Coltrane by Ben Ratliff

Author:Ben Ratliff
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 2011-03-16T16:00:00+00:00

Although Miles continues to play with delicacy and infinite grace, his group’s solidarity is hampered by the angry tenor of Coltrane. Backing himself into rhythmic corners on flurries of notes, Coltrane sounded like the personification of motion-without-progress in jazz … With the exception of Miles’s vital contribution, then, the group proved more confusing to listeners than educational.

One of the best Coltrane biographies, by C. O. Simpkins, published in 1975, called this “a very dumb-assed review.”

This was the period when Coltrane occasioned two of jazz’s most famous punch lines. They both amount to the same thing. One came from Cannonball Adderley: “Once in a while, Miles might say, ‘Why did you play so long, man?’ and John would say, ‘It took that long to get it all in.’” The other seems to have no definite source. Coltrane says to Davis that he can’t figure out a way to stop his solos. Davis retorts: “Why don’t you try taking the horn out of your mouth?”

A few writers, particularly Nat Hentoff and Barbara Gardner, started to make great claims for Coltrane’s influence, even while he was still with Miles Davis. Hentoff, in early 1958, wrote that Coltrane “has in the past year detonated more concentrated enthusiasm among eastern modern jazzmen than any tenor since Sonny Rollins.” In 1959 Barbara Gardner mentioned the existence of a “Coltrane cult” in the liner notes for Wayne Shorter’s first record.

Still, it would be hard to prove that Coltrane had any kind of wide effect yet, outside of a cadre of undeveloped musicians.

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