A Nice story

[Hardbopjazz]

Taken from

http://www.newsday.com/entertainment/news/...0,7863327.story

A haven, a home, for trane

Jazz legend John Coltrane reached his creative peak during his final years in Dix Hills

Jazz musician John Coltrane (AP File Photo)

A future as a shrine to jazz?

Mar 28, 2004

Related Documents

John Coltrane (Acrobat file)

Audio

' My Favorite Things' (RealAudio)

'Summertime' (RealAudio)

'But Not for Me' (RealAudio)

Top Stories

Berry, Half of Surf Duo Jan & Dean, Dies

Bolshoi's Sofia Golovkina Dies at 88

Jamaicans Record Bob Dylan Tribute Album

Bill Gates Joins Reno Bridge Tourney

BY PETER GOODMAN

STAFF WRITER

March 28, 2004

In the fall of 1964, John Coltrane had what he wanted, as a musician and as a man. He was 38, and music was pouring out of him like oil from a gusher. Record labels were releasing new discs as fast as he made them, and jazz fans were soaking them up. Coltrane was deeply in love with Alice McLeod, who had just given birth to John Jr., his first child. They were living in a big brick raised ranch house - four bedrooms, Jaguar XKE in the two-car garage - on three secluded acres just south of the Long Island Expressway in Dix Hills.

Even though she was a musician, too, Alice Coltrane (they married in 1966) gave him the room to create. She took care of the baby and of 4-year-old Michelle, her daughter from a previous marriage, kept the house, made the meals and left him alone. "Whenever he decided it was a time [to compose] he would go upstairs, and we would not see him for several days, other than my bringing him his food," she said from her home in Woodland Hills, Calif. "I would not disturb him."

There was a period shortly after the baby was born, perhaps in September, when the weather was nice, that Coltrane disappeared into his studio above the garage for about five days. Recalling it years later for author Ashley Kahn, Alice Coltrane said that when the composer finally emerged, "It was like Moses coming down from the mountain, it was so beautiful. He walked down, and there was that joy, that peace in his face, tranquility.... He said, 'This is the first time that I have received all of the music for what I want to record, in a suite. This is the first time I have everything, everything ready.'"

Coltrane died of liver cancer in Huntington Hospital July 17, 1967, two months short of his 41st birthday. Alice Coltrane and her family stayed on Long Island until 1972, when they sold the house and moved to California. Only hard-core fans remembered that they had lived in Dix Hills - until three months ago, when a fan named Steve Fulgoni located the house and began a move to preserve it as a landmark and museum - just days before a local developer filed papers to demolish the building for new construction.

A musical childhood

John Coltrane was born in 1926 in the tiny town of Hamlet, N.C., and raised in nearby High Point. Both his parents played instruments, both his grandfathers were Methodist ministers, and his early life was a rich mixture of music and religion. After two years as a musician in the Army, he played in several big bands and switched from alto to tenor saxophone when he played with Dizzy Gillespie in the late 1940s. In 1955, he joined Miles Davis' quintet, where his thrusting, rough-edged sound complemented Davis' smooth introspection.

Over the next few years, Coltrane's playing became more adventurous - his style was raw and shocking - and he became one of the leading hard-bop players. He also was living on the edge, drinking and taking drugs.

In 1957, though, he kicked alchohol and heroin and began to develop his own music. In 1960, he quit playing with Davis. During that period, Coltrane released such brilliant, inventive albums as "Giant Steps" and "My Favorite Things." From then until his death, he was among the most avant of the avant garde.

Settling down

As the music was maturing, Coltrane had been looking to settle down after years of life in hotel rooms and Manhattan apartments. From 1959 to 1963, he lived with Naima, his first wife, in the St. Albans section of Queens. But after he fell in love with Alice and she became pregnant, the lovers looked for a house in the suburbs.

Like such other successful jazzmen as Louis Armstrong and Dizzy Gillespie, he had the money. "These were career musicians whose careers had finally taken them to the level that they could afford to settle down and create a homestead," author Kahn said. "For John Coltrane, this was a huge gift for him."

In Dix Hills, Coltrane received, along with John Jr., this new work, which he called "A Love Supreme." He recorded it three months later in a single night with the members of what was known as his "classic quartet": pianist McCoy Tyner, bassist Jimmy Garrison and drummer Elvin Jones.

The disc was released in February 1965 on Impulse!, the hard-hitting jazz label established by ABC Records. The music, sometimes coruscatingly intense, elsewhere deeply reverent, puzzled some listeners at first but resonated warmly with many more.

Within a few months, "A Love Supreme" was recognized as a masterpiece. It was nominated for two Grammys; Down Beat magazine's readers voted it album of the year. Although no official figures are available, Kahn, author of "A Love Supreme: The Story of John Coltrane's Signature Album" (Penguin), estimates that between 3 million and 4 million copies have been sold. Over the years, it has influenced musicians as diverse as the Byrds' Roger McGuinn, minimalist godfather Terry Riley and Bono of U2. Indeed, the work is so highly regarded that the BBC is making a two-hour documentary to mark its 40th anniversary: Two weeks ago, a film crew spent five hours at the house in Dix Hills.

"It is not only considered one of John Coltrane's greatest works, it is considered one of the greatest works in the jazz canon," said Michael Cogswell, curator of the Louis Armstrong House & Archives in the Corona section of Queens. "Forty years later it still thrills and moves people as much as, if not more than, it did when it was first released. That is the benchmark of great music."

"When you think about albums that take half a year to make - this was done in one evening, and that album continues to sell," said Kahn, whose interview with Alice Coltrane opens his book. "It's a Grammy Hall of Fame album that continues to inspire music lovers of all stripes, classical, hip-hop, R&B, stone-cold jazz freaks, across generational and stylistic boundaries."

"During those days he did a lot of great music," said Lewis Porter, author of "John Coltrane, His Life and Music" (University of Michigan). "It is obviously a keystone."

His masterpiece

The first movement, titled "Acknowledgement," is dominated by the four-note figure denoting the phrase "a love supreme." Coltrane plays it more than two dozen times through a multitude of keys and then chants the words into the microphone. The quartet continues to play with the theme during "Resolution," the second movement. The tone for "Pursuance," the third, is set by drummer Jones' 90-second opening improvisation, a glittering, polyrythmic display.

"Psalm," the conclusion, is subdued and poignant, perhaps the soul of the suite. Coltrane wrote a poem, "A Love Supreme," for the music, and he plays it syllable by syllable in that final movement. It begins, "I will do all I can to be worthy of Thee o' Lord,/It ALL has to do with IT./Thank you God./Peace."

"I think whatever creativity God gives is in you," Alice Coltrane said. "I hope he would have heard that, or something. That [Long Island] happened to be the place."

Culmination of a dream

Coltrane lived on the Island for three years before his death. But his time in Dix Hills appears to have marked the culmination of his dreams. There was a home full of children and dogs. Besides John Jr. (who died in an automobile accident in 1982), he and Alice had two more sons, Ravi and Oran. Two German shepherds lived in a compound on the grounds. There was peace and quiet 45 minutes from Manhattan, with room to hear the music in his head.

"He really wanted to have kids, a family," Porter said. "It is possible that having your own quiet place outside the city, your own studio to fool around and practice in, could help you create, to get into the mood."

"He had available to him the time and the space to be able to simply give himself totally to composing his music," Alice Coltrane said.

"He was very happy there, from what I can recall," said pianist Tyner, who was at the house only once, some time after "A Love Supreme."

"He was a sort of reflective person, a kind of meditative individual," he said. "I can understand him being at peace."

Coltrane's music was never the same afterward. It grew, in Kahn's words, "wilder, weirder and more exotic than ever." The quartet broke up; some of the musicians, such as Tyner, did not go in his direction. "It was his last statement that the whole world got, before he went on a total other path," Kahn said. Within two years, Coltrane was gone.

Michelle Coltrane remembers the house in great detail: "The color of the carpet in certain places, where my bedroom was, my brothers', the kitchen, how to get out the back door." Of course, music was ever-present. Coltrane was building a studio in the house at the time of his death. Alice Coltrane completed it and made several of her own recordings there. "I could hear the sounds of the tape recorders, when they would rewind, in my room," Michelle Coltrane said. "And when they were editing, I could hear that in my room all the time. I could hear the music, too. We were so used to being around it."

Only a few reminders

Today, the house is boarded up. The ornate white-painted, wrought-iron gate lies rusting against a brick pillar at the driveway entrance. Once-neat shrubs run wild over a garden retaining wall. The fence Alice Coltrane had erected around the property remains, as does the doghouse and the gate she had installed in the back so her kids could play with the neighbors.

"My best friend, Pamela Winn - her brother, Bobby Winn, still owns a house on that street," Michelle Coltrane said.

"I must have been about 15, 16 years old back then," Robert Winn said. "My only remembrance was buying a lawn mower engine from him, Briggs & Stratton, five horsepower. I made a motorbike out of it. He had an XKE I used to admire, a sharp car. When it comes to the music aspect, I didn't know much about him. I knew him as Mr. Coltrane, my next door neighbor, not as the big jazz musician."

But Winn is a jazz fan now, and "A Love Supreme" is one of his favorite pieces. As for the possibility that the house next door might become a John Coltrane museum - "I think that's a good idea."

Copyright © 2004, Newsday, Inc. | Article licensing and reprint options

_____________________________________________________________________

A future as a shrine to jazz?

Coltrane's Dix Hills home (Newsday / Ken Spencer)

Steve Fulgoni (Newsday / Ken Spencer)

The Home in Dix Hills (Newsday / Ken Spencer)

Top Stories

Yasuhiro Fujioka may be the world's No. 1 John Coltrane fan. He's got thousands of Coltrane-related items - home movies, snapshots, nightclub programs, ticket stubs - in a private museum in Osaka, Japan. Two weeks ago, Fuji, as he's known in the jazz world, visited the house in Dix Hills where Coltrane spent the last three years of his life and where he composed "A Love Supreme," one of his masterpieces.

"We feel a lot of spiritual things from the home," Fuji said afterward in a telephone interview from the New York hotel where he was staying. "I am so much interested in Huntington. That's why we are discussing with Steve Fulgoni for maintaining, preserving, how can we do it."

Fulgoni, a Dix Hills engineer and president of the year-old Half Hollow Historical Association, began a movement in January to have Coltrane's house declared a landmark and converted into a museum. The four-bedroom, brick raised ranch is on a three-acre plot purchased in July 2002 for about $500,000 by developer Ash Agrawal and since divided into two plots. The land is for sale and, as currently mapped, the unoccupied building would need to be demolished for new homes to be constructed.

Neither Agrawal nor Eugene DeNicola, his attorney, responded to repeated requests for comment. Fulgoni said that when he spoke with Agrawal in January, the owner said he would be willing to sell the property for $1.02 million. Fulgoni expressed sympathy for Agrawal: "He went through the process as he had to, through town hall, zoning, planning. He did everything he was told to. He was days away from getting a demolition permit when I come out of nowhere and say, 'Hey, this is important.' He did everything he could, and we are saying, 'Wait a minute.'"

The Huntington Historic Preservation Commission has recommended to the Huntington Town Board that the house be declared a historic landmark, which would prevent any changes to the exterior. The board has scheduled a hearing in Town Hall for April 20 at 7 p.m.

At the same time, the Huntington Open Space Preservation Committee, which has $30 million to acquire space for parks and "neighborhood enhancements," has approached Agrawal about buying the land, according to committee chair Joy Squires of East Northport. "We really are interested in the open space," she said, adding Fulgoni might raise the money for the house. "This in no way interferes with the planning process," she said. "The developer can go ahead and work on the subdivision while we work for preservation. They are not in conflict with each other."

The concept of turning the home into a museum has drawn support from around the world. Fulgoni's Web site, www.dixhills.com, shows letters from Japan, Australia, Brazil, Finland, Denmark, the United Kingdom and elsewhere, as well as comments from the United States. Michael Cogswell, curator of the Louis Armstrong House & Archives in Queens, is enthusiastic.

"I think it's a terrific idea, and I think it needs to be done," he said. "America has such a rich cultural heritage in jazz, and we need to preserve significant locations and objects. Unfortunately, sometimes we don't fully realize the importance of these locations and objects till many decades have passed. It is much easier in the long run to preserve them now rather than try to go back and re-create them later."

Cogswell, who worked on the Armstrong project for more than a decade before it came to fruition, pointed to a New Orleans jazz tour he took years ago as an example of what can happen without some form of preservation. "It was very much an imaginary tour," he said. "Most of the tour was, 'Over here used to be such and such a nightclub.'"