©Copyright 2017: Richard von
Sternberg, All Rights Reserved
The John Coltrane Quartet Made New Jazz Blossom with My Favorite Things
As I write this, I realize that I am so old now that my parents
grew up on Dixieland and swing era music and crooned to the love songs of the
era of the Great War of the 1940’s. I
was born as the war ended and my childhood began when the baby boom exploded,
affluence came in like a tide and jazz music had evolved to what they called
be-bop.
Hermosa Beach as Jazz Music Epicenter
As I grew up, so did my little town of Hermosa
Beach. Jazz music has always been
esoteric and a “taste” one acquires, a genre of music. Its followers have always been a minority here. Jazz musicians from the 30’s forward have noted that their audiences were far larger in Europe than here. During my teen years, conditions had ripened enough that jazz was readying itself for a major transformation in tempo and style and a place in society. Jazz performers began to appear in large cities all over America: The Village Vanguard, The Jazz Workshop, Carnegie Hall, Newport, Shelly’s Manne Hole, The Jazz Gallery, and one of the most famous clubs of all, Howard Rumsey’s Lighthouse in Hermosa Beach.
In my little town of Hermosa Beach, a town of one square
mile with a population of 13,000, filled with artists and reclusive types as
well as Ph.D. engineers, masters of rocket science with jobs at Jet Propulsion
Laboratories, North American Aircraft Company, actors with Hollywood careers,
all kinds of people, a jazz night club managed to flourish, draw crowds on the
weekends as the likes of John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Dave Brubeck, Shorty
Rogers, and, and, and………performed. They
were magnetic performers in a magnetic venue right down from the Hermosa pier
on Pier Avenue who drew enormous crowds of people from all over Los Angeles,
people who came to ride the wave of a beautiful, rapidly evolving music based
on soulful and masterful improvisation.
Experiencing Jazz Live Made it Irresistible
As a boy I was not allowed in, as it was, after all, a
nightclub with liquor. Luckily for me,
at the end of the performers’ stage was a Dutch door that just HAD to be kept
open during the humid nights of that warm, Mediterranean-like climate enjoyed
by the neighbors of my youth, and I perched myself right at that Dutch door and
could almost reach out and touch the performers, they were so close. One could say that I stumbled on the jazz
scene and that I probably would have missed it had the Lighthouse club not been
there yet, once discovered, was gripped by it. Changed by it.
 |
| Miles Davis |
I was still in junior high school when I discovered Miles
Davis. Miles appeared to be arrogant and sometimes sat with his back to the audience. I listened to his music and never thought
another negative thing about him again no matter what he did or had done. Miles was powerful with the trumpet and his
arrangements of top performers, one of whom reeled me in with his originality
and versatility: John Coltrane.
The “Trane”
The first time I heard John Coltrane play, I found myself
constantly worrying that the run of notes he was building on was leading to a
spot he would not be able to get out of and sound like he was still with the
overall theme of the music. He reminded
me of W. C. Fields, the famous comedian of the 20th century who
found a way to stand out from all other performers who juggled things like
cigar boxes by appearing to drop one of the boxes and retrieve it just at the
very last second, causing so much adrenalin to build up in his audience that
his save would cause thunderous applauses to occur.
Something happened to jazz at the end of the be-bop era that
made it open up, that made it become a spotlight ensemble for performers. To become a star, you had to be able to
transfix the crowds with your solo improvisations, to work on and off the music
of the other players and keep your part of the train on the track, touching on
the main theme of the piece you were playing, yet stand out brilliantly against
the landscape spotlighting your individuality, your personal style and control
of your instrument(s). The one who my
childhood intuition told me at the time was the master was John Coltrane.
I can hear the influence of Thelonius Monk, who Coltrane
played with for a while, on his music.
In one of his more famous tunes, Little
Rootie Tootie, Monk repeats his theme with strong banging on the piano
keys, continually touching pairs of keys (next to each other) right to the
point of making the listener wonder if he were about to stumble into cacophony,
yet with his masterful touch, kept the music exciting by pushing it next door
to chaos while managing to keep it tame enough to integrate into one’s soul.
While Coltrane was with Miles Davis there were rumors of
irreconcilable ego sparks, but their musical compatibility was at a pinnacle of
musicianship and interconnectedness one would expect to only find in thousand
year old orchestras led by timeless masters of the baton. The two of them made musical history together
as long as it was possible, until Coltrane finally realized he was meant to be his own innovator and beta-experimenter,
developer of his own ensemble.
The John Coltrane Quartet is Born
His first attempts to create a group on his own were
chronicled by Wikipedia. You can Google this on line:
“Coltrane formed his first quartet
for live performances in 1960 for an appearance at the Jazz Gallery in New York
City. After moving through different personnel including Steve Kuhn, Pete La
Roca, and Billy Higgins, the lineup stabilized in the fall with pianist McCoy
Tyner, bassist Steve Davis, and drummer Elvin Jones.”
Tyner, Davis, Jones and Coltrane turned out to be the
lightning flashes that lit up the night sky because they were perfect
together. Coltrane saw what he had,
looked for a way to satisfy his burning desire to fly with his new-found
soprano saxophone in a way only he could play it and in 1960 he surprised even
himself with an arrangement of a gentle, melodious Rogers and Hammerstein Sound
of Music crowd pleaser: My Favorite
Things.
When I first heard his ensemble play My Favorite Things, I was too young and inexperienced to understand
how deeply I was being affected by it, how much a place within me was permanently
affected as I stood, riveted, catatonically put into a state that elevated, the
way the Bach intended to elevate the soul with his deeply moving sacred music
for the organ: that transcendent musical state where you feel no separation between the
self and the music you are listening to or performing.
I listened to a Nancy Wilson radio program about John
Coltrane in which she explained that he picked My Favorite Things at a time when he was becoming fascinated with
the instruments and music of India.
Perhaps from a conversation she had with him she learned that he was
attempting to blend the elements of Indian music with the waltz rhythm of My
Favorite Things and discovered he had found a way to launch his most amazing
solos and contrast every note against the exotic and gentle background so that
every part of the music supported his genius-level improvisation.
His album, My Favorite
Things, broke into the market like a thunderstorm with whirlwinds in 1961. Coltrane’s switch from the alto to the
soprano saxophone – essentially announced to the world through My Favorite
Things – caused, according to my professor of jazz music in college, Phil
Elwood, who was the jazz critic for the San Francisco Examiner, around 20
thousand soprano saxophones to be sold in the next few days all around the
world. With one musical score, John
Coltrane, known in his world as “Trane”, changed jazz music forever.
It was a collaborative endeavor with Coltrane at the helm
and his three choices of accompanists, all of whom were the best at what they
did, making up the John Coltrane Quartet.
It was the moment Miles Davis dreaded most as the “Trane” left his station. (Professor Elwood told us Davis broke down
and sobbed as he realized what he was losing.)
The first time I heard the recording (not the first time I
heard the ensemble play live), I heard the one error that McCoy Tyner makes in
his triangular piano run of waltz patterns with one slight extended second per
triangle, an error he makes when one of his fingers touches two keys at once
and one of the hammers lands harder than the other on the piano strings making
it sound like something was off a tiny bit, leaving you unsure whether it was intentional
or not. I got the first recording in
1960 in the middle of my teens and played it until it was mostly scratch
sounds. I shared what I found with
everybody I met who enjoyed jazz music and even pointed out the micro-error
made by pianist Tyner. Professor Elwood
pointed that out as well back then, and, many years later, I heard Tyner refer
to the “blip” in an interview as a great unnoticed mistake. He pointed out, with tongue in cheek, that
every critic referred to that recording of My
Favorite Things as a flawless performance, so he didn’t have to be
disappointed in himself.
What is it about it that allowed that one mixture of sounds
to be perceived in such an extraordinary way? The first impression you get hearing it the first time is familiarity
because the quartet did not try to disguise their music. For the sake of clarification, since many
people think that Julie Andrews introduced the tune to the world in a movie,
here is the My Favorite Things
timeline, also from Wikipedia:
“The song was first
performed by Maria (played by Mary Martin) and Mother Abbess (Patricia Neway)
in the original 1959 Broadway production.
Julie Andrews performed the song for
the first time on the Christmas special
for The Garry Moore Show in 1961, and then in the movie in 1965.”
What Happens to a Person Taken by Coltrane's Rendition of My Favorite Things?
In the quartet recording, introduction-of-the-piece
honors were given to Tyner as he and his cohorts set the rhythm and prepared
the ear for what was to follow. For all
those who had already heard the Rogers and Hammerstein version, it must have
seemed like a look at a familiar, treasured place over its reflection on a lake
where a very slight breeze is blowing, just enough to ripple the surface and
make the reflection an impressionist-influenced look at the same thing.
Two extremely beautiful, but different,
scenes blended stereoscopically into a rhapsodic panorama. Tyner, Davis and Jones, with familiarity,
harmony, sweet piano patterns and crisp percussive touches slowly and
seductively set the stage for the ignition of Coltrane’s first rich sound that,
for those inclined toward such things, grabs you, pulls you away from
EVERYTHING ELSE and lulls you into listening to the familiar, quickly ratcheting
up several levels of complexity as Coltrane respectfully plays Rogers and
Hammerstein adding a dash or two of his unusual approach, then lets his fingers
begin to speed around his sax keys faster than a person can even think of them
moving, making multiple sounds where one or two are expected, sending ping pong
balls of sound ricocheting all around the room.
Just as you begin to think that the roller coaster has left the track
and an embarrassing crash is about to occur, as I mentioned earlier, Coltrane
is already back on the main track leaving you to “replay the tape in your
head”, subconsciously “examine the evidence” to see if all of what you just
heard really was “correct” and, if you perceive the genius, wonder how it was
possible for any human being to do that.
In the background, Elvin Jones provides a perfect musical heartbeat,
error free from beginning to end and Steve Davis fills in all the blanks with
his bass in a way that is so natural it is barely noticed consciously, but,
removed, would make the selection sound like stereo with one speaker missing.
If you have never heard the recording, it is available on
line here:
Please leave a comment on this blog post. I am curious to see people’s take on
Coltrane’s letting go of the ball almost until it hits the floor, then,
reversing the impression leaving you in awe.
Richard von Sternberg, May 15, 2017
