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Jazz Articles about John Coltrane
Getting Closer to the Dream
by Christopher Mote
[Editor's Note: All About Jazz, Hidden City Philadelphia, and the Preservation Alliance for Greater Philadelphia have collaborated to present a series of articles on the local jazz scene that John Coltrane inhabited, developed in, and ultimately transcended between 1943 and 1958, when he called the city home.] In some ways, John Coltrane's house is like any other in Strawberry Mansion. The three-story, Dutch-gabled row home where he lived from 1952 to 1958 was seen as ...
Continue ReadingJohn Coltrane: There Was No End To The Music
by Rob Armstrong
[Editor's Note: All About Jazz, Hidden City Philadelphia, and the Preservation Alliance for Greater Philadelphia have collaborated to present a series of articles on the local jazz scene that John Coltrane inhabited, developed in, and ultimately transcended between 1943 and 1958, when he called the city home.] When 18 year old John Coltrane moved to Philadelphia, in 1943 the nation's third largest city, he entered a fundamentally different world from his hometown of High Point, N.C. Like many ...
Continue ReadingThe Business of 'Trane
by Gordon Marshall
Carlos Santana turned me on to himin an article in Guitar Player magazineI read at the Hingham library,at 14: spiritual centerof his Baja brain,and mine now,for 35 years,in Boston, in the rainafter 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 lossand pain, in ...
Continue ReadingJohn Coltrane's Music Gets New Life at Lincoln Center
by Nick Catalano
In jazz history, the often ignored contributions of the great arranger/orchestrators can never be overestimated. It was Jelly Roll Morton's orchestral writing that enabled “Black Bottom Stomp" to soar. In trumpeter Miles Davis' Sketches of Spain (Columbia, 1960), it was Gil Evans' pen that created the magic. At Town Hall, it was Hall Overton's arrangements that brought the audience into the soul of pianist Thelonious Monk. As the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra once again took up ...
Continue ReadingJohn Coltrane: Always A Philadelphian
by Rob Armstrong
[Editor's Note: All About Jazz, Hidden City Philadelphia, and the Preservation Alliance for Greater Philadelphia have collaborated to present a series of articles on the local jazz scene that John Coltrane inhabited, developed in, and ultimately transcended between 1943 and 1958, when he called the city home.] One of Philadelphia's most interesting properties from a cultural standpoint--the former home of legendary saxophonist and composer John Coltrane--is also one of its most endangered. This year, the house located at ...
Continue ReadingJohn Coltrane: Kulu Sé Mama
by Chris May
John Coltrane Kulu Sé Mama Impulse!1967 It is rare to find Kulu Sé Mama on somebody's desert-island list of recordings by saxophonist John Coltrane. Why, is a mystery. Despite the brooding intensity of the cover photo, the performances are accessible and delightful, and, as an artifact, although it was recorded over three sessions in summer and fall 1965 in New Jersey and Los Angeles, with two lineups, the album hangs together ...
Continue ReadingVarious Artists: First Impulse: The Creed Taylor Collection 50th Anniversary
by Chris May
The headline news on this lavishly packaged, four-CD collection of the work of the Impulse! label's founding producer, Creed Taylor, is that it includes three previously unreleased tracks by John Coltrane. These were recorded during rehearsals for what would become the saxophonist's Impulse! debut, Africa/Brass, in 1961. They have a combined playing time of less than eight minutes, but as newly discovered Coltrane recordings are reduced to a trickle with the passage of time, the arrival of any such material, ...
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