By Vic Schermer

David Liebman is one of the most forward looking and innovative saxophone players in the business, has been profoundly interested in John Coltrane and his music for many years, and has studied and performed his music in the context of evolving his own style and repertoire. He seemed to be an excellent choice to get a take on Trane in addition to that of Lewis Porter, the author of John Coltrane: His Life and Music. So I called Dave and asked him to share with us some of his thoughts on Coltrane and the biography. As always, Dave came through very thoughtfully and responsively:

All About Jazz: So, you've read the Lewis Porter biography of Coltrane?

David Liebman: I read it a while ago, so I can't comment in detail, but it definitely is for me the best book written about Coltrane so far.

AAJ: What did you particularly appreciate about it?

DL: The very detailed understanding of what Coltrane's process was, more as a day-to-day thing rather than just the music. And also some really verifiable facts, such as where he got exposed to some of his original compositions, like the story of "India" and Impressions, And finding a spiritual in an old bible song book. You know, Lewis is a very dilligent historian. He's done a lot of very credible work that such a book deserves, and it's great. There's a humanistic and warm feeling about it. We just get a real feeling for the guy, a feeling about him as a person, rather than just about the music.

AAJ: We'll come back to the book as we go along. I wonder if you can tell us which of Coltrane's own tunes and compositions you enjoy performing the most.

DL: Well, first of all, with Coltrane, there are a lot of blues, because he was a real blues player- that I really enjoy. Also, there are some blues in different keys than the normal, for example, "Bessie's Blues" in E flat. I love that tune. "Up Against the Wall" in A flat. That's a great one. "Equinox" in D flat minor, that's a beautiful one. "Mr. Day" in F sharp- I don't think I've ever seen another tune in F sharp, or certainly not a blues in F sharp. There are a lot of great blues. His arrangements of standards, when he used the "Giant Steps" changes, for example, "But Not for Me," and "Confirmation," which is the very difficult "26/2" [that's the name of the tune!], and his original, "Satellite," which is actually "How High the Moon." They're just amazing compositions. Incredible. "Body and Soul" of course. They're fantastic. And then I guess "Impressions" is the National Anthem of my generation if not several generations. And finally, for me, there's a couple of ballads, for instance, "Dear Lord," which is incredible because it comes from a guy who makes such amazing use of consonance and dissonance. Here is a tune that is the most diatonic tune you'll probably ever find-- like a church chorale. And then of course my all time favorite tune is "Naima," which is one of the first if not the first tune to make use of pedal point harmony. And finally, you know, toward the end, much of his freer stuff in the last two years like "Father, Son, and Holy Ghost" and other tunes from the Meditations Suite which I play quite a bit myself. A tune called "Welcome" from the recording Kulu Se Mama and of course "Expression," "Peace on Earth," and so on. I mean the list is just amazing! And I've recorded quite a few of them.

AAJ: As you're talking, I'm reminded that Lewis Porter emphasizes two aspects of Coltrane- one is that Coltrane hears and is influenced by the blues everywhere, and the other is that he interestingly states that Coltrane sounds like a Baptist preacher- even though Coltrane was not a Baptist.

DL: Well, you know, there's a vocal aspect of his playing, a highly emotional vocalization, both on tenor and on soprano- the way he squeezed the notes in the high register, i.e. the altissimo, the passion, and the energy. I could see Porter making that comparison to a Baptist preacher. I don't know about the details of these things, but definitely the most intense music I've ever heard, or could ever imagine being played. What he would do particularly with the quartet that I heard so many times live, with Elvin Jones, McCoy Tyner, and Jimmy Garrison-- it was just unbelievable- the intensity, the length of solos, the sheer energy was enough, if not for the musicality on top of it! Whatever it was- preacher or madman or whatever- it was somethin' else! You know, the videos we have, that are available, and the recordings are just a pale comparison to what it was like to hear him live in a club. It was unbelievable!

AAJ: What particular moments do recall from seeing him live?

DL: Well, I saw him twenty or thirty times, from the time I was fifteen, from 1961 on. One time I saw him, I didn't know who he was that much. I was just starting to get into jazz. I went to Birdland with a lady, our first date to New York, and we saw the Bill Evans Trio, and the John Coltrane quin-tet with Eric Dolphy. I had no idea who anybody was, I was just getting into it. They played "My Favorite Things." The lady I was with said, "Oh, that's from The Sound of Music." I said, "Oh, they couldn't play that, it's too corny" [laughter], but it ended up being his great song, and one that I play now. And then, of course, I heard him many times, in Birdland, and particularly the Half Note downtown. When he played New York, which was two or three times a year for a week or two at a time, I would definitely go every Friday and Saturday night. I was still in high school, and I'd spend the whole night there, get in at nine o'clock and stay right 'til three, four o'clock.They played two long, long sets, with a long break and then a shorter third set until three, three-thirty in the morning, I mean people would be standing on their chairs sometimes; screaming and yelling- it was...I don't know if Lewis [Porter] saw it live- it was like that- it was like a revival meeting [referring to the comparison to a Baptist preacher, above]. People would be raising their hands and hollering, it was so intense! And I remember a couple of times he and Elvin going at it for an hour, an hour and a half as a duo. I mean it was inhuman, above human, I don't know what to call it! You'd be sitting there, and your back would hurt, and people would fall asleep or whatever, and you'd realize you'd been sitting that way for thirty minutes, an hour, an hour and a half, and the guy is still playing! It was remarkable!

AAJ: He put his whole soul into the music. They say that when he wasn't playing a chorus, and while his group was continuing the set, he would go to the bathroom and practice!

DL: He was an obsessive practicer. The story was that if he wasn't practicing, he was sleeping. He was into it, and you could hear it. He would be developing something, and three, four, five months' later he would be into something else. I mean he moved at an amazing rate. And- when you think about it- I did a concert last week where we did all-Coltrane in California, and something I'd never seen so starkly, but talking about it; you know we celebrate Miles Davis' amazing changes through the years, his different epochs, and Duke Ellington- but the truth is Coltrane moved at a rate faster than everybody because he did everything in eleven years.

AAJ: And, he evolved more profoundly.

DL: More profoundly, more quickly, and I think deeper in a lot of respects, at least for my taste, than any of the other above-mentioned. And did it from 1955 until 1966-67, depending on where you want to draw the line.

AAJ: At what point would you say that Coltrane really came into his own? Before, during, or after his stint with Miles Davis?

DL: I think it was with Miles, because he had the opportunity and the publicity, you know, with Miles in the fifties- that was the top gig. But I think when Coltrane first arrived, he was already different- I mean he was not what he became, but his sound was different, he had a different approach right away in 1955, even the recordings from the early fifties sounded different. But of course, his main formation would have to be around 1957, and THE RECORDING Blue Trane was a major step forward for him, and then of course, in the next year or two, Giant Steps and the Kind of Blue record, and finally, My Favorite Things- those are the real statements.

But then there are three major periods of Coltrane, and you can divide each one into several. There's the early Trane, we're talking about Miles and Monk. There's the middle Trane, with the quartet, and then there's the late Trane, which is only sixty-five to sixty-seven, with several drummers, and the more chaotic music with Pharoah Saunders. So, those are three major periods, and each of those can be divided up, so this is an incredible scene, those eleven, twelve years.

AAJ: Did you ever hear Coltrane perform in one of the larger venues?

DL: I heard him in Lincoln Center, in the concert called "Titans of the Tenor Sax." It was remarkable. It was 1966, there was Dexter Gordon, Zoot Sims, Sonny Rollins. They all played maybe ten, fifteen minutes each in the first set. Sonny played a couple of minutes, and said, "I'll be back later with John Coltrane" and everybody went crazy! Then there was a break, and when they started the second set, Coltrane walked on with what looked like an army of guys he got off the street carrying shopping bags, two drummers, a bunch of saxophonists. He started chanting "Om Manee Padme Om," which was the Tibetan chant.

AAJ: Coltrane chanted that?

DL: He started chanting into the microphone. Alice [Coltrane] was doing a tremolo, and they all started "My Favorite Things," but not in the typical way. It was a much freer arrangement, and people started cheering. I mean this was a full house in a two thousand seat auditorium. Of course, after the melody, there was no semblance of anything at all approaching the tune "My Favorite Things!" This went on for the next hour plus, and I would say a good third or half of the audience left.

AAJ: What do you say to people like that, the people who walked out on such a musician?

DL: People still don't get the late Coltrane. This is why I play Meditations every five years on his anniversaries, because I think that's a major piece of music, and the late Coltrane, when everyone was playing continuously together- I mean almost Dixieland in a way, only different kinds of notes and style, that's a very difficult period for the audience for sure, let alone musicians, to understand because it was chaotic, there was a lot of cacophony, yet there was an incredible amount of beauty. It's unbelievable what he does! And his saxophone playing, I mean what he was doing technically, is even beyond what he was doing in the middle sixties, so it's some different kind of music, and not for the faint-hearted, and I don't believe it's meant for even the good average listener.

AAJ: Going back a bit before that, Coltrane played with Eric Dolphy for a short period of time.

DL: Eric was in the band at the beginning when Coltrane formed his first group. Coltrane liked a second horn, and I think he loved Eric. They were kindred spirits, no question about it.

AAJ: And Coltrane was also influenced by Ornette Coleman.

DL: Well, he did his bit on the recording called The Avante-Garde" using Don Cherry and Ornette's rhythm section basically. He was definitely exposed to Ornette, and I think Ornette's seminal recording called Free Jazz was some kind of symbol to Coltrane and something he thought about when he did Ascension, which was a larger situation of the same sort in1966. You know, a whole bunch of drums, bass, and horn players. Ornette was definitely an influence, but I think it stopped short because really Ornette didn't have any kind of harmony, and Coltrane was certainly one of the most harmonic players ever. Not to disparage Ornette, but I wouldn't put Ornette anywhere near Coltrane with respect to the depth and sophistication of the music.

AAJ: Do you think Ornette's playing pushed Coltrane to go to the farther reaches?

DL: He was probably affected by him, and Albert Ayler, and the New Wave, the avant garde that was happening in the sixties, Cecil Taylor and Pharaoh Saunders, because when I saw Pharaoh come and sit in with Coltrane in 1964, Pharaoh turned his mouthpiece upside down! He had the reed on top! Now any sax player knows that if you put the reed on top, all you're going to get is the extreme ultra altissimo- and he did that for twenty minutes while Coltrane was playing straight ahead tunes! So Coltrane was definitely looking for something and open to the avante garde.

AAJ: Did Ornette Coleman or Eric Dolphy have an effect on your own playing?

DL: Not particularly. But, Eric definitely on flute- I hear my flute playing from the 1970's and there's definitely some Eric Dolphy type playing there. I loved him very much, but he wasn't somebody I set out to emulate. Also, I do love Ornette's melodies, but that was about it.

AAJ: Tell us a bit about Albert Ayler.

DL: He was one of the main avant garde saxophone players in the sixties. >From what they say, he was very influential on Ornette, and along with his brother, Don Ayler, on trumpet, they were among the first to play completely free. He was a couple of steps ahead of Ornette Coleman. He was already doing it in the mid-sixties. Ornette made a very important record called Spiritual Unity, with Sonny Murray and Gary Peacock and with his brother on trumpet, a milestone for the avante garde on the ESP label. And there's no question that Coltrane was aware of these guys- Marion Brown, John Tchicai, Archie Shepp, Pharaoh Saunders, Dewey Johnson. Many of these people all appeared on Ascension, and Coltrane supported the avant garde, really giving a blessing to the avant garde by 1965-66. They looked towards him as a spiritual father, and he definitely moved into that area. One thing we have to remember is that by that time he had already covered every conceivable form, chord changes, patterns, modes, etc. that could ever be done, and exhausted it- he had literally gone through everything, whereas some of the avant garde players had not been through that.

AAJ: Who did Coltrane himself study music with?

DL: Well, the major influence of course, was Dexter Gordon, from a "sound" standpoint. Of course, Trane worked for Johnny Hodges' small group in the early fifties. And I think there's a Lester Young influence, which is not something you would think of.

AAJ: As a youth, Coltrane loved Lester Young's playing.

DL: There's Lester's influence in Trane's sound, the higher sound in his tone, and the singing quality. And certainly Dexter Gordon, but we have to remember that Coltrane started on alto. When he switched to tenor, there's no question that the alto influenced his tenor playing. That helped to make his tenor playing have a unique sound.

AAJ: Obviously, jazz from the 1940's through the 1970's was one of the most fertile periods in the history of music. I'm fascinated how the jazz musicians of that time got their ideas. What was the nature of their Muse, so to speak? As one of the most innovative musicians ever since that time, what can you tell us about this?

DL: I think they worked with each other. It was a small community, with people who knew each other, frequented the same places, and the same bars and clubs, lived in proximity of each other, and hung out together. And I remember a similar period of my own life doing that with other musicians. You come over, you play, you hand over the piano, you got a new tune, you show it to somebody, they say, "Try this, man, try that..." They fed off of each other. The other thing is that we have to remember that there wasn't that much water under the bridge. Sure, you had Charles Parker, Louis Armstrong, amazing stuff happening from the twenties on, but nothing like what these guys were doing, so they were able to discover more- because there was more to discover.

AAJ: Coltrane went to a school in Philadelphia called the Ornstein School of Music, and he started really learning piano and theory, piano.

DL: He worked with Dizzy, too. Dizzy was a fine piano player.

AAJ: Dizzy was very open to sharing his ideas.

DL: Dizzy would show people voicings, and, you know, it was a laboratory atmosphere in those days.

AAJ: It is incredible where Coltrane was able to take the music. Porter, in his biography, seems to really try to demonstrate that even at his "free-est" and most radical, Coltrane put real organization and structure into his compositions and improvisations.

DL: He knew very well what he was doing- there was always melody in his playing, there was always blues in his playing, always lyricisim, and there was always some kind of formal structure and he never abandoned that, even in his most far out music.

AAJ: You could say that Coltrane was literally obsessed with his instrument and with music.

DL: He was obsessed, serious, whatever the word is...

AAJ: More than even the greats like Miles Davis?

DL: Much more than Miles! I could tell you that personally! Well-- Miles was obsessed in different ways, he was as intense as Coltrane in different ways. And so was Mingus in another way. You can't compare- it's like apples and oranges. I mean Coltrane was instrumental, I mean, he was really into playing the saxophone! It was in his hands all the time. He wasn't sitting there writing charts, arrangements, that wasn't what was in his mind at that time. Maybe it would have been if he had lived longer. But he was obsessed in the sense of getting the saxophone to really be at his command.

AAJ: So Coltrane died young, and we don't know what he would have accomplished had he lived longer.

DL: I would venture to say, world music, for sure, because he had been leaning that way- Spanish music for example in the tune, "Ole," and of course "India," a tune that I play quite a bit; "Dahomey Dance" is another. He did tunes that had the sounds and feel of ethnic music when it was neither fashionable nor accessible. And I think he would have delved into that, and would also have gone into large orchestral type stuff, whether he would have written it or what, I don't know. Now to think of what would have happened to him in the seventies when fusion started, I have no idea. It's like thinking like what would have happened had Bird lived past age fifty-five, and lived into Giant Steps and the Coltrane Era, what would have Bird done? It's hard to say.

AAJ: Do you recall any of Lewis Porter's analyses of Impressions and Meditations?

DL: Great job. Incredible job. This is a milestone book. As far as I'm concerned it's the book at this point in time. The book is a good balance between the music and a feeling of humanity, a feeling of the man. Other books have been more story-telling, the legend, delving into an alomst quasi-religious feeling about Trane. Coltrane was a spiritual man, and I think people go that way with him. Lewis really struck the balance right.

AAJ: Porter very much honored Coltrane by being precise, the way that Trane was as a musician.

DL: He's a real scholar. He's a great speaker- he'll talk to you for hours.

AAJ: Did you learn anything new or surprising about Trane from the book?

DL: It was interesting to learn that "India" was a raga which Porter traced to its source. And that a melody of Ravel may have influenced "Impressions." And that "Spritual" was based on a book of spirituals from the twenties, and so forth.The story of how "Giant Steps" came together and that he was working on it for a long time. There were some illuminating "factoids" about how things come about, that you're always interested in.

AAJ: About Trane's life, there is a legacy of biographies which are said to contain much insubstantiated material.

DL: I agree with that. And there were some polemics, also, because Coltrane was a symbol of Black Pride, Black Nationalism. He inadvertenty became such a symbol. The early writng about Coltrane was very biased towards him as that kind of a symbol. Leroy Jones, etc., wrote in that vein. But no one tackled Coltrane really well until Porter. It's amazing it took that long. It's amazing that Coltrane is not as touted, acclaimed as say Monk, Duke Ellington, etc. They're all great, of course, but for some reason, Coltrane has stayed beyond the pale.

AAJ: Well, I tell you, it was you personally who started me into really listening to Coltrane extensively, and I'm now convinced that he was the greatest of all of them.

DL: He's my favorite.

AAJ: He went further than anybody else.

DL: That's exactly what I think. I don't think he can be compared with any other musician. And as much as I respect Louis Armstrong and all of that stuff, there's nobody that did what Coltrane did in that short time period, and there are so many levels- the saxophone, the music, the quartet with Tyner, Garrison, and Elvin Jones, probably the greatest group ever. The intensity, the passion, the spiritualism, the lyricism, the beauty. Plus he had McCoy and Elvin Jones, who on their own contibuted to the entire jazz language. So, it was a massive thing what he did. But- he was not controversial, except musically. He was not flamboyant. He was direct, honest, sincere, shy, nicest guy you would ever want to meet- so the tabloids could never write about him! Except the music: they would say, "Oh, he's angry..." like there was something wrong with him, and this was the most gentle guy you could ever know- he never raised his voice! He was known to be a peaceful guy. So there was nothing to write about, and he didn't have fancy clothes, fancy cars. There's no story there. The others get more notoriety because they have more of a "story."

AAJ: Well, Dave, to change the subject, what are you up to?

DL: I'm about to go to Europe in April with the [David Liebman] Group, you know Vic Juris, Jamey Haddad, and Tony Marino.

AAJ: You were at Birdland.

DL: We did three nights at Birdland with "The Three Tenors:"- Me, Brecker, and Lovano. It was on the Internet live. And I'm doing a duet concert next week at the New School with a pianist, Mike Gerber, playing the music of composer Rhoda Averbach. Things are good- I can't complain.

AAJ: As usual, it was wonderful talking to you.

DL: Thank you again, the interview we did last Spring is one of the best I ever had. I really appreciate the work you did. All the best.

Vic Schermer is a psychologist and jazz aficianado in Philadelphia, PA. He is a regular contributor to All About Jazz and other jazz venues on the Worldwide Web. Vic welcomes thoughts from readers and will respond. Contact Vic.