Jazz Articles about John Coltrane

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John Coltrane: The Penny Whistle Tapes

by Derek Taylor
April 1, 2003

The late 1950s were a tremulous time for John Coltrane. In the stark wake of withering heroin addiction, he finally stood stalwartly clean and sober. The future lay wide open and uncertain, replete with possibilities. An all consuming musical quest was about to begin.After hooking up with Monk for an extended engagement at New York's Five Spot, his harmonic language would expand at a near exponential pace. He would also soon augment his signature tenor sound with the ...

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A Love Supreme: The Story of John Coltrane's Signature Album

by Joel Roberts
February 11, 2003

A Love Supreme: The Story of John Coltrane's Signature Album Ashley Kahn (foreword by Elvin Jones) ISBN: 978-0142003527 Viking/Penguin 2002 Few recordings in jazz have the mystique of A Love Supreme. Nearly 40 years after its release it's still revered by jazz fans as a work of rare artistry, intensity and originality. But perhaps because of its powerful spiritual overtones and the unfortunate idolization, by some, of Coltrane as an ...

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A Love Supreme: The Story of John Coltrane's Signature Album

by Brent Wheeler
January 11, 2003

A Love Supreme: The Story of John Coltrane's Signature Album Ashley Kahn (foreword by Elvin Jones) ISBN: 978-0142003527 Viking/Penguin 2002 The accepted authority on Trane and the authoritative analysis is Professor Lewis Porter's John Coltrane: His Life and Music, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 1998. His is a splendid and immaculate celebration but one leaning toward strict musical analysis and written within an academic tradition. Mr Kahn brings a different ...

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John Coltrane: Lush Life

by David Rickert
November 6, 2002

Coltrane’s records for Atlantic and Impulse are such towering landmarks that now his work for Prestige is all but ignored. However, there are many excellent albums in the Prestige catalog, and Lush Life, recently reissued in 20-bit, is as good a place as any to start exploring the early days of Trane. The brooding cover doesn’t quite do the music justice, for this is a fairly up-tempo, spirited affair capturing a gifted improviser who was just beginning to stretch out ...

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John Coltrane: Lush Life (20-Bit Remastered)

by C. Michael Bailey
October 10, 2002

Coltrane Schmoltrane...can he play a ballad?

I once read that a well-known music critic opined that John Coltrane might very well be jazz’s most boring genius. It cannot be disputed that Giant Steps and A Love Supreme, as well as, My Favorite Things were important pioneering affairs in the evolution of jazz. But a good deal of his late music is noise. It might be brilliant noise, but it is noise all of the same. Amid the deluge of late ...

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John Coltrane: Ballads (Deluxe Edition)

by C. Andrew Hovan
June 25, 2002

With the success that Blue Note has had in eliciting the services of the legendary recording engineer Rudy Van Gelder in remastering the past glories of one of the most revered record labels in all of jazz, it’s no surprise that Impulse would eventually follow suit and ask Van Gelder to do the same handiwork for releases from that label’s archives. So the story goes, producer Bob Thiele would often have Van Gelder run extra copies of Coltrane recording sessions ...

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John Coltrane: Coltrane (Deluxe Edition)

by C. Andrew Hovan
June 25, 2002

With the success that Blue Note has had in eliciting the services of the legendary recording engineer Rudy Van Gelder in remastering the past glories of one of the most revered record labels in all of jazz, it’s no surprise that Impulse would eventually follow suit and ask Van Gelder to do the same handiwork for releases from that label’s archives. So the story goes, producer Bob Thiele would often have Van Gelder run extra copies of Coltrane recording sessions ...