Alice Coltrane

[Ian Thumwood]

My Dad has a CD somewhere by Terry Gibbs who is still playing vibes in his 90's. I believe he was a West Coast musician but had originally worked with Woody Herman and Benny Goodman. The record feature Alice Coltrane (I believe she was McCleod back then) and it is interesting to hear her playing which it totally different and far more mainstream than where she eventually ended up. Gibb's music was heavily inspired by Lionel Hampton and always seemed to represent the kind of jazz that was on the cusp of be-bop. I believe that this was around the early sixties. Funny to see that her origins were in a quartet as conservative at this.

Before she was married to Coltrane, she was married to the singer Kenny Hagood who was one of the sub-Eckstine singers that cropped up on a lot of be-bop recordings in the late 40's.

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

There's some B/w film on Youtube of her in Paris playing piano behind Lucky Thompson, with Kenny Clarke and Pierre Michelot. "Strike up the band". She was only married to KH for a year or so but had a child that I think John adopted. Kenny H also played piano as well as singing (and his career continued for a long time under the radar), and they stayed at the same hotel as Bud Powell. Bud being her reason to go to Paris. She met Coltrane when Terry Gibbs played opposite the Coltrane quartet at Birdland. The rest is history...

BN.

[Ian Thumwood]

I believe she studied with Bud which would explain her approach on the Terry Gibbs records.

I must admit I am not a fan of her music. The energy of Coltrane felt like it dissipated after his demise with his heirs like Pharaoh Sanders basically continuing to play two-chord vamps which loose their appeal after a couple of listens. The whole "Astral jazz" thing feels like a bookend in jazz development and you can understand why the likes of Wynton seems like a re-awakening on the tradition when he first burst on the scene with the quintet. As I said a few weeks ago, the impulse label churned out as much dross as Blue Note in it's later years. Apart from the Coltrane connection, I wonder if AC would have retained such a reputation. Can't say I have heard a lot of her music but the ide of a jazz harp is on a bar with accordions and banjos.

I have often wondered where John Coltrane would have ended up had he not died early and the kind of music ECM produced in the 1970s seems like a possible spiritual home for him. I am sure that he would have worked with musicians from other cultures and the "purist" nature of Eicher's original releases would have been an attraction. It would have been fastening to hear a pairing of Coltrane and Jarrett - this seems like an obvious partnership. I am not convinced her would have remained within a "traditional" jazz background and certainly cannot see him "going fusion." I am sure he would have ended up on ECM records working with musicians like Collin Walcott and Don Cherry.

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

There's a piece in Robin Kelly's Monk biography, where not that long before Trane died, his and Monk's band were booked into a winter festival in Detroit. The Coltrane group were snowed in and couldn't make it, but Coltrane and Alice travelled separately and did. Anyway, Trane played that night with Monk and apparently it was exceptional. Monk said something along the lines that this (kind of playing) is what you should be doing, and Trane said at times he really missed it, and that he'd really reached a dead end in his own music. Just a story but ... I suspect he may have gone in the direction of Alice. Who knows.

BN.

[Serial_Apologist]

There's a piece in Robin Kelly's Monk biography, where not that long before Trane died, his and Monk's band were booked into a winter festival in Detroit. The Coltrane group were snowed in and couldn't make it, but Coltrane and Alice travelled separately and did. Anyway, Trane played that night with Monk and apparently it was exceptional. Monk said something along the lines that this (kind of playing) is what you should be doing, and Trane said at times he really missed it, and that he'd really reached a dead end in his own music. Just a story but ... I suspect he may have gone in the direction of Alice. Who knows.

BN.

Ian Carr was of the view that Trane would have gone the jazzrock fusion way, but Paul Dunmall, who imv has gone further into the late Coltrane and, with the wisdom of distance deprived immediate successors necessary to absorb what Trane was about towards the end, feels that he would have gone on experimenting and offering ways forward that would have circumvented and weakened the fusion hegemony of the late 1970s. A view I go along with.

[Richard Barrett]

Having listened to a few more of AC's recordings, I would say first that there's no real question of "jazz harp" (and once more I don't much see the point of making an issue out of whether something is jazz or not), she uses the harp as a textural/colouristic element but not really for any melodic material or soloing, for which she uses the instruments she has more facility with, a bit like Sun Ra did when he started using synthesizers. There's something about the ecstatic frame of mind she's aiming at which I find attractive although obviously it's very much of its time (there's too little idealism in today's music if you ask me).

I'd never thought of the "what would Trane have gone on to do" question. In a way his supposed comment to Monk rings true - he might have felt he'd exhausted the possibilities of thinking harmonically but on the other hand was too deeply involved in that kind of structure to let go of it. I don't think he had his eye sufficiently on commercial concerns to have followed Miles in the direction of fusion.

[Quarky]

I assume you heard last Saturday's JLU? (was that a repeat?)

Alice was deeply into yoga, as were many other jazz musicians (Mclaughlin/ Mahavishnu). I'm an adherent myself, but in terms of music, I don't think the mixing of Jazz and Indian-based music works- the blues is something Yoga works very hard to avoid?. Expanding one's consciousness via yoga may probably make a better musician, but it doesn't necessarily follow that Jazz must incorporate "Indian sounds".

Just to clarify this post, I was giving a personal opinion, from the Jazz perspective, on the incorporation of Indian music into Jazz. I was not expressing a view on the merits of Alice's music; I'm sure people will make their own minds up about that.

However it seems to me that her music has to be regarded primarily as meditation - based music. According to her son Ravi (see KLG's programme) she did not regard her music as Jazz, rather somethin' else.

[Richard Barrett]

According to her son Ravi (see KLG's programme) she did not regard her music as Jazz, rather somethin' else.

Your point was clear, to me at least; I was responding rather to Ian's comment about "jazz harp" which seemed to imply that instruments must take on a different personality in order to pass their initiation into the ways of jazz, or fail to do so.

[Quarky]

. There's something about the ecstatic frame of mind she's aiming at which I find attractive although obviously it's very much of its time (there's too little idealism in today's music if you ask me).

.

OK. Having listened to some more of Alice's music, and thanks to references from Lat-Lit and JR, it seems to me the music has a function, in inducing a state of mind, where the listener may be more receptive to spiritual practices of meditation, physical postures, etc. In other words, it puts you in the mood. In this respect, it may be analogous to JS Bach's organ music performed at a Christian service.

Well I think she does it very well. I find the music very agreeable.

[As regards John Coltrane, he seems in his albums from A Love Supreme, in a state of total religious ecstasy. The music is Jazz, and uncompromising. Did some last recordings point to a more detached frame of mind?? (guesswork, I'm afraid)]