(...) Coltrane emerged as a major jazz figure in the late 1950s. Born in North Carolina, he developed as a musician in Philadelphia in company with another important saxophonist, Benny Golson, his lifelong friend. It was his membership with the Miles Davis group that pulled people's coats, to use an old jazz musician's phrase, to his emerging brilliance.
John was said to play with a hard tone, and some referred to his playing as angry. This puzzled him. He said to me, “Why do they say my playing is angry? I'm not angry at anything.” (...) I thought John had an exceptionally pretty sound. I attended one of his record sessions entirely devoted to ballads; indeed I was there because John wanted me to write the liner notes for it, which I did. I remember that session (and the album documents my impression) for enthrallingly tender playing. It will stay with me all my life. He also did an album with the late singer Johnny Hartman in which this aspect of his work is again evident.
But he could play with incredible fire. He was, at least in his early years, deeply interested in arpeggiated chords, and would give an impression of piling one chord on top of another (although that obviously is technically impossible on the saxophone) with such rapidity that writer Ira Gitler called it “sheets of sound”, a term that has stuck ever since. He also played at enormous length, his solos lasting fifteen minutes or more. My Favorite Things, recorded at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1963, is 17 minutes 24 seconds long. This used to annoy Miles Davis, leading to a rather famous exchange: he told Miles that he'd sometimes get into a solo and wouldn't know how to get out of it. Miles reportedly replied, “Try taking the horn out of your mouth.”
John was said to play with a hard tone, and some referred to his playing as angry. This puzzled him. He said to me, “Why do they say my playing is angry? I'm not angry at anything.” (...) I thought John had an exceptionally pretty sound. I attended one of his record sessions entirely devoted to ballads; indeed I was there because John wanted me to write the liner notes for it, which I did. I remember that session (and the album documents my impression) for enthrallingly tender playing. It will stay with me all my life. He also did an album with the late singer Johnny Hartman in which this aspect of his work is again evident.
But he could play with incredible fire. He was, at least in his early years, deeply interested in arpeggiated chords, and would give an impression of piling one chord on top of another (although that obviously is technically impossible on the saxophone) with such rapidity that writer Ira Gitler called it “sheets of sound”, a term that has stuck ever since. He also played at enormous length, his solos lasting fifteen minutes or more. My Favorite Things, recorded at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1963, is 17 minutes 24 seconds long. This used to annoy Miles Davis, leading to a rather famous exchange: he told Miles that he'd sometimes get into a solo and wouldn't know how to get out of it. Miles reportedly replied, “Try taking the horn out of your mouth.”
John's religious quest continued to the end. He began to eschew the steady beat of jazz for a freer approach, and it lost him some of his audience “ and indeed some of his musicians. The magnificent and influential pianist McCoy Tyner left at the end of 1965 and then great Elvin Jones, his drummer for many years, left in 1966, both of them using the same phrase about the group in interviews, calling the group “a lot of noise.” (...)
(...) The Miles Davis group circa 1959 gestated three major jazz influences, Miles himself, Bill Evans, and John Coltrane. We have not seen their like again, and we're not likely to. Though skillful jazz players will continue to emerge and struggle to make a living, there is a growing uneasy feeling in jazz circles that this music is at the end of its rich creative run: approximately 70 percent of CDs sold are reissues of music recorded decades ago. If it is over, Coltrane must be viewed historically as one of its last great innovators. (...) [Gene Lees in Allaboutjazz.com]
(...) I won't waste time trying to be funny about John Coltrane, because Philip Larkin has already done it, lavishing all his comic invention on the task of conveying his authentic rage. (For those who have never read Larkin's All What Jazz, incidentally, the references to Coltrane are the ideal way in to the burning center of Larkin's critical vision.) There is nothing to be gained by trying to evoke the full, face-freezing, gut-churning hideosity of all the things Coltrane does that Webster doesn't. But there might be some value in pointing out what Coltrane doesn't do that Webster does. Coltrane's instrument is likewise a tenor sax, but there the resemblance ends. In fact, it is only recognizable as a tenor because it can't be a bass or a soprano: It has a tenor's range but nothing of the voice that Hawkins discovered for it and Webster focused and deepened. There is not a phrase that asks to be remembered except as a lesion to the inner ear, and the only purpose of the repetitions is to prove that what might have been charitably dismissed as an accident was actually meant. Shapelessness and incoherence are treated as ideals. Above all, and beyond all, there is no end to it. There is no reason except imminent death for the cacophonous parade to stop. The impressiveness of the feat depends entirely on the air it conveys that the perpetrator has devoted his life to making this discovery: Supreme mastery of technique has led him to this charmless demonstration of what he can do that nobody else can. The likelihood that nobody else would want to is not considered. (...) [Clive James in Slate]
Escutem a música, sintam e pensem pela vossa própria cabeça e decidam. Mesmo que não se decidam, já ficaram a ganhar. Aqui penso que todos concordamos.
