Happy Birthday Mr. Coltrane!

[poot]

Can't let this thread die.

Had Trane lived, I believe he would have moved away from the avant-garde; he was developing a strong interest in what would become known as world beat music.

Seems the Free Jazz movement pretty much dried up after Coltrane's death. A lot of those artists (Archie Shepp, Albert Ayler, Pharaoh Sanders) were signed to ABC Impulse, "the house that Trane built." Coltrane had even supported Shepp and Ayler financially; being a free-jazz musician was not a ticket to wealth. After his death Impulse pulled the plug on most of them. I believe Pharaoh Sanders still produced a few Impulse recordings and had a fair amount of success, as did Alice Coltrane.

Alice Coltrane's Journey in Satchidananda is an excellent post-Coltrane recording and represents a return to more familiar forms. On this recording Pharaoh plays simply and melodically, abandoning the wildness of his free-jazz days. If you're a Coltrane fan I'd strongly recommend this recording.

 

[cdlaine]

Did somebody mention ballads ?.... 8)

Grey Goose on the rocks, slap on the headphones, pour yourself into the barcolounger...and melt.

A compilation... very comfortable. So, when you are in the mood.. Favorites...My Little brown book, Too young to go steady, In a sentimental mood...well heck, all of them.

Peace, Chas

http://www.vervemusi...up.com/artist/r ... 4&aid=2660

 

[jashoup]

poot said:
Can't let this thread die.

Had Trane lived, I believe he would have moved away from the avant-garde; he was developing a strong interest in what would become known as world beat music.


That's a good point. Can you imagine Coltrane sitting in with Shakti? What a band that would have been!

[poot said:
Seems the Free Jazz movement pretty much dried up after Coltrane's death. A lot of those artists (Archie Shepp, Albert Ayler, Pharaoh Sanders) were signed to ABC Impulse, "the house that Trane built." Coltrane had even supported Shepp and Ayler financially; being a free-jazz musician was not a ticket to wealth. After his death Impulse pulled the plug on most of them. I believe Pharaoh Sanders still produced a few Impulse recordings and had a fair amount of success, as did Alice Coltrane.

Alice Coltrane's Journey in Satchidananda is an excellent post-Coltrane recording and represents a return to more familiar forms. On this recording Pharaoh plays simply and melodically, abandoning the wildness of his free-jazz days. If you're a Coltrane fan I'd strongly recommend this recording.


There are still some stragglers in the free jazz world. No one's ever been able to stop Ornette Coleman. And Roscoe Mitchell kind of picked up the ball and ran with it too. I think there is actually still a fairly vital movement that follows this line, except they're quite far out of the mainstream.

Have you heard Alice Coltrane's final album, Translinear Light? Has Jack DeJohnette, Jeff Watts, Charlie Haden, et. al., on it. Also Alice and John's son Ravi. It's quite beautiful. I got to see Alice, Ravi, Roy Haynes, and Charlie Haden in Ann Arbor MI two years ago on what would have been Trane's 80th birthday. An amazing concert. And if you closed your eyes, you would swear Trane was in the room. Ravi's got that sound.

 

[rondrums51]

jashoup said:
rondrums51 said:
My question is: What musician in the last 30 years has done what Coltrane did?


You've hit the nail on the head with that question. That very thing is pretty hotly debated in the jazz world. In a sense, the growth and progression of jazz came to an end with Coltrane. I'm actually just finishing a book about this very thing right now, called "Coltrane: The Story of a Sound" by Ben Ratliff. He posits that the standard sound of a jazz group today is essentially that which was developed by Coltrane and his band, that everyone is standing on his shoulders. (Consider the bands of Branford Marsalis and Kenny Garrett in this light.) Obviously you have exceptions to this for groups that are chasing a specific artist or genre, but in general I think he's right. Everyone wants to have Coltrane's sound.

You ask who has done what Coltrane did. Wynton Marsalis might be the closest in terms of sheer public stature, but to many people Trane is seen as almost a deity. I don't think Wynton has quite reached those heights yet. And Wynton isn't constantly breaking barriers and searching and trying new things, like Trane did.

Toward the end of his life, in the increasingly out music he was playing, Trane started putting down his horn and playing bells and tambourines and such. When asked why, he replied that "he couldn't think of anything else to play." Essentially he felt he had exhausted the possibilities of the saxophone.

Don't think there's anyone out there today that is even coming close.

You are right on. Today's music business puts commercial appeal over creativity. The 60's were a time of experimentation and artistic freedom. Those days are gone, and they're not coming back. Nowadays, with mega-corporations controlling the business, it's all about the bottom line and appealing to the low common denominator.

I agree about Wynton. He's great, and he has worked hard to keep jazz alive in the public eye, but he's not a pioneer like Coltrane was. He can't be a pioneer, if he wants to be successful. That's just the way it is.

Someone please invent a time-travel machine, so I can go back to the 60's.

 

[Pounder]

I'm just not into Wynton at all. Branford is a great player, but Wynton, although he's a great player, does not seem to have any of the forward-thinking and exploratory attitudes that made Coltrane the great jazz star he was. I don't think everything began and ended with him, because I feel that jazz did indeed evolve beyond where it was when Trane passed. It went into electric and blended with Rock, Funk, and other styles. Some Jazz purists refuse to acknowledge this fact, and many critics never let Miles Davis (or 4/5 of his great 60s quintet) forget it. I've never heard Wynton move beyond this period, so in my mind he's really retro. A great historian perhaps. This is all just opinion, though. And what if Coltrane had lived? The same question is answered with varying degrees of believability, with regards to all the greats, Coltrane certainly was one of them. Particularly in Jazz, Coltrane is up there with Bird, and I believe Miles Davis. And in Rock there's Hendrix, and Bonham, all the innovators.. We have the music they did make, however; and this music is waiting to be discovered by new generations, and it is waiting to be used by today's innovators in music--not just in jazz.

I have always seen Coltrane to be similar to Charlie Parker in that he was an explorer. He exhaustively explored all the melodic and harmonic permutations of his music. But his explorations had gone in a different direction even than where they were at in the early 60s. I'm not really as studied as I should be but I know after A Love Supreme Coltrane went further into the free-jazz genre and some more spiritual-oriented works with some other instrumentation, but I don't know if he could have kept from further alienating his audience. Would he have had more to say, or did he say everything he came here to say musically? Tough to tell...

 

[5 Style]

I'm a big Coltrane fan as well. I got interested in his music when as a geeky music loving teen I keept reading stuff about my favorite rock musicians where they'd say how they were really influenced by Coltrane's music. One day I realized that this old 3 LP collection that my mom had of jazz stuff had a side of Coltrane tracks on it... It was something called "Birdland" and as soon as I put on that Coltrane side, I was hooked.

That recording was with a different band than any of the ones that he's more famous for. It has McCoy Tyner, but has Billy Higgins in place of Elvin Jones and a bass player by the name of Art Davis. Much more "inside' than most of the stuff that he's better known for, but such great music and still one of my favorites by him. Higgins almost never plays a fill, but his drumming is so earthy... so funky! Coltrane and McCoy Tyner have this quality to their solos on this one where it's as if every note was composed... there isn't any wasted note... no noodling at all. The tunes that these guys recorded apparently didn't even fill a whole LP, but there's a CD with this session and another lesser great one that's worth checking out... It's called "LIke Sonny."

I Love all of the stuff with Elvin too, of course. The much later stuff with Rashid Ali is kind of harder for me to get into... but I do love a lot of free jazz. Ornette Coleman comes to mind, and he's still doing it. I saw a show just last year that was fantastic!

I have to agree with Pounder in that the adventure in jazz music didn't end with the death of Coltrane. Perhaps as some have said, there isn't anyone of the stature of Coltrane playing jazz today, but there are plenty of folks that out there adding new sounds... new ideas to the art form. Jazz to me, is something that's constantly evolving and although certainly some of these evolutionary stages are not as profound as others, the fact that it is evolving keeps it interesting.