Jazz experts, scholars detail how iconic saxophonist, who would have turned 100 this year, reshaped most American musical genre
Nearly 60 years after his last recording, trailblazing jazz saxophonist John Coltrane’s legacy remains as vital as ever.
Coltrane, who died of liver cancer at 40 in 1967, is widely credited with reshaping jazz in the late 1950s and early ’60s. The Pulitzer Prize board awarded him a posthumous special career citation in 2007. Fans will celebrate his 100th birthday on Sept. 23.
Coltrane played on several of jazz’s most well-known and important albums, including 1959’s “Kind of Blue” as a member of the Miles Davis Quintet, and then, as a bandleader, in 1960’s “Giant Steps” and his 1964 opus, “A Love Supreme.”
As a performer, Coltrane was a hard-working virtuoso known for his lyrical and unmistakable sound. But he was also a pioneer of new harmonic forms who explored non-Western musical and spiritual ideas and was among the first stars to embrace the avant-garde “free jazz” movement.
In edited reflections, members of the Harvard community explain why Coltrane remains a singular musical icon.
Gazette: Why is John Coltrane still such a revered figure all these years later?
Ingrid Monson, Quincy Jones Professor of African American Music at Harvard: I would put it simply: There has never been a jazz artist more profound than John Coltrane, and that’s saying a lot. Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter — this is a towering field of incredible musicians.
One of the reasons I feel that way so strongly is that no matter what your perspective was — politically, socially, aesthetically, whatever — John Coltrane spoke to musical excellence in just the most profound way.
This is somebody who used to practice eight hours a day or in between sets he was doing at a club. He was dedicated to a combination of discipline, the mathematics of music.
But first and foremost, to him, the relationship between music and communicating with the divine was ultimately the most important thing. To him, music and doing it with excellence, was about communing with the divine, and his ultimate expression of that that everybody cites is, of course, the album “A Love Supreme.”
What makes him so profound is just the depth of integrity of the music and his commitment to his personal spiritual beliefs, and that this was how to be a good human and to be humble in the face of God.
Bob Blumenthal ’69, J.D. ’72, Boston-based jazz critic and author who won two Grammy Awards for best album notes for two special Coltrane retrospectives: Clearly, he’s one of the 10 greatest musicians in the history of jazz.
Nobody ever really heard of him until he was 29 years old and joined Miles Davis in 1955. He was, at that point, a classic case of a talented musician whose drug and alcohol problems had kept him from really developing. But he had a sound that was so arresting, that just grabbed you.
The emotional impact of the sound was already available in his first stay with Miles Davis. And his technique, because he was very fast on the tenor sax, made him stand out. But he was fired by Miles Davis in 1957 for being so unreliable.
He went home. He cleaned up his act, came back to New York a couple of months later. Thelonious Monk soon hired him for his band, and by the end of the year, went back to Miles Davis’ group a much better saxophonist.
He stayed with Miles Davis for two years, at which point he had developed his own harmonic language, which caught the attention of a lot of musicians. In 1960, he forms his quartet with McCoy Tyner on piano and Elvin Jones on drums, and a series of bass players that ultimately became Jimmy Garrison on bass in 1961. They established a whole style for quartet-playing using modes and scales instead of chord progressions.
He also began playing the soprano saxophone, which hadn’t had any prominence in jazz since the 1920s, other than the great Sidney Bechet. Once he had his own band and had more control over his music, his talent as a composer became clear.
Vijay Iyer, pianist and composer, Franklin D. and Florence Rosenblatt Professor of the Arts and professor of African and African American Studies: He became one of the most virtuosic saxophonists of all time. He also made music that spoke to a lot of people.
There’s a sense of struggle in his music; there’s a narrative of overcoming hardship that you feel in the energy of it, in the backdrop of his life story. And I think that hard-won quality that you can hear in the way he approaches things speaks to people in a way that mere virtuosity for its own sake doesn’t. You really feel that he arrived at something after great effort and labor and hardship.
“There’s a sense of struggle in his music; there’s a narrative of overcoming hardship that you feel in the energy of it, in the backdrop of his life story.”
Vijay Iyer
The other thing is that he wasn’t afraid to, in his own way, speak to his time. A piece like “Alabama,” for example, which is a prayer for the four girls killed in the [1963 Baptist Street] church bombing, or in that last movement of “A Love Supreme,” where he is playing through one of Dr. King’s sermons, and then created his own prayer. So, there’s also this prayerful quality in the music that emerges in the last several years of his career.
What made him so special as a player?
Monson: You recognize his tone instantly. He’s got a unique sound on the saxophone.
For people who aren’t familiar with it I would suggest they listen to his ballad performances — he has a whole album called “Ballads” — or listen to his version of “Body and Soul” on the album “Equinox.” He had a tremendous lyricism.
Many jazz players say, “If you can’t play a ballad, you can’t play.” You hear this particular sound. It’s a little darker than some other players, and it’s very expressive, and the way he connects the notes.
For his up-tempo playing, listen to him on “Giant Steps,” and how quickly and the kinds of patterns and ideas that he is developing in the solos.
But for him, the technical wasn’t just about the technique. The technique was a means of mastery to get at this kind of communion with the divine and higher powers of some kind. That’s what really inspired him.
Blumenthal: His sound just grabs you. I happen to be listening to an old anthology, and it had a ballad he played on the first album issued under his own name, just called “Coltrane.” The song is “While My Lady Sleeps” and it’s almost wrenching, the emotion he can get out of a ballad.
And he was a great blues player, which people came around to understand.
Sound is so important. The place to go if you want to hear it for the first time on record is the Miles Davis album “Round About Midnight.” It’s the first thing that brought Coltrane to public attention. On the track “’Round Midnight,” Miles Davis plays the theme. There’s a little interlude, and then Coltrane comes in and plays his solo. And suddenly people are saying, “Whoa! Who is this guy? What’s he doing?”
Iyer: Coltrane was influenced by a lot of people — Bird [Charlie Parker], Prez [Lester Young], Sonny Rollins. He even named Stan Getz as an influence at one point.
And then, he studied music from all over the world kind of obsessively — [Béla] Bartók, South Asian music. He started working with African musicians towards the end. He was very interested in what at the time was called a “Third World consciousness,” that idea of looking outside the West for inspiration that a lot of African American artists pursued.
That was not just idle curiosity. It was about contemplating their place in the post-World War II era and understanding their fates as linked to those in across the Global South. This sense of kinship and spiritual connection, and the fact that their lived realities were not so far apart.
Generations of musicians from jazz to rock to hip-hop and classical cite Coltrane as a major influence. What were some of his most important contributions to music?
Iyer: He had these really pivotal apprenticeships with these icons of the music, people who were real instigators and changemakers, Monk and Miles Davis. The other thing that makes him really influential among musicians is that he came up with some pretty important ideas that move the language forward.
Every story that anyone talks about him they would always talk about how he was constantly trying to find something new for himself, and he would have these breakthroughs.
The most famous example is “Giant Steps.” For someone who’s not versed in music theory, it sounds like another song. But any musician knows there’s something profoundly challenging in that song. It’s just a 16-bar étude, but to try to navigate it as an improviser, you have to come up with some new language because of the harmonic oddity of it.
He made it seem easy, but that’s because he worked on it for a long time. He gets somewhere by really putting himself through the paces, and he has this extraordinarily high standard for himself to try to achieve something that seems, at the outset, impossible.
It’s things like that where he set a new bar and he created a new language. And he did that repeatedly.
Another breakthrough is that he started to do the reverse, most famously with his version of “My Favorite Things” in 1961. He took a pop song and stripped away all the harmony. It’s all centered around this central drone pitch. That came from his interest in South Asian music, this very different approach to music making that isn’t based on chords, that’s based around resonance.
So, he had these pretty interesting and kind of countervailing interests. One was this constant playing around with chords and intervals and progressions. Another was really stripping things to their essence.
Blumenthal: Back in the late ’50s and early ’60s, as I understand it, the way nightclubs operated, bands were told to play for 30 minutes, 40 minutes tops, and then, “We need to sell drinks for 20 minutes.”
Coltrane was the first bandleader to say, “No, I’m playing as long as I need to play.” It led to altering the whole way music was presented at nightclubs. I’ve never seen him get credit for this, but he’s maybe the key individual in that transition.
Coltrane was known for relentlessly practicing for hours and hours every day, even during gigs while his bandmates were soloing. What was he trying to do?
Iyer: We have to understand him as a composer.
He was working on ideas. He wasn’t just trying to sound cleaner and faster than the next guy. He was just like any composer who lives into their 100s and keeps creating. There’s always this “What’s the next idea?” And then also, “How do I put that idea into practice as a player?” It was processing ideas and trying to develop them.
We use the word practicing, but what do we mean?
It’s the word we use in classical music to say I’m trying to polish this rendition of this piece. But that’s not what most of us in creative music are doing. We’re trying to refine the process of creating. He knows that there’s more than what he knows, and he knows there’s a way to access it. That is already here.
So, it’s about trying to open that door. It’s not about refining anything. It’s about those doors that you’re trying to open. That’s why any of us play. That’s why any of us are artists. Because we’re interested in channeling something from beyond ourselves and being that conduit so that we can bring that healing property and that magic to others.
ESSENTIAL COLTRANE TRACKS
Monson: I first heard him when I was a teenager, maybe 16 or so. “My Favorite Things” was one of the things I heard first. But when I heard his version of “Body and Soul,” my mind was blown away. Also, “Central Park West.” I love “Naima;” I love the ballads. I love from the album “Africa Brass,” his version of “Greensleeves.” And “Wise One” is one I would play over and over again, that’s on the “Crescent” album. He had an album with Duke Ellington, where he played “In a Sentimental Mood.” That was amazing. And he did this album with singer Johnny Hartman. I absolutely love, “My One and Only Love.” Just gorgeous.
Iyer: Oh god, how do I narrow it down? On the album with Johnny Hartman, “Lush Life.” “Body and Soul” that’s on “Live in Seattle,” which is spectacular. That’s one of the greatest albums to me of all time. It’s got a lot of chaos and turbulence, but it’s also got incredibly advanced and beautiful, brilliant playing by Coltrane, by McCoy Tyner, by Elvin Jones. A lot of the recordings with Miles are really beautiful, like the Prestige stuff, the quintet music with Red Garland. One that probably doesn’t get invoked very often is from the album “Interstellar Space” from late ’66 or early ’67, a piece called “Venus,” which is really lush and beautiful.
Blumenthal: “Good Bait” from the album “Soultrane.” “Straight, No Chaser” from the Miles Davis album “Milestones.” “Chasin’ the Trane” from “Coltrane ‘Live’ at the Village Vanguard.” “Soul Eyes” from the album “Coltrane” on Impulse; “Wise One” from “Crescent.” “Spiral” from “Giant Steps.” For soprano saxophone tracks: “My Favorite Things,” the original recording, and “Afro Blue” from “Live at Birdland.”
The things about getting into his music, I’ve always said, is I think it’s a mistake if you feel like if you don’t know anything about a certain musician, you have to start at the beginning and work your way through. I think if you find something that attracts you, then you work backwards and forwards.