Coltrane at 100
I loved jazz as soon as I discovered it, but it was when I heard John Coltrane that I realised it could take me to a different place. That would have been around 1960, and the first thing I heard was his solo on Miles Davis’s “Milestones”, on an EP. Then I used the money from my paper round to buy another EP, this time released under Coltrane’s own name.
Issued in the UK on the Esquire label, it paired “Bass Blues” and “You Leave Me Breathless” from his third studio album for Prestige, recorded in 1957. These were fairly conventional performances but I already knew, from reading Down Beat, that he was heading somewhere else. Soon there would be Coltrane Plays the Blues and Olé, which made that new direction very clear.
From the very start, though, there was that sound. You can hear it in the opening notes of his solo on “Bass Blues”. It was like nothing you’d ever heard before. Nothing like Lester Young or Dexter Gordon or Sonny Rollins. It spoke in a different way, to a different part of the brain. It wasn’t pretty in any normal sense. But it was immediately and transcendentally beautiful. Even then, it seemed to be searching for something beyond the tune, beyond the notes. I couldn’t put it into words then and I still can’t. I’ve never read anybody who really could.
Today, 23 September 2026, is the centenary of Coltrane’s birth. I could have listened to any of the favourites — the album with Monk from Carnegie Hall, “Mr Syms”, “Impressions”, “Africa”, “Alabama”, the whole of A Love Supreme, Crescent and Expressions — but instead I chose to honour his memory by listening to two of his most challenging albums, Om and Kulu Se Mama, both from 1965, They’re the sort of thing that gave critics the ammunition with which to attack his entire career, and 60 years later they still sound chaotic, beyond all structure and restraint and explanation, the product of a man searching for something beyond himself.
His death in 1967 robbed us of the chance to get answers from Coltrane himself, either in words or in his playing, to the questions raised by his later music. What did it all mean? That’s something we have to work out for ourselves. What I can give is my own interpretation of that thing he once said about wanting to create music that started in the middle and then proceeded in both directions simultaneously. To me, those directions are inward and outward, at the same time. That’s what his sound said, and still does.
* The photograph was taken by Chuck Stewart in 1964 is from the cover of Coltrane: The Definitive Visual Celebration of the Legend by Ravi Coltrane and Wayne Coyne, published this month by Ten Speed Press.
thank you. A moving, very beautiful way of remembering him. Carl Jung called enantiodromia that reaching of an extreme that reverses into the opposite – for example Dante reaching the bottom of the inferno in order to start ascending towards paradise. I find that subjective, inner reaching of Coltrane’s music keeps opening up to unreachable, universal and spiritual dimensions out there. I listened to the psalm with the prayer he sings, and the 1961 live at the village vanguard with his classic band and his ideal comrade, Eric Dolphy. 🕴🏼🕴🏼🕴🏼
Today l’ve listened to All Coltrane Solos At Once , by Saul Williams
and
l’ve read for the umpteenth time this passage from The Time of Our Singing , by Richard Powers :
” We caught Coltrane one night , tearing the roof off what felt like someone’s living room in a street shorter than a Tinkertoy , on a stage the size of a Danish cheese . He’d be standing in a nearby alley , leaning on the end of his tenor case , when the drummer and pianist of that night’s session went to have a smoke . They waylaid ‘Trane , or he had nothing better to do . Sources varied . In any case , Jonah and l sat with our ears in the giant upturned bell , hearing the cups clapping his tone holes , listening to a game of crazed quotations beyond our ability to follow . For all my grounding in theory and harmony , l couldn’t hear a third of what that pickup quartet did that night .”
These things l’ve done today , John .
Been listening to airshots by a Johnny Hodges small group from 1954. Stellar line-up with those great Ellingtonians Shorty Baker and Lawrence Brown alongside the great altoist in the front line with a youngish Coltrane . Just hear his solo on “Sideways” no other tenor player, with the possible exception of Rollins, was playing like this at that time.
On the same date he does the honking thing on “Castle Rock” in the style of Al Sears not his style but he paid his dues he knew his history like Ornette. He always spoke highly of Rabbit, this was the groundwork that made his later work possible
quantum music, proceeding in both directions simultaneously, existing on all planes and only becoming what you hear, what I hear, when we each take the measure of it.
Quantum music, proceeding in both directions simultaneously, existing on all planes and only becoming what you hear, and what I hear, when we take the measure of it.
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Couldn’t Coltrane’s sound be described as ‘the sound of searching’?
I’ve often thought that John Martyn’s brilliant 1973 album “Inside Out” showed remarkable affinity in spirit with “A Love Supreme”.
1973 was Martyn’s ” annus mirabilis ” ( Inside Out and Solid Air ) . Saw him with Danny Thompson at Reading Festival that year . Unforgettable .
My first Coltrane album was Coltrane Plays The Blues and it blew me away. After that I collected all the great ones, including the rather underrated disc with Duke Ellington. I also remember the shock of learning of his death. I was on holiday in Torquay with some friends and I bought that weeks Melody Maker which reported it on the front page.
Thank you Richard, you’ve put your finger on it, as usual. Incidentally, are you planning to review Coltrane: The Definitive Visual Celebration of the Legend?