Jazz Poetry

The Business of 'Trane

By

GORDON MARSHALL,

Gordon Marshall

Contributor since 2009

Poet, procrastinator unissued until now, in this deluxe edition on Blue Note.

Recent articles (56 total)

Published: November 25, 2012

Carlos Santana turned me on to him
in an article in Guitar Player magazine
I read at the Hingham library,

at 14: spiritual center
of his Baja brain,
and mine now,

for 35 years,
in Boston, in the rain
after a storm...

the storm—it lasted years,
years when I couldn't listen to the fellow,
so powerful his song,

so powerful the memories of loss
and pain, in those early years
I first discovered him

in the basement of the Hingham library:
they had a holding of maybe 20
of his records,

spanning his career;
I chose Sun Ship,
posthumous release

with a colorful photo of him
proudly playing his soprano saxophone
point blank

the year is what struck me: '67
the year that rock had blown,
summer of love and all that;

I figured maybe 'Trane
had absorbed a bit
of the psychedelic sounds

bouncing around, from San Francisco
to Abbey Road:
I listened—or tried to

"gobbledy gook—gobbledy gook..."
is all I heard, up and down
his saxophone—too much

I figured this was a late-career mistake
like so many artists make,
and tried again, with Coltrane

Plays the Blues, Atlantic,
'59, eight years earlier
this was more to my taste

the longing and the dark modal
sweetness, the heavy blues
beat, smooth as a walk

down the street,
or a night in my shady bedroom
with a woman I might meet...

it kept itself in my memory
like a lamp lit up all night,
while I slept;

and when I awoke from my Coltrane slumber
30 years later,
it is still my favorite Coltrane disc,

topping my desert island picks
on my personal profile
online, where I write my columns

and interviews and concert reviews,
for three years now,
back in the business of 'Trane.

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