Do You Get On With "Late Period' Coltrane?

[Conchis]

I put on the Olatunji Concert the other day and had to switch it off after about five minutes. I'm afraid the thought, 'This is just noise....' crept into my head.

I love most Trane but I do struggle with the albums from Ascensions onwards.

Some people love those albums but (I've noticed) have a problem with earlier Trane, like Ballads. Perhaps significantly, many of these people also seem to like thrash metal.

I don't believe, as some have asserted, that Coltrane suddenly decided to start making 'noise' because he'd run out of ideas. I think he was genuinely trying to move jazz on, or 'say more' in his solos, as he put it himself. But I can't seem to get onboard with it: it's been eight years now and the penny still hasn't dropped.

I'd say I'm pretty open-minded when it comes to 'difficult' music and I WILL stick with stuff I don't immediately 'get' because I'm usually rewarded. But it doesn't seem to working in the case of late period Coltrane. Maybe it's just not for me?

[burning dog]

It varies with me, both my mood, and the actual music.
I agree it's not a case of the emperor's clothes by any means.


I get Interstellar Space.

Often can't get on with Ascension.

At one time (I first heard it in my mid teens, 40 plus years ago) I really couldn't bear "Live at the Village Vanguard Again" now I kind of "get it" It's not "being clever" or anything. more the emotional side of it.

I've always liked "Peace on Earth" from "Live in Japan". It's got roots in Spiritual Music of African Americans and Eastern religions I guess (?). Not really jazz but connected with it.

[Joseph K]

Olatunji has poor sound quality - it's not something to do with the actual playing.

Interstellar Space is one of my all-time favourite albums, it's incredibly colourful, its harmonies and lyricism are nothing less than profound. It's often ecstatic and mystical.

I think Pharoah Sanders can be problematic. But I have fond memories of listening to the complete Japan concert in an intoxicated state all the way through (as, in fact, I do of Interstellar Space )

[Richard Barrett]

Interstellar Space is one of my all-time favourite albums, it's incredibly colourful, its harmonies and lyricism are nothing less than profound. It's often ecstatic and mystical.

I certainly agree with that. I'm very fond of Ascension too. I'm not sure how anyone could say that Coltrane in (what ended up being) his last period was running out of ideas; he was brimming with ideas in fact, and rethinking his music from a more fundamental position than before. Apart from which the influence of that music on succeeding generations of creative musicians was massive. I don't really see a connection with thrash metal, but I certainly see a connection with subsequent masters of improvised music like Anthony Braxton and Evan Parker.

[Conchis]

I certainly agree with that. I'm very fond of Ascension too. I'm not sure how anyone could say that Coltrane in (what ended up being) his last period was running out of ideas; he was brimming with ideas in fact, and rethinking his music from a more fundamental position than before. Apart from which the influence of that music on succeeding generations of creative musicians was massive. I don't really see a connection with thrash metal, but I certainly see a connection with subsequent masters of improvised music like Anthony Braxton and Evan Parker.

I think the relentless and overwhelming nature of most thrash metal music is probably good preparation for the relentless and overwhelming nature of Ascensions, etc.

I read once that Dark Magus is every Motorhead fan's favourite Miles Davis album. :)

[Conchis]

Olatunji has poor sound quality - it's not something to do with the actual playing.

Interstellar Space is one of my all-time favourite albums, it's incredibly colourful, its harmonies and lyricism are nothing less than profound. It's often ecstatic and mystical.

I think Pharoah Sanders can be problematic. But I have fond memories of listening to the complete Japan concert in an intoxicated state all the way through (as, in fact, I do of Interstellar Space )

It does, but I've heard MUCH worse - King Crimon's Earthbound, for instance, which was literally recorded on a hand-held tape recorder.

S.Q. doesn't normally bother me at all, though I struggle to listen to some acoustic recordings. I would say the Olatunji concert is of 'acceptable' quality soudnwise.

[Richard Barrett]

I think the relentless and overwhelming nature of most thrash metal music is probably good preparation for the relentless and overwhelming nature of Ascensions, etc.

Unless of course you don't think of Ascension as being relentless and overwhelming in that sort of way at all, that is to say the relentlessness and overwhelmingness of metal music is produced primarily by artificial means (amplification) while that of Ascension is produced through a clearly perceptible intensity on the intimate level of each player's interaction with his instrument. That's the way I hear them anyway.

[Serial_Apologist]

For me the late Coltrane LPs are an eternal souce of wonder, discovery and inner growth - the ones I've heard and familiarised myself with, at any rate. JC showed that with the expanded rhythmic and harmonic language he and his quartet has reached by 1965 it was possible to go on expanding. "Stellar Regions", the very last recording he made, I understand, already shows a renewed interest in compositional forms - and as always where innovation springs from jazz principles and their related methods - and I know Ian Thumwood disagrees with me on this point - it shows how the improvisational method and language was in the process of re-shaping composition, as was happening in multifarious ways also in Chicago, Germany, France, parts of Scandinavia, and this country.

When Trane died in 1967 it left the jazz avant-garde in a state of shock - leaving a gap at the cutting edge where a new revolutionary politics of liberation was operating at levels that were social, political, aesthetic and spiritual, if as an atheist I can be permitted the term, or to do with evolving a new humanity ready for dispensing with the values of advanced capitalist materialism and living more sustainably with communal creativity at its centre - not by retreating into religious sects or back to bygone belief systems but by engaging (with) the complexity of modern life and reflecting it in utterance. In this sense Trane would have represented a secular equivalent to Martin Luther King had enough people appreciated and come to understand what he stood for, whkich imo was as much to do with taking on the suffering of his race and class as much as expressing its solidarity, noted as he was for his generosity to fellow musicians in hard times. Unlike even the more advanced forms of rock music coming out of San Francisco and New York around the same time, his music, and that of his contemporaries like Cecil Taylor, Richard Abrams, and its legacy, was resistant to co-option by the music business end of consumerism by being dumbed down, reducible to spectacle and signification, as would happen to much of Prog Rock and Fusion by the late 1970s.

Evan Parker has been cited in connection with later Coltrane but it is instructive to note that he had already come by much of his own voice before Coltrane had actually completed his journey because what he represented and translated into musical values was "in the air", product of a more advanced inclusive education system filtering through to parts of society previously there to provide a reserve army of unemployed - a social condition now back with us as capitalism collapses and the poor have to pay. To be emancipated, consciousness evolves through unified sensory/intellectual engagement to crave a social and political framework in which it can thrive and become generalised, this being the reason why idiomatic aesthetic reductionism in music and the arts in general, or what I and Richard term "capitalist realism", is used to maintain an ideological imbalance among the population, as a form of control, which in turn reproduces profitable product turnover while promulgating idealised images of the past or a divine hereafter divorced from the contexts that gave rise to them. Late Coltrane - and this goes for all of the best of the avant-garde of that time - addressed its present, rejecting escapism, and taking on board all that could enrich it from reconnecting to a distant past usurped and shipped away by way of what Euroclassical modernism had made available since Debussy and Schoenberg delivered harmony from the compulsion to resolve and opened outer and inner regions, while doing it on its own terms. Which is why its statements will remain of vital and exemplary importance. So stick with it - one of those albums will be your gateway.

[Richard Barrett]

it shows how the improvisational method and language was in the process of re-shaping composition, as was happening in multifarious ways also in Chicago, Germany, France, parts of Scandinavia, and this country.

... and which is still going on! And if Dolphy had lived... anyway, I listened to the original Ascension this evening (I mean "Edition I") and it comprises everything between the brightest light and the darkest shade, so I'm not sure that "relentless" really applies to it at all. What particularly struck me on this listen was how the intensity, intelligence and interconnectedness of the players and their music takes what might seem on paper a simplistically schematic alternation between solo and ensemble "moments" and (as Coltrane no doubt envisaged) transcended it to create a form that seems to evolve continuously and in the overused formulation "organically". There's a lot to be learned there, still.

[Quarky]

I don't believe, as some have asserted, that Coltrane suddenly decided to start making 'noise' because he'd run out of ideas. I think he was genuinely trying to move jazz on, or 'say more' in his solos, as he put it himself. But I can't seem to get onboard with it: it's been eight years now and the penny still hasn't dropped.

I'd say I'm pretty open-minded when it comes to 'difficult' music and I WILL stick with stuff I don't immediately 'get' because I'm usually rewarded. But it doesn't seem to working in the case of late period Coltrane. Maybe it's just not for me?

I'm more in the Conchis camp than the Barrett et al camp. I'm not disagreeing with them; it's just for me, there is an initial barrier of difficulty which has not melted away on repeated listening. But there are various other types of music and composers where I have the same difficulty.

What is Coltrane's legacy? He was the greatest sax player of his generation, and someone on the same level of Charlie Parker in terms of improvisational prowess. His influence on Evan Parker and others has been cited, in regard to his late phase. But my strong impression [which has been gained from listening to R3 -not frequenting Jazz clubs] is that a great many of the younger generation of Jazz musicians will cite Coltrane in his earlier phases as a formative influence. And did he turn away from those earlier phases? On the day after he recorded the recently discovered long lost tracks, he was recording ballads with Johnny Hartmann.

[burning dog]

I don't hear much connection with thrash metal, I was listening to some last night

I did listen to some late period Coltrane yesterday, followed by the Johnny Hartman album and enjoyed both.

I agree that many younger players are influenced by the band with Elvin Jones/Impulse era/ just as the more conservative neo classic players would idolise Giant steps and the Atlantic years - Not surprising that musicians who regard themselves as "Jazz - in the tradition" would identify with these if you feel the headlong rush, or pull, of modernism in "Jazz" per-se (with exceptions) kind of run out of steam with Coltrane's death

[Richard Barrett]

my strong impression [which has been gained from listening to R3 -not frequenting Jazz clubs] is that a great many of the younger generation of Jazz musicians will cite Coltrane in his earlier phases as a formative influence.

For sure. But, as you suggest, there's no clean break in his musical output, or a rejection of its earlier phases. His development was more gradual than that, and it wasn't a matter of moving from one point in the space of musical possibilities to another, but of embracing a wider and wider range among those possibilities. For this reason I find it slightly odd that the Coltrane-influenced musicians you mention are effectively reducing that range back to something they feel more comfortable with. Should jazz feel comfortable? I guess so if you're after public success, but Coltrane himself obviously wasn't too concerned with what others thought of his music, but instead followed its internal momentum wherever it would take him. Some will see this as a positive thing, others as a negative one. What always excites me is people searching for a music that hasn't been heard until that moment.

[Conchis]

For sure. But, as you suggest, there's no clean break in his musical output, or a rejection of its earlier phases. His development was more gradual than that, and it wasn't a matter of moving from one point in the space of musical possibilities to another, but of embracing a wider and wider range among those possibilities. For this reason I find it slightly odd that the Coltrane-influenced musicians you mention are effectively reducing that range back to something they feel more comfortable with. Should jazz feel comfortable? I guess so if you're after public success, but Coltrane himself obviously wasn't too concerned with what others thought of his music, but instead followed its internal momentum wherever it would take him. Some will see this as a positive thing, others as a negative one. What always excites me is people searching for a music that hasn't been heard until that moment.

I definitely see it as a positive thing and I'm frustrated that I can't get it.

Btw: I love the album he did with Johnny Hartman, which contains the finest version ever recorded of my favourite song (Lush Life).

[burning dog]

Often wonder how much the instrument you play in jazz with its historical baggage, influences the players -the fact it's Coltrane is pretty obvious here but there's maybe echos of Adderley and others, with Adderey a shared heritage I guess as he came to the fore at the same time. Coltrane seem a bit more "be-boppish" to me at times than was on Tenor in that period

[Joseph K]

Currently listening to the first disk of the Live at Temple University album which was released about five years ago (officially, on Impulse). It was recorded in November 1966. I haven't listened to this in a while - but it (and Interstellar Space) both impress me more than before for their rhythmical aspects - the free rhythm is especially bubbly and ebullient, and Alice Coltrane especially seems to get off on this - what with the percussive nature of the piano. On this record there are also additional percussionists. I will listen to the second disk later, but from what I recall, however, there still only slight clues as to the direction Coltrane would take in Interstellar Space, which was only to come a few months later. On this record, unfortunately the percussion and drums are well in the background so it is sort of difficult to hear the interplay between the soloist and the percussion/drums - listening to the studio version of A Love Supreme the other day I certainly enjoyed Elvin Jones' playing, and how upfront and closely recorded it was in comparison to the live version of that suite - however, I think the solos on the latter are much better.

The reason I listen to late Coltrane (specifically Interstellar Space) more than other periods is simply its expressive nature, its mysticism, rapturous transcendentalism... it's not massively far removed from late Scriabin, which I also adore, but which, if I recall, Conchis, you find similarly hard to like?