Here the music of John Coltrane, arguably one of America's most important 20th Century Artists, has been laid bare on the musical autopsy table by a seasoned and confident art and Jazz critique, Ben Ratliff.
To those of us from the 1960s, whose intellect and artistic sensibilities were being constantly challenged -- even assaulted -- by a need to understand Coltrane's music, this is a welcomed contribution to the history of Jazz and to a better understanding of the music theory behind post-modern Jazz music and its familiar compositions. Using a dialect that fuses the vernacular of bebop with his own rich self-invented language of the art critic, Ratliff wields a deft scalpel in this his own self-styled musical autopsy room.
In part one of this two-part dissection laboratory, Raliff examines Coltrane's music using dense, sometimes even layered and often deeply intellectual language and analysis borrowed from music theory, excerpted from the tapes of live Jazz presentations, and from the "head sessions' of many famous Jazz musician's practice sessions. He does so with great erudition but without over-hyping or being pretentious, boring or pedantic.
Ratliff situates Coltrane's development as a musician and as a person in the context of a politically and socially hectic, but artistically rich and fertile, time. For instance:
He points out that Bebop was a new language of blues-based modernism, developed in NY in the early 40s by Charley Parker and Dizzy Gillespie and associated with fast tempos, asymmetrical melodic lines, and chord harmonies inspired by Stravinsky, Debussy, and Bartok. Ratliff explains Parker's eureka moment as being when he used the higher interval of a chord as a melody line and backed them up with appropriately related changes - only then could he play everything he had been hearing. He explains too how the two giants of the post-Charley Parker era, John Coltrane and Sonny Rollins, "separately colonized the post-Parker universe."
With great precision and an innate sensitivity to what is important, he explains Coltrane's idea of sheets of sound as being similar to the sketching of a "thin-pointed pen" versus that of a "paint-roller" -- both tracing out the same melodies. Or, as Coltrane challenged Wayne Shorter to do: "play all the sounds you can hear emanating from the "dronggg" caused by dropping a forearm across the piano keys.
Part I covers Coltrane's graduate degrees in advance music theory from both Miles Davis and his apprenticeship under Theolonius Monk; his brief stint with the master of the Avant-Garde, Ornette Coleman; and the expansive musical developments and interpretations he acquired from associations with Sun Ra, Rav Shankar, and many others. Coltrane's language on the saxophone was the language of sophistication. He played lavishly around, behind, above and outside simple changes; and he did so with great depth, stamina, fervor, and tenderness. In what is not an altogether apocryphal story, Raliff relates a tale that Coltrane, toward the end of his life, simply ran out of things that could be played on the saxophone, and out of new musical forms that could be explored.
In part two, the author gives a rich sample of comments, commentaries and critiques of those who studied, or studied with, or were affected by Coltrane's persona and music. These are well-selected comments and critiques designed to reveal even more about the artist and his music; and they do. A great part of section two draws on the rich history of Jazz and the subtext is devoted to understanding the context in which Coltrane existed both musically and socially. As the author points out, no one can understand John Coltrane without understanding that he was obsessed by, and obsessed with, musical sound, and by the demands he placed on himself in his quest for the perfect sound. Coltrane was about three things: Sound, sound, and more sound. For instance, even at their least inhibited, Coltrane's solos still show stamina that comes from difficult, almost demonic, obsessive and solitary practicing; they are derived from a deep and profound knowledge of the intricacies of music theory, and as always, his music is immensely and intricately "worked out music" in search of "the ultimate sound."
Like all great artists, Coltrane altered the lives of those he touched and of those who emulated him. They ceased to see Jazz as an exercise book, or a record collection but as an art form of open-ended possibilities. This is a fine piece of Jazz historical writing that will endure. Five Stars.
