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File:John coltrane with sax.jpg
John Coltrane

John William Coltrane (September 23, 1926 – July 17, 1967) was an American jazz saxophonist and composer.

約翰·威廉·柯川（1926年9月23日—1967年7月17日）為美國爵士薩克斯風演奏家及作曲家。

Though he was active before 1955, his prime years were between 1955 and 1967, during which time he reshaped modern jazz and influenced successive generations of other musicians. Coltrane's recording rate was astonishingly prolific, such that many albums did not appear until years after they were recorded.

He is regarded as one of the most important and influential jazz musicians, and one of the greatest musicians of the twentieth century. Along with tenor saxophonists Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young and Sonny Rollins, Coltrane fundamentally altered expectations for the instrument.

Early life and career （早期生涯）

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Born in Hamlet, North Carolina, Coltrane grew up in High Point in an era of racial segregation. During his seventh-grade school year, Coltrane experienced three deaths in his close-knit family; he lost his aunt, his grandfather, and his father. Coltrane began playing music and practicing obsessively at about this time.
柯川出生於美國北卡羅萊納州的Hamlet，成長於High Point的種族隔離區。七年級時，柯川痛失三位家族中的親密成員：他的阿姨、外祖父，以及父親。也許是為了撫平失親的傷痛，柯川就此狂熱地投入音樂世界。

His early life was influenced by a traditional Southern upbringing; the heavy emphasis on religion especially affected his later musical career. Coltrane began playing clarinet early on, but became interested in jazz and soon switched to alto saxophone. Coltrane moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in June 1943, and was inducted into the Navy in 1945, returning to civilian life in 1946. At this time, he had brief contact with Charlie Parker, during Parker's time in California.
柯川的早期生涯受到美國南方傳統家庭教育的深刻影響，強調宗教的環境深深影響了他晚期的音樂風格。柯川最初學習演奏豎笛，但很快地爵士樂擄惑了他的心，使他轉向中音薩克斯風的演奏。1943年6月，柯川搬至費城，於1945年被招募至海軍服役，直到1946年退伍。同時柯川也與當時人在加州的查理·帕克有過短暫的接觸與交流。

Coltrane worked at a variety of jobs in the late 1940s until he joined Dizzy Gillespie's big band in 1949 as an alto saxophonist. He stayed with Gillespie through the big band's breakup in May 1950 and switched to tenor saxophone during his subsequent spell in Gillespie's small group, staying until April 1951, when he returned to Philadelphia.
1940年代晚期，直到成為狄吉·格拉茲比大樂團的中音薩克斯風手以前，柯川嘗試過各種不同的工作。柯川在格拉茲比大樂團於1950年五月宣告解散後，加入格拉茲比自組的小團體，直到1951年四月時返回費城，並自此轉換樂器成為一名次中音薩克斯風手。

In early 1952, Coltrane joined Earl Bostic's band. In 1953, after a stint with Eddie Vinson, he joined Johnny Hodges's small group (during Hodges's four-year sabbatical from Duke Ellington's orchestra), staying with Hodges until mid-1954.

With Miles Davis' First Quintet

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File:John Coltrane-Miles Davis-So What-The Sound of Miles Davis.png
Soloing on "So What" in 1959; Miles Davis in background.

Although there are recordings of Coltrane from as early as 1946, he received little recognition until 1955.

Coltrane was freelancing in Philadelphia in the summer of 1955 when he received a call from trumpeter Miles Davis. Davis, whose success during the late forties had been followed by several dissipated years, was again consistently active, and was about to form a quintet. Legend has it that Sonny Rollins, Davis' preferred tenor-saxophonist, vanished temporarily to ensure that Coltrane was appointed in his place. Coltrane was with this first edition of the Davis group from October 1955 through April 1957 (with a few absences), a period which saw influential recordings from Davis and the first signs of Coltrane's growing ability.

This classic "First Quintet", best represented by two marathon recording sessions for Prestige in 1956, disbanded in mid-April due partially to Coltrane's problematic heroin addiction. He returned to Philadelphia again, and succeeded in curing himself of his addictions. Coltrane would use much of what he learned with Davis to run his own groups, namely allowing musicians to solo and improvise with their own sensibilities as well as eschewing involvement with his audience and remaining aloof to press. Coltrane's style at this point was loquacious and critics dubbed his playing as angry and harsh. Harry Frost dubbed Coltrane's solos "extended double-time flurries notable for their lack of direction".

During the latter part of 1957 Coltrane worked with Thelonious Monk at New York's Five Spot, a legendary gig. Unfortunately, this association was not well documented, and the best recorded evidence demonstrating the compatibility of Coltrane with Monk, a concert at Carneigie Hall on November 29, 1957, was only discovered and issued in 2005 by Blue Note. His extensive recordings as a sideman and as a leader for Prestige though, have a more mixed reputation. Blue Train though, his sole album as leader for the Alfred Lion era Blue Note, is probably that label's best known album from this period.

He rejoined Miles in January 1958 after kicking heroin and experiencing a spiritual epiphany that would lead him to concentrate wholly on the development of his music. In October 1958, Jazz critic Ira Gitler coined the term "sheets of sound" for Coltrane's unique style during this period with Davis. His playing was compressed, as if whole solos passed in a few seconds, with triple- or quadruple-time runs cascading in hundreds of notes per minute. He stayed with Davis until April 1960, usually playing alongside alto saxophonist Cannonball Adderley and drummer Philly Joe Jones in a sextet. During this time he participated in such seminal Davis sessions as Milestones and Kind Of Blue, and recorded his own influential sessions (notably Giant Steps). Around the end of his tenure with Davis, Coltrane began playing soprano saxophone, an unconventional move considering the instrument's near obsolescence at the time. His interest in the straight saxophone most likely arose from his admiration for Sidney Bechet and the work of his contemporary, Steve Lacy. The radical change in his tenor style after leaving the Davis group was due partially to a problem with his mouthpiece and acute pain in his gums, another possible reason for taking up the soprano, which Coltrane generally played "faster."

Shortly before completing his contract with Atlantic Records in May 1961 with the album Olé Coltrane, Coltrane joined the newly formed Impulse! label, with whom the "classic quartet" would record. It is generally assumed that the clinching reason Coltrane signed with Impulse! was that it would enable him to work again with recording engineer Rudy Van Gelder, who had recorded the earlier Prestige sessions. It was at Van Gelder's new studio in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey that Coltrane would record most of his records for the label.

Coltrane's Quartet

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File:John coltrane with soprano.jpg
John Coltrane playing a soprano saxophone

Coltrane formed a quartet in 1960. After moving through different personnel including Steve Kuhn, Pete Laroca and Billy Higgins, the lineup stabilized in the fall with pianist McCoy Tyner, bassist Steve Davis and drummer Elvin Jones. Tyner had been a friend of Coltrane's for some years and the two men long had an understanding that Tyner would join Coltrane at an appropriate moment. By early 1961 Davis had been replaced by Reggie Workman. Eric Dolphy joined the group as a second horn around the same time. The quintet had a celebrated (recorded) residency in November 1961 at Village Vanguard which was evidence of a new musical direction being pursued. It was some of the most experimental music he'd played up to this point. The music was influenced by Indian ragas, the recent developments in modal jazz, and the burgeoning free jazz movement.

During this period, many critics saw Coltrane as an interesting and virtuosic but somewhat sterile player. Audiences in France famously booed during his final tour with Davis. Down Beat magazine indicted Coltrane, along with Eric Dolphy, as players of "Anti-Jazz" in 1961, in an article that bewildered and upset the musicians. Coltrane admitted some of his early solos were based mostly on technical ideas. Furthermore, Dolphy's angular and jagged playing earned him a reputation as a figurehead of the "New Thing" movement led by Ornette Coleman, which was also denigrated by some jazz musicians and critics. But as Coltrane's style further developed, he was determined to make each performance "a whole expression of one's being," as he would call his music in a 1966 interview.

In 1962 Jimmy Garrison in turn replaced Workman. Dolphy departed in early 1962. The "Classic Quartet" with Tyner, Garrison and Jones produced searching, spiritually driven work. Coltrane moved toward a more harmonically static music which allowed him to expand rhythmically, harmonically and motivically in his improvisation. However, influences of his earlier harmonically complex music were still present, for example on the track "But Not for Me" on the 1960 album "My Favorite Things," Coltrane employs a giant steps matrix over the A sections instead of a conventional turnaround progression.

The criticism of the quintet with Dolphy may have had an impact on Coltrane. In contrast to the radicalism of Coltrane's 1961 recordings at the Village Vanguard, Coltrane's studio recordings in 1962 and 1963 were much more conservative and accessible. He recorded an album of ballads and participated in collaborations with Duke Ellington and Johnny Hartman. Despite a more polished approach in the studio, in concert the quartet continued its exploratory and challenging approach. The album "Ballads" is a fine example of Coltrane's versatility and his ability to tackle different forms of jazz whilst still being able to shed new light on old-fashioned standards such as "It's Easy to Remember."

The Classic Quartet would famously produce A Love Supreme in 1964, a culmination of much of Coltrane's work up to this period, as a four-part suite, essentially an ode to his faith and love for God. Its "spirituality" would characterizes much of Coltrane's late playing from 1965 to 1967. The fourth movement of the suite, "Psalm" is in fact a poem that Coltrane recites through his saxophone. The recording also pointed the way to the atonalism of those later free jazz recordings. Despite its challenging musical content, the album was a commercial success by jazz standards, encapsulating both the internal and external energy of the quartet of Coltrane, Tyner, Jones and Garrison. They only played the suite live once--in July 1965. By then, Coltrane's music had grown more adventurous, and the performance provides an interesting contrast to the original.

Tyner and Jones, would back up many other musicians of the day including Wayne Shorter and Joe Henderson on many albums during the sixties, redefining the way rhythm sections would approach backing soloists.

Free jazz

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In the early 60s Coltrane was influenced by Davis' modal approach, the free jazz of Ornette Coleman and the music of Ravi Shankar. Much of this influence can be heard as early as Coltrane's surprise 1960 hit My Favorite Things, a nearly 14-minute version of the Rogers and Hammerstein classic. Coltrane would frequently play this song through the rest of his career, though subsequent versions grew increasingly abstract, bearing only the faintest resemblance to the original song.

Coltrane's late period music showed an increasing interest in the free jazz, pioneered by Cecil Taylor, Albert Ayler and others. In formulating his late period style, Coltrane was especially influenced by Ayler's dissonance in Ayler's trio with bassist Gary Peacock and drummer Sunny Murray. Coltrane championed many younger free jazz musicians, including Archie Shepp), and under his guidance, Impulse! became a leading free jazz record label.

After recording A Love Supreme, the influence of Ayler's playing became more prominent in Coltrane's music. A series of recordings with the Classic Quartet in the first half of 1965 show Coltrane's playing becoming increasingly abstract and dissonant, with greater incorporation of devices like multiphonics, overblowing and playing in the altissimo register. In the studio, he reduced his soprano playing to concentrate on the tenor saxophone. In addition, the quartet responded to the leader by playing with increasing freedom. The group's evolution can be traced through the recordings The John Coltrane Quartet Plays, Dear Old Stockholm (both May 1965), Living Space, Transition (both June 1965), New Thing at Newport (July 1965), Sun Ship (August 1965), and First Meditations (September 1965).

In June 1965, he went into the Englewood Cliffs studio with ten other musicians (including Shepp, Pharoah Sanders, Freddie Hubbard, Marion Brown, and John Tchicai) to record Ascension. This lengthy 40 minute piece included adventurous solos by the young avant-garde musicians (as well as Coltrane), but was controversial primarily for the collective improvisation sections that separated the solos. Despite returning to recording with the quartet over the next few months, Coltrane invited Pharoah Sanders to join the band in September 1965.

By any measure, Sanders was one of the most abrasive saxophonists then playing. Coltrane, who used over-blowing frequently as an emotional exclamation-point, gravitated to Sanders's solos. Longtime Sun Ra saxophonist John Gilmore was a major influence on Coltrane's late-period music, as well. After hearing a Gilmore performance, Coltrane is reported to have said "He's got it! Gilmore's got the concept!"[1] Coltrane took informal lessons from Gilmore, and his own "Chasin' the 'Trane" (1961) was strongly inspired by Gilmore's music.

By the fall of 1965, Coltrane was regularly augmenting his group with Sanders and other free jazz musicians. Rashied Ali joined the group as a second drummer. Claiming he was unable to hear himself over the two drummers, Tyner left the band shortly after the recording of Meditations. Jones left in early 1966, dissatisfied by sharing drumming duties with Ali. It is possible that both men were unhappy with the music's new direction.

Also in 1965 Coltrane began using LSD which would inform the sublime, "cosmic" transcendence of his late period, and also its incomprehensibility to many listeners. After Jones and Tyner's departures, Coltrane led a quintet with Pharoah Sanders on tenor saxophone, his new wife Alice Coltrane on piano, Jimmy Garrison on bass, and Rashied Ali on drums. Coltrane and Sanders were described by Nat Hentoff as "speaking in tongues," an interesting interpretation seen relative to Coltrane's Christian upbringing in the south. The screaming, especially, can be compared to the cadences of black preachers on the pulpit.

Despite the radicalism of the horns, the rhythm section with Ali and Alice Coltrane had a very different, more relaxed feel than that with Jones and Tyner. The group can be heard on several live recordings from 1966. In 1967, Coltrane entered the studio several times; though one piece with Sanders has surfaced (the unusual "To Be", which features both Coltrane and Sanders on flutes), most of the recordings were either with the quartet minus Sanders (Expression and Stellar Regions) or as a duo with Ali. The latter duo produced six performances which appear on the album Interstellar Space. These saxophone-drum duets are general considered among the finest music Coltrane recorded near the end of his career.

Coltrane died from liver cancer at Huntington Hospital in Long Island, NY on July 17, 1967, at 40. Coltrane's excessive alcohol and heroin abuse during the 40s and 50s likely laid the seed for this illness, which can strike reformed alcoholics years after they quit. In a 1968 interview Albert Ayler revealed that Coltrane was consulting a Hindu meditative healer for his illness instead of western medicine, though conventional treatment may have been ineffective regardless.

Coltrane and religious beliefs

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Coltrane was born and raised a Christian, and was in touch with religion and spirituality from childhood. As a youth, he practiced music in a southern African-American church. In A Night in Tunisia: Imaginings of Africa in Jazz, Norman Weinstein notes the parallel between Coltrane's music and his experience in the southern church.

In 1957, after the age of 30, Coltrane began to shift spritual directions. He married Naima, a Muslim convert, and came into contact with Islam, an experience that may have led him to overcome his addictions to alcohol and heroin; it was a period of "spiritual awakening" that helped him return to the Jazz scene and eventually produce his greatest work. The journey took him through Islam (particularly Sufism). Bassist Donald Garrett told Coltrane, "You've got to go to the source to learn anything, and Sufism is one of the best sources there is."

Coltrane also explored Hinduism, the Kabbala, Jiddu Krishnamurti, yoga, maths, science, astrology, African history, and even Plato and Aristotle [2]. He notes..."During the year 1957, I experienced, by the grace of God, a spiritual awakening which was to lead 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."

In his 1965 album Meditations, Coltrane wrote about uplifiting people, "...To inspire them to realize more and more of their capacities for living meaningful lives. Because there certainly is meaning to life." [3]

But, it was the fusion between music and religion that produced A Love Supreme. Moustafa Bayoumi, an associate professor of English at Brooklyn College, City University of New York, argues that Coltrane's "A Love Supreme" features Coltrane chanting, "Allah Supreme". [4]

In October, 1965, Coltrane recorded Om, refering to the name of God in the Hindu religion. Coltrane described "Om" as the "first syllable, the primal word, the word of power". The 29-minute recording contains chants from the Bhagavad-Gita, a Hindu poem. It is alleged that Coltrane began taking LSD around the time of the Om session. A 1966 recording issued posthumously, has Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders chanting a Buddhist mantra, Om mani padme hum, and reciting a prayer: "May there be love and peace and perfection throughout all creation, oh God."

Coltrane's spiritual journey was interwoven with his investigation into world music. He believed not only in a universal musical structure which transcended ethnic distinctions, but in being able to harness the mystical, magickal language of music itself. Coltrane's study of Indian music led him to believe that certain sounds and scales could "produce specific emotional meanings" (impressions). According to Coltrane, the goal of a musician was to understand these forces, control them, and elicit a response from the audience. Like Pythagoras and his followers who believed music could cure illness, Coltrane said: "I would like to bring to people something like happiness. I would like to discover a method so that if I want it to rain, it will start right away to rain. If one of my friends is ill, I'd like to play a certain song and he will be cured; when he'd be broke, I'd bring out a different song and immediately he'd receive all the money he needed."

Legacy

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Today, most casual jazz listeners (and some self-described "traditionalist" musicians like Wynton Marsalis) consider late-period Coltrane unlistenable. However many of these late recordings — among them Ascension, Meditations and the posthumous Interstellar Space — are widely considered masterpieces. Many of Coltrane's innovations would be incorporated into the jazz fusion movement, however with diminishing returns of spiritual fervency and earnestness. Also more mainstream rock musicians such as Jimi Hendrix, Carlos Santana, the Stooges, and Mike Watt would seize upon Coltrane's work as inspiration in addition to American Blues music.

Coltrane's massive influence on jazz, both mainstream and avant-garde, began during his lifetime and continued to grow after his death. He is one of the most dominant influences on post-1960 jazz saxophonists.

Coltrane was an important pioneer in unaccompanied playing for saxophone and drums, first with Elvin Jones and then with Rashied Ali.

Coltrane's son, Ravi Coltrane, has followed in his father's steps and become a saxophonist. His widow, Alice Coltrane recently returned to music after several decades of retirement.

Selected discography

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Samples

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References

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  • Porter, Lewis (1998). John Coltrane: his life and music. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. ISBN 0472101617.

Further reading

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  • Kahn, Ashley (2002). A Love Supreme: The Story of John Coltrane's Signature Album (1st ed.). New York: Viking. ISBN 0-12-345678-9.
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