Customer Reviews

Spirit Catcher: The Life and Art of John Coltrane

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

While jazz criticism is often little better than "fanwriting," Fraim's book on Coltrane is even worse than thispitiful standard. Factual errors are plentiful ("Countdown" is NOT from _Coltrane Jazz_; Coltrane was NOT playing with Johnny Hodges in the 1940's); Fraim's "research" evidently consisted of nothing more than cutting and pasting standard biographies (Thomas, Cole); and his allegedly "metaphorical" interpretations of the music, mentioned not once but twice on the back cover, are distracting and uninformative, and often consist of quotes from other authors such as Conrad (Fraim describes Coltrane's "piercing gaze" after recording _Giant Steps_ as similar to the smouldering look of an Anais Nin character!). While an analysis of the spiritual dimension of Coltrane's music would be most welcome, this book certainly is not it. With many jazz giants still lacking decent biographies in any language (Thelonious Monk, Sonny Rollins), the publication of this shallow appreciation of the profound and beautiful music of John Coltrane does a disservice to jazz writing in general and this wonderful artist in particular.

If you are a Coltrane fan, Fraim's book is worth reading as you may not surmise from my 2 star rating. In truth, this is a hard book to rate because it is so strange. Fraim truly has some insights into the Coltrane's spiritual quest through music and manages to give a powerful account of the depth and breadth of what he tried to achieve. Coltrane was uncompromising and awesome in his all encompassing search for sounds to convey the wonder and power of life on earth and the human quest to understand it. Fraim gives us a unique appreciation of this but his book is also in bad need of an editor. Besides some poor writing, there are glaring factual errors and contradictions in the book. For example at one point he tells us Paul Chambers was Coltrane's favorite drummer,(p.72) later he says he was a bass player--he got it right the second time. He calls Eddie Vinson a primitive bluesman when in fact Vinson was one of the pioneers of a sophisticated urban version of the blues and a newly evolving R&B that made liberal use of jazz and big band arrangements. His singing style was raw and powerful--perhaps that is what Fraim had in mind. He tells us Coltrane switched to tenor in Vinson's band and this "'opened a wider area of listening' for him because no one dominated the tenor like Parker dominated the alto."p.13. Fraim fails to mention that Vinson played alto and was excellent thus making it opportune for Trane to move to another horn. He also leaves out the fact that the first great bop tenor man during this period was Dexter Gordon who was a huge influence on COltrane's playing. He also tells us in describing the audience at a Coltrane concert, that around 1960 intellectuals were called "beatniks."!(p.85) Fraim is completely misleading in characterizing cool jazz as an independent development separate from and antithetical to bop and Charlie Parker. There are elements of the cool sound in Lester Young whom Fraim seems to credit with developing it but before Young there was Trumbauer and in any case cool jazz, as it came to be known in the 1950s, grew out of bop. Parker precedes and encompasses the seeds to both cool and hard bop. Fraim also digresses into a lot of nonsense about astrology and Gurdieffian vibrations that he admits may have nothing to do with Trane's development as a musician.Fraim also tells us the lp John Coltrane Quartet Plays is unoriginal because it does not represent a major new advance in his technique or conception. Actually, it is a great lp that represents a consolidation of previous advances.His assessment of the post Coltrane music scene is blind to many new achievements and Coltrane's influences on spiritually oriented musicians one would think Fraim would admire such as John McLaughlin and his Mahavishnu Orchestra. It is hard at times to believe Fraim has written previous books and articles for prestigious journal since his own writing' particularly in the early part of the book, is so incredibly amateurish and syntactically challenged. Yet he can write movingly about Trane and Monk, Sun Ra, Dolphy, etc.

Fraim explores Coltrane better than any book I have read on this Master of Jazz. He goes further in-depth to show us why and how his music has had such an impact on modern music of all kinds...not just Jazz. Definitely a must read for anyone who is a serious about finding out more about this "Giant of Jazz".

A word of warning though.....be prepared to enter the mindset of a true Master. Fraim's research is impeccable. Once I picked it up, I couldn't put it down. This is an award winner. Get the book today, get comfortable and enter the world behind the scenes and mind of a true musical genius.