For Spencer Weston, who introduced me to the real, authentic Freddie Freeloader
I’ve never been comfortable in crowds.
I did most of my early serious musical explorations alone, carefully removing the shrink wrap from a newly arrived album, placing the album on our family console, and listening intently as new, challenging sounds swept over me.
But I’ve been lucky.
I was lucky because, while I seldom went to concerts, I happened to go to three very different, but historic musical events that affected me very deeply: John Coltrane’s performance at the first and only 1965 Downbeat Jazz Festival in Chicago, Woodstock in 1969, and Bob Marley’s last concert at the Stanley Theater in Pittsburgh, 1980.
I call that good luck.
Of the three experiences, Woodstock aged poorly. The utopian idealism of Woodstock crashed into a wall of cynical capitalist appropriation. The promise of peace and love, the vision of a commitment to tolerance and respect was dashed by crass commercialization and the seduction of success in a class society. Woodstock Nation called for no sacrifice and made no demands, and the participants were coaxed back to taking their places in a society of class-striving and exploitation. As some used to say: Bummer.
Within the world of popular culture, was there anyone who so poignantly blended sophisticated politics with a fresh, exotic, and totally authentic musical genre as Bob Marley and the Wailers? Maybe Woody Guthrie.
Any group that pioneered, popularized, and dominated Reggae music and ended concerts with a rousing “Get up, Stand up for your Rights” rises well above the mediocrity of the mass of corporate-directed popular music.
Marley’s last concert was in Pittsburgh on September 23, 1980 which happens to be John Coltrane’s birthday.
This year-- on September 23-- we celebrate John Coltrane’s 100th birthday. Tributes, memoirs, and appraisals are everywhere.
My encounter with this great artist’s music came when I found an album-- Coltrane Time-- in a close-out bin in the early 1960s. This unusual recording-- combining the decidedly avant-garde pianist, Cecil Taylor, an old-school, hard-bop trumpet player, Kenny Dorham, a relatively conventional rhythm section, with the emerging path-finding tenor saxophone of John Coltrane-- served as my introduction to the music of Coltrane.
Soon, I was anxiously awaiting every release of Coltrane’s new quartet on Impulse! Records. Like Coltrane, the new record company, Impulse! seemed to be dedicated, under Bob Thiele’s direction, to moving conventional sounds in a fresh-- dare I say, revolutionary-- direction.
Looking back, my almost cult-like obsession with Coltrane’s music must have appeared to many as strange behavior for an early-teen, working-class white youth growing up in an industrial oasis among the Midwestern corn fields.
Then came a fateful opportunity: Downbeat-- the self-styled authoritative jazz magazine-- announced its first (and only) jazz festival to be held in Chicago in August of 1965. Coming off of his greatest commercial success, the majestic A Love Supreme, made John Coltrane a headliner for this event.
I talked my friend Steve, a Miles Davis fanboy, into taking a bus some hundred miles to Chicago’s Soldier Field.
But to the dismay of most of the crowd, Coltrane and his group did not revisit A Love Supreme. Instead, he and saxophonist Archie Shepp walked on stage playing loud, complex, often harsh sounds. In place of A Love Supreme’s serenity and contained passion, what we heard that evening was neither serene nor contained. Some said people walked out, though it was difficult to walk out of Soldier Field and leave a continuing stellar program. But people who came to see Big Joe Williams, the blues singer, were demonstrably unhappy. If people paid to be entertained by Coltrane, they were disappointed.
For Ammar Kafia, writing in the Guardian earlier in September, this was one of the signal moments when Coltrane cast aside any pretension to conventional “success” and popularity to explore entirely new, risky, and challenging directions.
Coltrane’s appeal was never based on entertainment. His work was demanding, challenging to the listener. And those of us who were drawn to his music were well aware of the effort necessary to continue with his project.
Yet there was a liberatory character to his journey. Without any fanfare, he revolutionized the perception and status of the African American artist.
He liberated the Black musician from the relegation to the night club or bar. His music sold drinks poorly. Long solos and dense, complex music commanded rapt attention and little banter or social drinking. It demanded that he be seen as an artist and not as a cocktail accompaniment. He sped up the transition from bar room to concert hall.
He liberated the African American musician from the rigid commercial constraints of the established format of musical theme, followed by the horn and piano solos, and a return to the theme. Coltrane refused to submit to the tyranny of the Artist & Repertoire departments of the recording industry. He made his music, they recorded it.
Coltrane redefined the solo-- the central creative expression in the genre of what came to be called Jazz music. The recording industry, clubs, and other venues exploitative of Jazz typically imposed conservative temporal and emotional restraints on jazz solos. Coltrane finished his solos when he finished his solos. He exposed raw, intense emotion through unorthodox musical effects. His explorations invariably took him to risky places-- sometimes magical, sometimes disappointing, but always impressively daring.
Was Coltrane political?
Yes, and no.
While opportunists like critic Frank Kofsky sought to portray Coltrane as a revolutionary Black nationalist, one could easily see from his interviews how uncomfortable he was with that label. On the other hand, Coltrane penned and played Alabama, dedicated to the victims of the 1963 church bombing and wrote and recorded several Africa-themed works, clearly reflective of his own heritage. He fervently promoted the careers of younger, more overtly political musicians like Archie Shepp.
In those regards, John Coltrane reflected his time-- a time when the brutal racism of segregation was being successfully attacked and the national liberation of colonies was reaching its zenith. Cultural developments often follow the politics of the time in the same way that the society’s cultural superstructure is largely determined by its socio-economic base.
Accordingly, Coltrane’s evolution mirrored the politics of the moment: a country pushing back from McCarthyism, a growing anti-racist movement, the early symptoms of the movement rejecting US foreign policy, especially in Vietnam.
Coltrane-- like important leaders who emerged at the time-- was uncompromising in his dedication to a vision. Like King and Malcolm X, growth, development, and change became a driving force for him.
Those who followed King’s commitment closely marveled at how he grew from a fighter against segregation in the South into an opponent of racism in the North as well. How that struggle led him to a broader campaign for poor people and, further, to opposition to the war in Vietnam. Before his murder in Memphis while defending striking workers, King had bravely denounced the cancer of anti-Communism. Struggle led him to a broader, deeper understanding.
Similarly, Coltrane’s evolution was unstoppable. From a competent post-bop saxophone player, he came to see further possibilities through his work with both Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk. His near-manic, harmonically-challenging playing-- some called it “sheets of sound” -- drove critics like Ira Gitler mad, dubbing his music “anti-jazz.” He persevered.
Coltrane continued to press harmonic and melodic boundaries, finding inspiration from playing with a new instrument, with additional and new colleagues, with inspiration from other, less well-known cultures.
He lost fans along the way. Understandably, people with less dedication, less time, or simply less interest, got lost on the Coltrane highway and had to exit, giving rise to grand debates over early-, middle-, or late-Coltrane.
Just as many in the early nineteenth century thought that the final products of a sick, deaf man, Ludwig von Beethoven, were a bit unhinged and incoherent, many found late-Coltrane to be self-indulgent and too dense to be coherent.
Beethoven’s late quartets are today acknowledged to be among the greatest musical pieces ever constructed. Coltrane’s late works bear serious study as well.
John Coltrane, like the great leaders of popular movements in the 1960s, opened up new and daring vistas for millions of people. The times were demanding, and they grew to meet those demands.
Greg Godels
zzsblogml@gmail.com
