Coltrane: The Story of a Sound [Paperback]

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.

John Coltrane is an endlessly fascinating musician, whether or not you like his music - he was both traditional and forward-looking, immensely disciplined and constantly striving for more freedom, technically brilliant yet willing to work with musicians considerably less able than himself. He made a series of relatively undistinguished recordings before suddenly emerging as a phenomenon when hired by Miles Davis, and then he went from one level to another, taking jazz to terrifying levels of complexity before breaking it down into something starkly simple.

Ben Ratliff's book is about two things: what Coltrane wanted to do, and what people have wanted from Coltrane. He is clearly a good listener, and someone acutely aware of how Coltrane was coming across at the time. He is also very sensitive to the depths people have sometimes sunk to in both praise and dispraise of the man, citing as evidence both Frank Kofsky's absurd description of 'Live at the Village Vanguard Again!' as the greatest recording in the history of jazz, and Philip Larkin's bilious and vindictive article, written shortly after Coltrane's death, about how much he hated Coltrane's music - Larkin surely wanted to make other people agree with him that it was worthless, which is never a very noble ambition in a critic.

Unusually for a jazz writer, Ratliff is also aware of how Coltrane's enormous influence has spread beyond jazz and into rock and punk (never thought I would see the great jazz-punk bass player Mike Watt mentioned in a book on Coltrane). He argues, if I take his point correctly, that Coltrane's influence has often been to make subsequent players sound like Coltrane, whereas the influence of an equally gifted player such as Sonny Rollins has worked more obliquely, helping players to sound more like themselves (perhaps because Sonny is not as imitable as Trane). It's true that, of the players (at least the sax players) who were most influenced by Coltrane, the majority have not been able to overcome his influence and develop truly distinctive voices - people on the level of Dave Liebman, etc., being the exceptions rather than the rule.

This book does not require a degree in music theory to read, or any musical talent whatever. It helps if you've listened to a lot of music. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and my only quibble is that it wasn't longer. I can read about Coltrane forever.

Ratliff does an extrodinary job on what had to be a difficult subject. He has a way with words like very few authors I've read in a long,long time. Not only is his vocabulary boundless but the way he uses his word knowledge is beyond about anything one finds today. He must be the finest Jazz writer in the USA.