As hard as it may seem to believe, it is now nearly five years since the passing of the iconic British Jazz figure, Ron Coltrane. I am shocked that this has gone unnoticed !! Whilst there may have been a time of this "bored's" predecessor when there was a clamour from jazz fans, misty-eyed for the heady days of 1960's, to see the sometime taxi-driver's reputation restored to what was held to be his true position in the Pantheon of British jazz legends, it is fair to say that RC's stock has severely diminished. The stories of his excesses may have been as legendary as his penchant for the ladies and bongoes but the fact remains that he now seems entirely forgotten. He has been ignored totally on the new messageboard. To some extent, this can only be expected with the flood of numerous, cheap re-issues of seemingly lost-forever British jazz albums steeling his thunder whereas RC's output remains locked in the vaults (original LP's by Ron Coltrane from the late 50's have reputedly been put up for sale on E-bay at prices more excessive than a season ticket for Chelsea.) Even amongst those who are old enough to recall Ron's legendary performances at The Flamingo or the first version of Ronnie's seem to have dispensed their enthusiasm for his work in their rush to stack up with Elmo Hope's back catalogue. Only Tony Blair's stock seems to have fallen further.
There was a time when the message board of old was awash with tales of this musician, often told in first hand accounts or from leaked transcripts of "News of the World" phone taps. Back in the day of what Geoffrey Smith once called "the surreal playground of the BBC message board" (or words to that effect), there hardly seemed a moment when there wasn't a thread that concerned Ron Coltrane. Stories cropped up with even more increasing frequency than King Kennytone's tea trolley or references to a tapas bar in Dalston. Now in seems that Ron Coltrane has gone the way of Harry Parry. JRR won't play his records and attempts to commemorate the anniversary of his passing with selections by other musicians who were an influence on his work are rebuffed. Moira Stewart seems to have traded her Ron Coltrane records for those by Lena Horne and appearances elsewhere on the BBC now seeem very unlikely. Even Youtube fails to come up trumps!
I would like to see Ron Coltrane rightly restored to his true position in the history of jazz in this country. Granted that Manfred Eicher is not seemingly unlikely to re-issue the one album Coltrane cut for ECM, there must be plenty of other recordings out there which are at least worthy of discussion. I think there are a lot of things we can be proud about in this country and Ron Coltrane was one of them.
There was a time when the message board of old was awash with tales of this musician, often told in first hand accounts or from leaked transcripts of "News of the World" phone taps. Back in the day of what Geoffrey Smith once called "the surreal playground of the BBC message board" (or words to that effect), there hardly seemed a moment when there wasn't a thread that concerned Ron Coltrane. Stories cropped up with even more increasing frequency than King Kennytone's tea trolley or references to a tapas bar in Dalston. Now in seems that Ron Coltrane has gone the way of Harry Parry. JRR won't play his records and attempts to commemorate the anniversary of his passing with selections by other musicians who were an influence on his work are rebuffed. Moira Stewart seems to have traded her Ron Coltrane records for those by Lena Horne and appearances elsewhere on the BBC now seeem very unlikely. Even Youtube fails to come up trumps!
I would like to see Ron Coltrane rightly restored to his true position in the history of jazz in this country. Granted that Manfred Eicher is not seemingly unlikely to re-issue the one album Coltrane cut for ECM, there must be plenty of other recordings out there which are at least worthy of discussion. I think there are a lot of things we can be proud about in this country and Ron Coltrane was one of them.
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