The two would collaborate most famously on Davis's 1960 album, Kind of Blue, the birth of modal jazz. Recorded just a few weeks after that seminal album, and while Davis didn't have anything directly to do with it, Kahn considers Coltrane's first great solo album, Giant Steps almost a sequel. More importantly, Kahn writes
It's no coincidence that Coltrane recorded Giant Steps only two weeks after he finished Kind of Blue. The same emotional depth and self-assurance powers his work on both…But while the latter's modal framework points to a future path of jazz expression, the former serves as a masterful farewell to the world bebop created, a world of labyrinthine harmonies and chord changes, a world Coltrane had aspired to and in the past three years had finally mastered.After Miles, Coltrane's next mentor was Ornette Coleman, who emerged on the scene just as Kind of Blue was making its mark. Whereas Davis's jazz was the epitome of streamlined cool, Coleman's The Shape of Jazz to Come was cacophony. But Coleman's "free jazz" or "harmolodic" (harmony and melody simultaneously) playing intrigued Coltrane enough that he made sat in from time to time with Coleman's live band, made frequent visits to Coleman's apartment, and even paid Coleman for lessons.
He also eventually incorporated former Coleman bassist Jimmy Garrison (1933-1976) into his band, which would also eventually include Elvin Jones on drums, and McCoy Tyner on piano. These musicians, both still playing (Jones contributed the introduction to Kahn's book) became legends in the jazz world playing with Coltrane.
The Recording Process
Not surprisingly, Kahn does a masterful job explaining the recording process behind A Love Supreme and giving examples of what Coltrane, the other musicians on the recording, and his producer, Rudy Van Gelder were trying to achieve.
Coltrane very much wanted to record a musical prayer to God, thanking Him for allowing Coltrane to dedicate his life towards music. Kahn also thoroughly explains how the album's now famous liner notes, which consist largely of a written prayer by Coltrane, came to be. They would be some of the only written words produced by Coltrane, who otherwise very much put his emphasis on his music.
Article comments
1 - Eric Olsen
Very informative and thought-provoking. People look for transcendence wherever they can find it.
2 - Stephen Harris
Great Article!!!
3 - HW Saxton
The writer here is well meaning I'm sure
but also really WRONG on several points.
Miles Davis' "Kind Of Blue" was recorded
and released in the spring of 1959 as
was Coltrane's "Giant Steps" erroneously
tagged here as being a 1960 release.
As an aside,Charles Mingus' LP "Ah Um"
was from 1959 also.Definitely a stellar
year for Jazz.
4 - Lil Joe
It's a darn good article! It catches the spirit of the 60s, the revolution in the social air that gave the music a home.
There has been a lot of, and in fact most of the articles dealing with Trane's social and spiritual connectedness with the Hippies, and it is good that people know that. But, his music was very profoundly influenced by and influencing of the spiritual lives of those of us in the Black community who were in a state of open rebellion, and many of us who became Marxist dogmatic materialists had become atheists.
The loss of the ghostly God - the unbodily body - was a loss of spirituality. As I said we were dogmatic materialists.
But, Trane's piece "Spirituals" performed Live at the Village Vanguard enabled us to merge with the spirituality if pantheism, as Art as Hegel said was the empirical side of the Region of the Absolute Spirit. Trane's "Psalm" poem connection with the final movement of the Suite, as did the music itself in A Love Supreme took us into a pantheistic spirituality.
This is to say, a spirituality that comprise nature, as the Absolute is not just Subject, but Substance as well (to do an inversion of Hegel and Feuerbach re Spinoza)and Trane, Alice and Pharaoh provided a Pantheism that we felt, as well as rationally understood.
Lil Joe
Los Angeles