TERRY GROSS, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. Tomorrow marks the 100th anniversary of John Coltrane's birth. He was one of the great jazz musicians of all time. Coltrane, the composer and band leader, has been hugely influential, right down to the revival of spiritual jazz in recent years. Jazz historian Kevin Whitehead says John Coltrane's greatest influence is as a virtuoso saxophonist whose every move has been transcribed, copied and analyzed. For today's tribute, Kevin zeroes in on Coltrane - the saxophone improviser.
(SOUNDBITE OF JOHN COLTRANE'S "MR. DAY")
KEVIN WHITEHEAD, BYLINE: John Coltrane, 1960, on his blues "Mr. Day." It's filled with typical Coltrane gestures - the optimistic upward-leaping phrases, the built-in repetitions, the way he balances long notes and fast phrases. Coltrane was one of jazz's all-time great practicers, which gave him a hard, majestic tone consistent all over the tenor saxophone's range and clean articulation at supersonic speed. He was a late bloomer, apprenticing in his 20s with Dizzy Gillespie and master saxophone technician Earl Bostic. We hear early glimmerings of Coltrane's mature tenor in 1954, when he backed his early sax idol Johnny Hodges, who taught him by example the value of a dramatic entrance. Here's Coltrane the sideman on "Thru For The Night."
(SOUNDBITE OF JOHN COLTRANE'S "THRU FOR THE NIGHT")
WHITEHEAD: In 1955, John Coltrane got his big break when Miles Davis hired him. The saxophonist played a lot of notes while trumpeter Miles played famously few, and they tugged the music in opposite directions. Coltrane's next boss, pianist Thelonious Monk, played even fewer notes than Miles, but in this case, opposites attract. Monk and Coltrane sound like they approach the same musical problems from opposite directions. This is Monk's 1957 "Trinkle, Tinkle."
(SOUNDBITE OF THELONIOUS MONK'S "TRINKLE, TINKLE (FEAT. JOHN COLTRANE)")
WHITEHEAD: Monk also indulged Coltrane's penchant for long solos, which Miles discouraged. In this period, Coltrane would punctuate his improvisations with rapid up-and-down runs based on various scales. Critic Ira Gitler called those outbursts sheets of sound, one of the enduring jazz metaphors. In the late '50s, Coltrane practiced out of exercise books for the harp, an instrument where fast scalar runs are easy. Keep that in mind, as John Coltrane plays "Come Rain Or Come Shine." Again, you hear him mix long tones and very short ones.
(SOUNDBITE OF JOHN COLTRANE'S "COME RAIN OR COME SHINE")
WHITEHEAD: Now Coltrane became even more preoccupied with fast-moving chords. On his famous test piece "Giant Steps," the chords change on every beat while bouncing around three distantly related keys. Coltrane had practiced it thoroughly, but not with his band. In the studio, the great pianist Tommy Flanagan could barely keep up.
(SOUNDBITE OF JOHN COLTRANE'S "GIANT STEPS")
WHITEHEAD: Miles Davis then advised Coltrane, when you squeeze in a whole bunch of chords like that, don't make the rhythm section track your every move. Keep their parts simpler. That was good advice. Coltrane had already been thinking about Indian classical music with fast, scale-oriented improvisations over slowly undulating backdrops.
(SOUNDBITE OF JOHN COLTRANE'S "INDIA")
WHITEHEAD: In the early 1960s, Coltrane formed a new quartet featuring McCoy Tyner's bellowing piano and drummer Elvin Jones' wide, shambling beat. He took up the small straight soprano saxophone, whose higher range and piercing tone helped him rise above the fray. And he underwent a spiritual awakening. You can hear all of that on Coltrane's tune "Spiritual," based on a traditional melody. On soprano, he can sound both like he's hollering the blues and issuing a call to prayer.
(SOUNDBITE OF JOHN COLTRANE'S "SPIRITUAL")
WHITEHEAD: "Spiritual," recorded at the Village Vanguard in 1961, looks ahead to Coltrane's meditative suites like "A Love Supreme." Playing high notes on soprano made Coltrane rethink the tenor's upward limits. On one down, one up from 1965, he volleys high and low phrases back and forth in dialogue with himself, sounding less like a singer than an impassioned preacher.
(SOUNDBITE OF JOHN COLTRANE'S "ONE DOWN, ONE UP")
WHITEHEAD: In John Coltrane's ecstatic final two years, he took LSD and took inspiration from his younger colleague Albert Ayler's heavier tone and vibrato. He formed a new quartet with his wife, Alice Coltrane, on piano. Live and on record, he surrounded them with extra players of uneven quality. But five months before his death from liver cancer in 1967, he recorded an ear-grabbing album of duets with drummer Rashied Ali called "Interstellar Space." Coltrane cast down his thunderbolts faster than ever.
(SOUNDBITE OF JOHN COLTRANE'S "JUPITER")
WHITEHEAD: Since John Coltrane's death at 40, folks have speculated where his music might have gone next. He had discussed various possibilities with his wife, and the wildly orchestrated records Alice Coltrane made a few years later may offer some clues. For me, it's enough to marvel at how steadily and quickly Coltrane advanced, constantly refining his saxophone style and technique alongside his composing and band-leading and spiritual life and advocacy for younger colleagues. Amazing to me that he made all the varied records under his own name in just 10 years. He was a comet who lit up the sky.
(SOUNDBITE OF JOHN COLTRANE'S "THE PROMISE")
GROSS: Jazz historian Kevin Whitehead is the author of "New Dutch Swing," "Why Jazz?" and "Play The Way You Feel." Tomorrow marks the 100th anniversary of John Coltrane's birth.
Tomorrow on FRESH AIR, cybersecurity and AI safety concerns will likely be addressed at this week's meeting between President Trump and China's president, Xi, in Washington, D.C. We'll talk with Rush Doshi. He helped arrange summits between President Biden and Xi and just co-authored a report on China's cyber threat to America's critical networks. I hope you'll join us.
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I'm Terry Gross.
(SOUNDBITE OF JOHN COLTRANE QUARTET'S "BESSIE'S BLUES") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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