The New Jazz Musings

The French writer Frank Tenot was in New York during October 1960, and was invited to the "My Favorite Things" session on October 21st. In the January 1962 edition of the French "Jazz Magazine" Tenot contributed a piece to the Coltrane special, which was featured across multiple pages, and had articles by two other writers. I've been reading about the 2022 remastering of "My Favorite Things" and this inspired me to complete the English translation that I had started in 2018. Some of the originally translated article formed the blog entry  John Coltrane the Obsessive I must practice, I must practice... I still have to train and improve. It is with these words that John Coltrane replied more than a year ago, to the warm congratulations I gave him at the end of the Atlantic Studios recording session for "My Favorite Things".  His forehead was lined with worry as he stared at his soprano sax like it was a poisonous snake. Yet everyone thought the...

Jazz Magazine Janvier '62 Much has been written about John Coltrane's obsession with self improvement, including obsessive practising with his instruments. In Philapdelphia, young musicians who would later become established artists, would sit across from Coltrane's home to listen to him practice. He would practice during band breaks and would often prefer to practice in his hotel room, and eat a couple of apples from a store, rather than eat in a restaurant. One of the main reasons Bob Thiele of Impulse wanted the joint recording with Duke Ellington, was to try to show Coltrane the Duke's regular one-take recording philosophy. Often-times it wouldn't get any better. Jimmy Heath, horn player and Trane's longtime friend did say that his own heroin addiction forced deep concentration. He imagined that during Trane's addiction, despite the terrible curse, it would have driven him to increasing concentration on practising tenor lines. Frank Tenot was a...