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Question for Trane Fans


Dan Gould

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I'd genuinely like to hear Chuck's thoughts on this subject -- beyond "what's not to like?".

Chuck, were you always a fan of Trane's later period? Or always as much of a fan as you later turned out to be? (I know my questions presupose some things, and perhaps not entirely correctly.)

For you, Chuck (or anyone else, for that matter), what helped you get into Trane's later work if your initial reaction wasn't as postive as it would later be?? (Note: I didn't say your initial reaction wasn't positive -- just that it got more positive over time.)

Calling Chuck Nessa: I'd like to hear your thoughts on this too.

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I've never really gotten bitten by the Trane bug, early middle or late. I 'like' the music, respect it a lot, and understand why it's important (and agree that it is too). I've just never been drawn to Trane even half as much as one would expect, give all my other interests.

Pretty much the same here. And I think Trane proved to be a negative influence on a number of other sax players.

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I've never really gotten bitten by the Trane bug, early middle or late. I 'like' the music, respect it a lot, and understand why it's important (and agree that it is too). I've just never been drawn to Trane even half as much as one would expect, give all my other interests.

Pretty much the same here. And I think Trane proved to be a negative influence on a number of other sax players.

Amen to that. Can you say Art Pepper?

Up over and out.

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I've never really gotten bitten by the Trane bug, early middle or late. I 'like' the music, respect it a lot, and understand why it's important (and agree that it is too). I've just never been drawn to Trane even half as much as one would expect, give all my other interests.

Pretty much the same here. And I think Trane proved to be a negative influence on a number of other sax players.

Amen to that. Can you say Art Pepper?

Up over and out.

Not Trane's fault, and not anything to do with him, for that matter.

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I've never really gotten bitten by the Trane bug, early middle or late. I 'like' the music, respect it a lot, and understand why it's important (and agree that it is too). I've just never been drawn to Trane even half as much as one would expect, give all my other interests.

Pretty much the same here. And I think Trane proved to be a negative influence on a number of other sax players.

Amen to that. Can you say Art Pepper?

Up over and out.

Not Trane's fault, and not anything to do with him, for that matter.

Paul,

Would be interested in your expanding on this. Maybe I'm missing your point, but my sense would be there were precious few, if any, sax players who were not influenced in one way or another by Trane.

Up over and out.

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There's no doubt that many saxophonists felt compelled to "keep up" with the changes. For some that was a good thing. For others, like Pepper, not so much. Of course it had nothing to do with Coltrane other than the fact that he was the one creating the influence. He's not to be blamed for anything. But to say that "it had nothing to do with him" is simply not right. No one would have been influenced one way or the other if he had not done what he did.

Up over and out.

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Coltrane is a matter of taste. I don't see any reason why all jazz fans should like him.

Until mid-1965, Coltrane's path seemed to be a rather continuous progression. As Coltrane progressed, he left some things of value behind. That is only natural. Yet, if you can relate to what Coltrane was doing in 1960, it is hard for me to imagine it being too big a jump to understand what was happening in 1964, and even early 1965. Is there something about the Crescent and Love Supreme Coltrane that makes the music more "difficult" than the Coltrane of 1960 with Miles in Europe, or 61 at the Village Vanguard? I don't hear it.

Beginning around mid-1965, it strikes me that Coltane started making more discontinuous jumps into the unknown, for better or worse. Jazz fans will probably never agree about the relative merits of what he produced post-65. But jazz has never been the same.

Edited by John L
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I hope that I don't get the "if you can't hear it that's your problem" dismissals (I'm looking at you, Chuck - :) but I am curious to hear what it is that makes Coltrane's mid and late period Impulse records such compelling music.

I'll be the first to admit that I have never found my way into that era and have always regarded it as "noise" - random "noise". Now I have heard from Jim S. many many times that if you get into the guts of the music, it is far from random and of course I accept his statement. But the music still strikes me as noise, with nothing that is appealing to my ears. So the question is, for fans of this period, what does make it appealing to you? The energy? The feeling of boundaries being exceeded? For that matter, is there a particular mood you have to be in to enjoy it? Would you listen to it with your Sunday paper and coffee? Or more when you are pissed off at the world?

Inquiring minds want to know!

All of the above. Really, I know you don't want this answer, but you either hear it or you don't. That's not a cut, (neither is your original question, I don't think) it's just the truth. It's bigger than can be explained by words; it's a connection, full and total. If I could explain it, it might not be so. Perhaps Trane was the Messiah.

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That's not a cut, (neither is your original question, I don't think) ...

You should know, Thom, that in my first foray into online jazz discussion, at a site I can't even recall the name of anymore (JOL?), I put it a slightly different way: "Trane - Genius or Insane?"

I try (try) to play nicer nowadays. :g

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Coltrane is a matter of taste. I don't see any reason why all jazz fans should like him.

Until mid-1965, Coltrane's path seemed to be a rather continuous progression. As Coltrane progressed, he left some things of value behind. That is only natural. Yet, if you can relate to what Coltrane was doing in 1960, it is hard for me to imagine it being too big a jump to understand what was happening in 1964, and even early 1965. Is there something about the Crescent and Love Supreme Coltrane that makes the music more "difficult" than the Coltrane of 1960 with Miles in Europe, or 61 at the Village Vanguard? I don't hear it.

Beginning around mid-1965, it strikes me that Coltane started making more discontinuous jumps into the unknown, for better or worse. Jazz fans will probably never agree about the relative merits of what he produced post-65. But jazz has never been the same.

I don't hear any particularly discontinuous jumps in Coltrane's style after 65 - not any more discontinuous then the rapid evolution of the sheets of sound in 57/58 or the transition to his more liner style in 60. Furthermore, there is a fairly clear progression in the 64-and-onward recordings that seems continuous to me.

Guy

Edited by Guy
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Coltrane is a matter of taste. I don't see any reason why all jazz fans should like him.

Until mid-1965, Coltrane's path seemed to be a rather continuous progression. As Coltrane progressed, he left some things of value behind. That is only natural. Yet, if you can relate to what Coltrane was doing in 1960, it is hard for me to imagine it being too big a jump to understand what was happening in 1964, and even early 1965. Is there something about the Crescent and Love Supreme Coltrane that makes the music more "difficult" than the Coltrane of 1960 with Miles in Europe, or 61 at the Village Vanguard? I don't hear it.

Beginning around mid-1965, it strikes me that Coltane started making more discontinuous jumps into the unknown, for better or worse. Jazz fans will probably never agree about the relative merits of what he produced post-65. But jazz has never been the same.

I don't hear any particularly discontinuous jumps in Coltrane's style after 65 - not any more discontinuous then the rapid evolution of the sheets of sound in 57/58 or the transition to his more liner style in 60. Furthermore, there is a fairly clear progression in the 64-and-onward recordings that seems continuous to me.

Guy

Do you really think so? If I had never heard Ascension, First Meditations, Meditations, Live in Seattle, Live in Japan, Interstellar Space, Expression, and the Olatunji Concert before, and somebody asked me to guess the chronology, I would be pretty lost. On the other hand, I would feel a bit more confortable taking a shot at guessing the chronology of most of the earlier sequence of recordings, at least those that feature some stylistic differences. Of course, the studio recordings of 62 and 63 are somewhat of an exception, a deliberate step backward that was not present in the live recordings of the same period.

From mid-65 on, Coltrane strikes me as being much more in an "anything goes" sort of mode, no longer moving so much in a determined single linear direction, but intent on pressing the pace of experimentation in various directions.

Edited by John L
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I have always loved virtually all Coltrane I have heard, since my first exposure to jazz. Many of the Atlantic recordings, Crescent, A Love Supreme, Africa Brass--they hit me with an immediate postive reaction, just as Mingus Ah Um, Free For All, and Blues and the Abstract Truth did.

When I heard late period Coltrane, I felt the same way. It hit me immediately and in a positive way. I enjoy Om and Interstellar Space more than Ascension and Meditations, but that is just personal taste. The style itself did not bother me.

I agree with JSngry's comments about coming from psychedelic rock. After listening to the more adventurous rock of the late 1960s and early 1970s, the later period Coltrane did not seem particularly weird or difficult. Sometimes I would think, if this music was being played on distorted electric guitars instead of on saxophones, millions of young people would like it.

Edited by Hot Ptah
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"One Down, One Up, Live at the Half Note" (1965) is the recording that really re-energized my interest in music in general, and jazz in particular. That music grabbed ahold of me by the throat and really connected to me immediately. It remains probably my favorite Coltrane, simply because of the pure energy and unbridled joy streaming from the bandstand that night. The quirky cutting-in, gotta-go, radio broadcast also lends it a unique and endearing quality. To me his live recordings -- whether the Village Vanguard, Europe, Japan, whatever -- are always way more intense than his studio recordings.

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I have always loved virtually all Coltrane I have heard, since my first exposure to jazz. Many of the Atlantic recordings, Cresent, A Love Supreme, Africa Brass--they hit me with an immediate postive reaction, just as Mingus Ah Um, Free For All, and Blues and the Abstract Truth did.

When I heard late period Coltrane, I felt the same way. It hit me immediately and in a positive way. I enjoy Om and Interstellar Space more than Ascension and Meditations, but that is just personal taste. The style itself did not bother me.

I agree with JSngry's comments about coming from psychedelic rock. After listening to the more adventurous rock of the late 1960s and early 1970s, the later period Coltrane did not seem particularly weird or difficult. Sometimes I would think, if this music was being played on distorted electric guitars instead of on saxophones, millions of young people would like it.

Roger McGuinn of the Byrds was trying to do that with 'Eight Miles High'.

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My introduction to jazz was in the late '50s. I lived on a farm in central Iowa and the closest record store was 15 miles away. The "jazz section" was 4 bins of stuff. I bought Armstrong Hot Fives, Ellington Columbia lps, Miles and Rollins on Prestige, Gillespie Verves, Bix and adventured on. As I understood it, this was all the same thing. By the time Africa/Brass came out I was ready for any sonic adventure and this has continued all my life. I always thought "jazz" fans were looking for the "new" and dug the past, but about 20 years ago this seemed to shift. Now people seem more interested in "styles" than music. I guess this means the music died.

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By the time Africa/Brass came out I was ready for any sonic adventure and this has continued all my life. I always thought "jazz" fans were looking for the "new" and dug the past, but about 20 years ago this seemed to shift. Now people seem more interested in "styles" than music. I guess this means the music died.

:tup

I think the phrase sonic adventure says a lot.

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I always thought "jazz" fans were looking for the "new" and dug the past, but about 20 years ago this seemed to shift. Now people seem more interested in "styles" than music. I guess this means the music died.

I agree, the public perception of what the music "is" seems to be what changed. Which of course is part of the problem, trying to pigeon-hole things into easily definable categories. Improvised music should be a fluid thing...which would of course morph and change over the years as times change and new players and ideas are introduced. However, there seems to have been a disconnect somewhere, instead of moving forward and incorporating new sounds they started looking back. Was this really the musicians that caused this, or a reaction to what the public "expected" jazz to be?

I don't think improvised music is dead, but narrow-minded thinking along the lines of what "should" be defined as jazz surely is.

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