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John Coltrane Jazz, taking its roots in African American folk music, has
evolved, metamorphosed, and transposed itself over the last century to
become a truly American art form. More than any other type of music, it
places special emphasis on innovative individual interpretation. Instead of
relying on a written score, the musician improvises. For each specific period
or style through which jazz has gone through over the past seventy years,
there is almost always a single person who can be credited with the evolution
of that sound. From Thelonius Monk, and his bebop, to Miles Davis’ cool
jazz, from Dizzy Gillespie’s big band to John Coltrane’s free jazz; America’s
music has been developed, and refined countless times through individual
experimentation and innovation. One of the most influential musicians in the
development of modern jazz is John Coltrane. In this paper, I examine the
way in which Coltrane’s musical innovations were related to the music of the
jazz greats of his era and to the tribulations and tragedies of his life. John
William Coltrane was born in Hamlet, North Carolina, on September 23,
1926. Two months later, his family moved to High Point, North Carolina,
where he lived in a fairly well-to-do part of town. He grew up in a typical
southern black family, deeply religious, and steeped in tradition. Both of his
parents were musicians, his father played the violin and ukulele, and his
mother was a member of the church choir. For several years, young Coltrane
played the clarinet, however with mild interest. It was only after he heard the
great alto saxophonist Johnny Hodges playing with the Duke Ellington band
on the radio, that he became passionate about music. He dropped the clarinet
and took up the alto saxophone, soon becoming very accomplished. When
Coltrane was thirteen, he experienced several tragedies that would leave a
lasting impression on him and would have a great impact on the music of his
later years. Within a year, his father, his uncle, and his minister all died. He
lost every important male influence in his life. After graduating from high
school in High Point, he moved to Philadelphia in 1943, where he lived in a
small one-room apartment and worked as a laborer in a sugar-refinery. For a
year, Coltrane attended Ornstein School of Music. Then in 1945, he was
drafted into the Navy and sent to Hawaii where he was assigned to play
clarinet in a band called the Melody Makers. Upon his return from Hawaii a
year later, Coltrane launched his music career. “With all those years of
constant practice in High Point behind him, possessing a powerful inner
strength from being raised in a deeply religious family, and with a foundation
in musical theory and an innate curiosity about life, Coltrane was well
prepared to seriously enter a battle.” In the late nineteen forties, Coltrane
began playing with several different R&B groups in small bars and clubs
around Philadelphia. It became a tradition in many of the clubs at this time for
musicians to “walk the bar” (i.e. to walk on top of the bar while playing one’s
instrument). Coltrane was ashamed of having to go through this “display”
every night. “To any serious musician, it was an incredibly humiliating
experience - to someone like Coltrane, who was developing a type of
religious fervor for his music, it was devastating.” In addition to the negative
self-image this experience engendered, critics criticized his music as being too
bizarre. Coltrane became very depressed, and searching for a way out, he
turned to heroin. Heroin was a very popular drug among black musicians in
the forties. It was a uniting force that, initially, brought them together, but in
the end caused lives and careers to disintegrate. In 1949, Dizzy Gillespie
invited Coltrane to play in his big band. Gillespie had been a very influential
and important figure in the bebop movement. Bebop was a style of jazz,
popular during the late thirties and forties. It incorporated faster tempos, and
more complex phrases than the jazz of earlier years. For the first time in many
years, Coltrane felt some sense of stability in his life. However, after a
two-year stint with Gillespie, Coltrane was asked to leave because of his
unreliability due to his heroin addiction. Again, Coltrane was reduced to
“walking the bar”, and playing in seedy clubs. Depressed and dejected, his
addiction grew. It was during this time that Coltrane became very interested
in eastern philosophies. “When he was not studying or playing he spent most
of his time reading and attempting to satisfy his growing philosophical
curiosity about life. It was an inborn curiosity to a certain extent, but one that
had also developed from events from his early life such as his religious
upbringing, and the early deaths of the most important men in his life.” Life
was getting back on track for him, as he finally felt the influence of positive
forces. At this time, he met Naima, a Moslem woman, and an able musician.
More than anyone, she was able to help Coltrane pick up the broken pieces
of his life. They were soon married. In the mid-fifties, he was invited to play
with Miles Davis and his quintet. The collaboration that developed would
change his life. Miles Davis had received acclaim at the Newport Jazz
Festival in 1955. Davis was dubbed the rising star of the new avant-garde
movement, cool jazz. Cool jazz was a striking contrast to the more traditional
jazz popular during the forties. It emphasized experimentation with chords,
keys, and modes, improvising on scales rather than on sequences of chords,
producing music that at times was very bizarre. This new movement was the
beginning of an experimental stage of jazz that was very popular during the
sixties. The partnership between Davis and Coltrane proved to be an
incredible learning experience for Coltrane. He began to develop a style
distinctly his own. “Coltrane poured out streams of notes with velocity and
passion, exploring every melodic idea, no matter how exotic.” This became
known as Coltrane’s “sheets of sound period”, in which he would explore the
scales of the saxophone at a speed that no one had ever achieved, creating
very dense musical textures . The Davis band did very well for a time, and
made several recordings; however, in late 1956, Coltrane was fired from the
band because of his debilitating heroin addiction. At this point, Coltrane
almost gave up music. He actually went to the New York Post Office, and
filled out an application to be a postman. He and Naima moved from New
York to Philadelphia in November of that year and lived in his mother’s
house there. Again, his life reached a low. Drugs and alcohol controlled him.
Coltrane realized at this point that he needed to choose between drugs or
music. He chose music. For two-weeks, he locked himself in his room and
went through a very painful withdrawal. When he left that room, he was a
cured man, and never touched heroin or alcohol again. During those two
weeks, Coltrane had undergone a spiritual rebirth that would send him on his
quest to find “the mysterious sound” . This transformation was documented
on his album A Love Supreme (1964), considered by many to be the best
recording of his solo career. On the album cover, Coltrane wrote- “During
the year 1957, I experienced, by the grace of God, a spiritual awakening
which has guided me to a richer, fuller, more productive life. At that time, in
gratitude, I humbly asked to be given the means and privilege to make others
happy through music. I feel this has been granted through His grace. ALL
PRAISE TO GOD.” The album is divided into four parts: Acknowledgment,
Resolution, Pursuance, and Psalm. Each part details a different element of his
spiritual journey. Coltrane’s God was not Christian, Muslim, or Jewish; his
God was simply a force that provided unity and harmony. “He believed that
his humanity, his music, the material world, and God were all one, and that
feeling of unity governed his life.” In 1957, Coltrane embarked on the most
important learning experience of his life - an apprenticeship with the “High
Priest of Bebop”, Thelonius Monk. Coltrane’s style had been developed with
Miles Davis, but it was still somewhat reserved. With Monk, he was
transformed into a legend. “Monk would provide Coltrane with the key to
unlock all sorts of musical doors and free the dark and the beautiful visions
Coltrane had seen throughout his life.” With the Thelonius Monk quartet,
Coltrane learned many techniques that he incorporated into his distinctive
style. Instead of concentrating on the melodies, the group focused on the
harmonic structure of a song. At this time, Coltrane was stronger than ever.
With his mature style, and new sobriety, he was ready to set out on his own.
At the end of 1958, Thelonius Monk disbanded the group; Coltrane was
about to set out on one of the most highly regarded solo careers in the history
of jazz. In the same year, he recorded over twenty different albums with
various artists, and though not famous yet, was widely respected by his fellow
musicians. His most important work from this period was Blue Trane (1957),
one of the first of his albums that would be widely acclaimed. Critics began to
laud him, and regularly gave him good reviews. In 1957, Dom Ceruli wrote in
Down Beat magazine “His playing is constantly tense and searching; always a
thrilling experience.” After the dissolution of Monk’s group, Coltrane
returned to work with Miles Davis, but in 1960, he left to form his own band.
The jazz world of the sixties belonged to Coltrane. He pushed the limits of
music, while attracting ever-bigger audiences. It was during this time that
Coltrane searched for the ‘mysterious sound’. He once said that the sound
for which he was searching was like holding a seashell to his ear. “However
one describes the strange sound, it contained some essential truth for him,
existing as an omnipresent background hum behind the façade of everyday
life.” With the John Coltrane quartet (pianist McCoy Tyner, drummer Elvin
Jones, and Reggie Workman on bass), he incorporated tribal music from
Africa, India, and the Middle East with that of the new avant-garde
movement, ‘free jazz’. Free jazz or ‘the New Thing’, like the counter-culture
of the sixties, was a nonconformist movement. It purposely avoided the
structured sounds of the cool jazz and bebop movements. Instead, it was
devoid of any structure, direction, or tonality, and was characterized by
random improvisation. As the sixties progressed, Coltrane experimented
more and more with different combinations of sounds and instruments. He
became obsessed with trying to communicate his musical vision. In 1968,
Alice Coltrane (his wife at the time) stated “I think what he was trying to do
in music was the same thing he was trying to do in his life. That was to
universalize his music, his life, his religion. It was all based on a universal
concept, all-sectarian or non-sectarian.” In the mid-sixties, Coltrane began to
take LSD fairly regularly, in an effort to help him explore in greater depth
both himself and his music. “For Coltrane and his quest, LSD was a
remarkable tool to dig deeper into his own being so he could discover the
essential and absolute truth at the center of his being.” Long time fans,
however, viewed his music in this period as being too radical, and too
far-out. Coltrane felt he was losing control over his music; his experimentation
was so far-ranging on that he did not know in what direction he wanted to
go. Through it all, he never abandoned the search for ‘the mysterious sound’.
In late 1966, Coltrane knew that there was something wrong with him. He
didn’t feel right, and by early 1967, he stopped performing in public. He
knew that his death was imminent. In May of 1967, Coltrane was taken to
the hospital, suffering from extreme stomach pain. He was ordered to stay at
the hospital, but left anyway. On Monday, July 17, he passed away. The
cause was liver cancer. John Coltrane’s music both led the way and reflected
the enormous varieties of experimentation and development of American Jazz
of the 1950’s and 60’s. Today, his influence is heard in the recordings of
almost every young jazz musician. A man of mysticism, whose life was
dedicated to sharing his vision of music with others, Coltrane was clearly a
creative genius.
Word Count: 2092
Word Count: 2095
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