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Ben Ratliff, author of Coltrane:  The Story of a Sound _____________________________________________      What was the essence of John Coltrane’s achievement that makes him so prized forty years after his death? What was it about his improvising, his bands, his compositions, his place within his era of jazz that left so many musicians and listeners so powerfully drawn to him? What would a John Coltrane look like now -- or are we looking for the wrong signs?      The acclaimed jazz writer Ben Ratliff addresses these questions in Coltrane. First Ratliff tells the story of Coltrane’s development, from his first recordings as a no-name navy bandsman to his last recordings as a near-saint, paying special attention to the last ten years of his life, which contained a remarkable series of breakthroughs in a nearly religious search for deeper expression.      In the book’s second half, Ratliff traces another history: that of Coltrane’s influence and legacy. This story begins in the mid - 1950's and considers the reactions of musicians, critics, and others who paid attention, asking: Why does Coltrane signify so heavily in the basic identity of jazz?      Placing jazz among other art forms and American social history, and placing Coltrane not just among jazz musicians but among the greatest American artists, Ratliff tries to look for the sources of power in Coltrane’s music -- not just in matters of technique, composition, and musical concepts, but in the deeper frequencies of Coltrane’s sound.#      Ratliff joins us in a conversation about Coltrane's sound and influence in a January 29, 2008 interview. * Interview Topics Preparation for writing the book What was more impactful -- his music or his influence? What Coltrane's music signified for the author at a young age Describing Coltrane's sound Recordings on which Coltrane's sound first appeared The importance of "Straight, No Chaser" from Milestones With Monk at the Five Spot in 1957 Negative reaction to Coltrane's work The sound of the 1960's and Coltrane Giant Steps Musicians' desire to play like Coltrane Coltrane's influence and its impact on jazz Is there a "Contemporary Coltrane?" About Ben Ratliff Critical acclaim for the book * Photo by Lee Tanner John Coltrane _____ "John Coltrane tends to be understood in either one of two ways, as the one-man academy of jazz -- the king student, the exhaustively precise teacher -- or as the great psychic liberator of jazz who rendered the academy obsolete. "Indirectly, by example, Coltrane encouraged musicians to practice and study rudiments and scales and harmonic theory. He played the blues in unusual keys for the sheer challenge of it. He worked on himself until he became a great technical achievement, the complete jazz musician. Even more indirectly, he encouraged other musicians, in jazz and outside of jazz, to transcend their hang-ups and preconceptions and to play a pure intuitive expression, as opposed to learned figures. He helped people freak out; he gave them extramusical ideas. "Whether or not the ideas were his prime motivation -- I think they were not -- Coltrane played all his music with such commitment that he could seem as if he were selling intellectual ideas outside of music. Even Duke Ellington's later music pales by comparison in terms of its commitment to the "Afro-Eurasian Eclipse," the "New Orleans Suite," the "Sacred Concerts" -- lovely works all, they are filled with niceties. Ellington never let you forget that music was his profession. On the other hand, the popular vision of Coltrane is that he seemed to ask you, repeatedly, to alter your life." - Ben Ratliff _____ Afro-Blue _______________________________________________________ JJM  You wrote, "His career, especially the last ten years of it, was so unreasonably exceptional that when he became seen as the representative jazz musician, the general comprehension of how and why jazz works became changed; it also became jagged and dangerous with half-truths. Every half-truth needs a full explanation." How did you prepare for writing this book? BR  In a very unscientific way. I felt like I was preparing for it just by observing jazz concerts for the last ten years or so, because half of the book is about what happened to jazz as a result of what Coltrane brought to it, and how we think about jazz after Coltrane. He changed our perception of jazz in a really large way. At first it was just sitting down and listening to everything in sequence and then writing, because the first half of the book is making the connections between all the different parts of his work, and how they fit together and flow into each other. When I got to the second part of the book, which is about his reception as opposed to the making of the art, I tried to read everything there was to read -- interviews and analysis -- but I was very conscious of trying not to draw too much from the sources that everyone knows because I wanted this book to be different from others that have been written about him. When I told people I was writing a book about Coltrane, often times the first thing they would say was "Why another one, and how is this going to be any different than those that were already written?" I felt like I had an obligation to answer that question in my writing. JJM  For one thing your book is different because it is not a biography. In describing it, you wrote, "This is not a book about Coltrane's life, but the story of his work. The first part tells the story of his music as it was made…the second part tells the story of his influence." Which was more impactful -- his music or his influence? BR  The thing about Coltrane is that he was such a great musician that even after having listened to his music closely for five years, I never became bored or disillusioned because his level of craft was so high. Where it gets really interesting is the fact that he left us with a set of ideals, some of which even came to be contradictory. On one side is the ideal of the cathartic improviser who needs to get everything out of himself, to say everything he has to say regardless of whether it fits into bar lines or whether it has to do with traditional structure; and on the other side is the ideal of the completely prepared and educated student, who knows and analyzes the rules, and who understands the feeling of jazz from every era of the music before his own. So, basically what I am talking about is the old idea of the split between free players and so-called traditional players -- a split that becomes more and more imaginary as the years go by. The split was a relevant thing for a long time in jazz, and I found it incredible that both of these two schools of thought that for a while worked against each other, came from the same man. I found myself endlessly fascinated by the fact that he was able to contain so much inside his music. * "Coltrane -- whose music is marked by remarkable technique, strength in all registers of the tenor and soprano saxophones, slightly sharp intonation, serene intensity, and a rapid, mobile exploration of chords, not just melody -- made jazz that was alternately seductive, mainstream, and antagonistic." - Ben Ratliff _____ Summertime Photo by Lee Tanner Miles Davis, with Paul Chambers, Jimmy Cobb, Cannonball Adderley, John Coltrane Chicago Amphitheater, 1957 _____ So What , a video of Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Paul Chambers, Philly Joe Jones, and Wynton Kelly JJM  You wrote, "His art, nearly up to the end, was not insular, and kept signifying different things for different people of different cultures and races." What did it signify for you when you first heard his music? BR  I remember my blank slate reaction very well. As a teenager I listened to the Miles Davis Quintet records from the fifties -- Workin', Relaxin', Cookin' -- and I felt as if I understood what Miles Davis was up to, probably because he phrased so simply. There was a little bit of a sense of humor and a flip attitude in the music, and I could recognize these human emotions and attributes and poses, but every time it was Coltrane's turn to solo, I didn't quite understand what he was doing -- he seemed to have a much faster idea about music, and it was intimidating, slightly off-putting and even a little bit scary. I felt that even then, and that is far from his scariest time! So, it took me a while to warm up to him, but I knew that I was interested. I also felt that learning about him would unlock some things for me, which ended up being a sound impulse, because I do keep learning more -- not just about jazz but about many other things -- by looking at and listening to Coltrane. "…we had Trane on sax, Philly Joe [Jones] on drums, Red Garland on piano, Paul Chambers on bass, and myself on trumpet. And faster than I could have imagined, the music that we were playing together was just unbelievable. It was so bad that it used to send chills through me at night, and it did the same thing to the audiences, too. Man, the shit we were playing in a short time was scary, so scary that I used to pinch myself to see if I was really there." - Miles Davis _____ Four, by the Miles Davis Quintet JJM  How would you describe his sound? BR  Big, resonant, and it begins at a very high level. He comes to the microphone and delivers a big block of sound rather than doing the normal sort of bell-shape that the best soloists tend to do, where they start out small, then they get big, then they get small and elegant. Physical descriptions of his sound, especially from my own mouth, always sound meager, because the whole thing about his sound -- and the reason I keep using that word in the book -- has to do with the fact that if you follow his career, and if you look at what he was doing at the end of his life, you hear these tracks that seemed more and more similar from one to the next, so in the end the message of his work was not so much about composition or structure any more, it was about sound -- both the sound coming out of his individual instrument, and the sound coming out of his band. Coltrane's sound was at its best when his bandswere at their best. Obviously, the music of the classic quartet is the best example of a great small band sound, but I also think the band that recorded Stellar Regions -- with Rashied Ali, Jimmy Garrison, and his wife Alice -- also had the potential for a great small band sound, it just wasn't realized enough. The sound Coltrane got from his own instrument had so much width and depth, balance and power -- it was almost a physical thing that transmitted a lot of information about who he was. When we say we understand where he was coming from, or when we say we have an understanding of who Coltrane was as a man or as a musician, I think we get that from his sound rather than from the melodies he wrote. After the Rain, by Mark Goodman _____ My Favorite Things Impressions Stellar Regions John Coltrane Quartet, by Kevin Neireiter * "...one of the mysteries about Coltrane is why he so nonchalantly subjected his audiences to such a rigorous working-through process. Clearly he believed, stubbornly, that there was an intrinsic positive force in his work, something larger than music." - Ben Ratliff _____ One Down, One Up , from Live at the Half Note Vigil , a filmed performance from 1965 JJM  He thought he could incorporate his sound into two different bands. In 1966, you quote him saying, "There was a thing I wanted to do in music, see. I figured I could do two things: I could have a band that played like the way we used to play, and a band that was going in the direction that the one I have now [in 1966] is going in -- I could combine these two, with these two concepts going. And it could have been done." BR That is one of the cooler things he ever said. I saw him as a guy who didn't want to throw away any good ideas that came to him. He wanted to use as much as he could from what he heard around him as being provocative, and the good ideas would rise to the top, and the not-so-good ideas would go away. It was a very natural approach for him. Similarly, when he was unbeatable in 1964 and 1965 -- during the time was playing all those gigs at the Half Note in New York -- he would often invite people on stage to play with his group, which I found quite amazing. Here he was, perhaps the greatest saxophone player in the world, with the greatest band, so why would he want to mess with that or dilute it by having other people on the bandstand? Because he wanted to see what would happen. My reading of him is because he was such an intense, studious, pattern-oriented thinker, it was his inclination to study something until it couldn't be studied any more, and to practice something until the patterns were completely a part of his bloodstream. That kind of thinking came very natural to him, and if he knew that was how his mind worked, he may have felt that it could be an impediment to making great music. So he welcomed these kind of wild cards or trip wires to get in his way, which could help make him stumble upon something new he may not have got to on his own. JJM  Sort of a collective learning experience… BR  Yes, and this could be why he went to Ornette Coleman and told him he wanted to learn from him, and that he was doing something he didn't quite understand and wanted to absorb it. I think that was a remarkably selfless thing for him to have done. JJM  On which recording did his "sound" first appear? BR  I can first hear his sound, as I understand it, on the 1951 bootleg recordings of him playing with Dizzy Gillespie. I can hear something of his voice, of that great cry, and some of the devices that he put into his improvising from that point forward. It was already there. But the moment when I feel he had risen to his feet completely, when his sound is heard in full, is in the Live at the Village Vanguard recordings of 1961. He had led this band for about a year by this time, and he had his bearings about him, and the way "Chasin' the Trane" starts, bam!, and off they go at full projection -- there is no warming up at all -- the listener is immediately put into the middle of it. On a recording from Chicago during the spring of that same year, they play a blues called "John Paul Jones" -- which was also called "Trane's Blues" or "Vierd Blues" at different times -- that is one of the greatest things I have ever heard him do. The blues line is so fantastically strong and beautiful -- and his play is wild, it gets completely "out," but it is the blues, and he plays it beautifully. JJM  The way you described how "Chasin' the Trane" begins reminds me of a conversation between Coltrane and Wayne Shorter that you report on. You wrote, "…they talked about improvising and language, and how it might be ideal to start a sentence in the middle, then travel backward and forward, toward both the subject and the predicate, simultaneously." BR  These are guys who were into Zen riddles, and propositions that could be transferred from one discipline to another -- ideas that have nothing to do with music they could possibly take something from and apply it to their music. That was the way Coltrane thought. These days we would call it "outside the box" thinking. One of Coltrane's motivations for wanting to go to Africa at the end of his life was because he was interested in the rhythms of speech in West African languages, and he saw this as something he could apply to his phrasing on the saxophone. This is another example of how he would always look for something that would break up his own iron-clad pattern, and bring him into a new area. * [Coltrane's questing for his sound] "became his signature, what people expected from him." - Ben Ratliff _____ Chasin' The Trane Trane's Blues (a.k.a. John Paul Jones) Milestones * Straight, No Chaser JJM  You wrote in the book that "Straight, No Chaser" from the Miles Davis LP Milestones is one of his great moments. Why? BR  Because it is where he has the new-found freedom to just sort of babble -- but it is a controlled babbling that has an inherent language. It is a really shocking and energetic solo, but it coheres. The problem with a lot of Coltrane's playing until this point is that while there were always great ideas in it, they didn't cohere. He was even working that out in 1957, during the period with Thelonious Monk, when he was working out all these original licks, stringing them together and then just kind of shooting them out as if through an automatic rifle. I hear lots of study and preparation and energy and stamina, but I don't hear the well-rounded refinements that improvisers get to with their own coherent language. That started to get communicated in the "Straight, No Chaser" solo. JJM  Some of the era's great artists attended the shows with Monk at the Five Spot in 1957. Did this audience affect his growth as a player? BR  The fact that famous people were coming in? JJM  Yes, creative artists who probably weren't particularly interested in being entertained by a clichéd performance. Do you think their presence had anything to do with his growth? BR  That isn't something I have given much thought to -- it is hard to know how interested he may have been in who was there and who he wanted to impress, and I get the sense that his own standing within the jazz world and intellectual world was not important to him. He was very sanguine about that. There is no doubt that those performances were an important cultural event that built up a lot of steam over six months, and they helped get the word out about Coltrane, although jazz people had known about him for a few years by that point. 1957 was an incredibly important year for Coltrane. He quit drugs and alcohol, he experienced some sort of religious awakening, may have been getting over some sort of depression, and had this incredibly long-standing gig with a great group. One of the points of my book is that being able to work as often as he did that year is so critical to a musician like Coltrane. He was able to play night after night in the same place for months on end, which is what made the band take off and become really good. We can talk all we want about individual figures, and how they are geniuses and whatever, but, finally, the labor history of jazz is something that should never be underestimated. Another reason that playing in that group was so important to Coltrane was that Monk would get up from the piano for long stretches of time, which left just Coltrane, bass and drums -- which meant he needed content, he had to have things to play. He was in a really intense studying and learning mode that year, and he could play all the licks he was practicing in this setting at the Five Spot. They sounded new and exciting to the audiences. He wasn't yet at the time when he played these songs and came out sounding like Superman, but it was a necessary experience for him to become great. * "…clearly it wasn't only Monk's individual soloistic style itself that reshaped Coltrane that summer [1957]. It was Monk's absences: the times he got up from the piano and walked away from it, or moved in a circle to hear the music from all angles, leaving Coltrane alone for fifteen or twenty minutes to improvise, with only the bassist Wilbur Ware to provide some kind of harmonic companionship." - Ben Ratliff _____ Trinkle Tinkle In Walked Bud I Mean You "Breathe," by Lindsay Erdman * "Still, consensually, critics showed their frustration. They didn't understand what the group was trying to do. The rhythm section was more or less given a pass, but it was the saxophone soloing that challenged credulity, its length and perhaps its unwillingness to tell a traditional story." - Ben Ratliff, on critical reaction to 1961's Live at the Village Vanguard recording _____ Traneing In Impressions, a filmed performance featuring Eric Dolphy with Coltrane's quartet JJM  When did the negative reaction to his work begin? BR  You are definitely seeing it by 1958, during the "Straight, No Chaser" time we talked about, which is when his playing got really wild, and people were getting the sense that he was potentially a long-winded musician. He got more criticism in 1960, when he went on tour with Miles Davis for the last time. But anybody can hear his recording from Stockholm or Paris and think, "Oh my God. There is something strange about this guy." You don't have to be a person in tune with the subtleties of jazz to hear this. At times it sounded like he was having a baby! There was something supercharged about every time he steps up to solo. In 1960, when he played like this, it became evident that the music of the 1950's was over, but maybe the rest of band doesn't quite know it yet. It is as if somebody gave him permission to play in a completely different way from the rest of the band. Those are strange and amazing records, but many critics and listeners would determine that they couldn't condone the music because it was just too self-indulgent. JJM  It also must have been difficult for his audiences when he began playing with Eric Dolphy… BR  It was, and what is so interesting about that is Dolphy joined him right after Coltrane's big hit, "My Favorite Things." This was a song that was being played on the radio, and his next move was to bring Dolphy into the band. That is one of the things I love about Coltrane -- he was a reflective, interior man who clearly was not obsessed with career advancement. "Coltrane may be searching for new avenues of expression, but if it is going to take the form of yawps, squawks, and countless repetitive runs, then it should be confined to the woodshed." - Critic Ira Gitler, 1961 * "Coltrane and Dolphy seem bent on pursuing an anarchistic course in their music that can but be termed anti-jazz." - John Tynan, in a 1961 edition of Down Beat _____ Freddie Freeloader Blue In Green All Blues So What , a video of Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Paul Chambers, Philly Joe Jones, and Wynton Kelly JJM  Concerning his turning inward during the 1960's, you wrote, "As the ambient noise of the sixties culture grew louder around him, the more he desired to block it out and hear only himself; the more he went inward." In which of his recordings did the sound of the 1960's emerge? BR You could look at Africa Brass as the beginning of that. It is really interesting how the two major recording events of 1959 -- Kind of Blue and Giant Steps -- were so close to each other in terms of recording dates yet were so different musically. While Giant Steps changes chords every other beat and is a challenging harmonic exercise, Kind of Blue is about playing modes for long stretches of time before changing. There was this sense that you can play for a long time within one scale. I love the fact that they happen so close to one another because it is absolute proof that there is no logic concerning how jazz evolved. It's not like jazz went one way until it couldn't go any further, and then it turned in another direction. No, two opposite things could be happening at the same time. What the modal thing may have suggested for Coltrane wasn't that he could be self-indulgent inside this kind of droning music, but that there was whole new song for jazz -- a kind of folk music -- that people reacted positively to because it sounded like ancient music, and in some weird way it sounded recognizable. _____ Giant Steps Cousin Mary Spiral Naima, a filmed performance Photo by Lee Tanner "If anyone wants to begin to understand how Coltrane could inspire so much awe so quickly, the reason is probably inside "Alabama." The incantational tumult he could raise in a long improvisation, the steel-trap knowledge of harmony, the writing -- that's all very impressive. But "Alabama" is also an accurate psychological portrait of a time, a complicated mood that nobody else could render so well." - Ben Ratliff _____ Alabama Alabama, a filmed performance JJM  Did he feel that going in the Giant Steps direction was right for him? BR  In the liner notes, he talks about being worried that his music was sounding too much like an academic exercise, and was trying to make it sound prettier. So, yes, he was concerned that he was going in the right direction. Clearly, he felt that his sound was narrowing down, which is the moment he likely thought the solution was to expand as much as he possibly could. He began looking at black spiritual books, and started listening to recordings of African and Indian music, trying to figure out how to bring all these things into his music. That was a very 1960's notion -- bringing in more, the more the merrier, let's not worry about closing the door, no limits, let's think about making it inclusive. Obviously, that is what he started to do on his bandstand… JJM  There is definitely some rebellion in that…A song of Coltrane's that epitomizes the sound of the 1960's is "Alabama, which you wrote was "…an accurate psychological portrait of a time, a complicated mood that nobody else could render so well." BR  "Alabama" is amazing because it is so succinct, and it contains so much of what he was good at -- not just the cathartic stuff, but the really detailed stuff and the really thoughtful, sad, and almost romantic stuff. It demonstrates his way of playing quietly and persuasively. I don't think that he just ever let it all go and said, "Ok, from now on I am going to play for hours at a time, and I don't care about self-editing." He kept returning to this idea of self-editing and craft. One of the reasons his record Stellar Regions succeeds so well is because all of the songs on the record are short. Things are never just black and white with him, which is another reason why I never got bored thinking about him or listening to him, because he never became a zealot only in one direction -- he never closed the door on any possibilities. JJM  Regarding Coltrane's influence, the saxophonist Art Pepper wrote, "More and more I found myself sounding like Coltrane. Never copied any of his licks consciously, but from my ear and my feeling and my sense of music…When I got out of the joint the last time, in '66, I had no horns. I could only afford one horn, and I got a tenor because, I told myself, to make a living I had to play rock. But what I really wanted to do was play like Coltrane." When did this desire among musicians to play like Coltrane begin? BR  Wayne Shorter had this desire in something like 1957, but I think for a lot of people the turnaround moment was either the recording of "My Favorite Things" or the album Live at Birdland. That is when many of the musicians young enough to be awed by him at the time -- people like David Liebman and Sonny Fortune -- went to see him a lot and were waking up to the idea that they wanted to play like him. It was at this time when, in terms of the records and information about him becoming available, things reached their critical mass. JJM  In 1970, Gene Ammons told Down Beat, "Before John died, he had gone into a very advanced thing, and had quite a few cats like Pharoah [Sanders] and Archie [Shepp] in the middle of this thing, and leaving the scene as suddenly as he did -- he sort of left their minds in a turmoil, to the effect that they weren't quite sure in what direction they wanted to go." Is contemporary jazz still feeling the effects of that? BR  I feel much more positive about where jazz is now because many of the old divisions are healing themselves. Part of that is just due to the passing of time, and part of that is due to a new generation of teachers who have come along and assessed the situation. The timing of Coltrane's death really did a number on jazz because it made the music he was making toward the end be understood as a kind of ending place -- like you can't get any freer than this, and you can't get any more liberated than this. I think some musicians looked at that and said it was the ultimate place for them to be, and that it was where they wanted to go, but it was not just music but a new way of thinking and a new way of living. And then perhaps some other musicians looked at this place and saw it as a trap, as the darkness. His sudden disappearance did really weird things for free jazz, especially, because the great practical and philosophical example is gone, so now what's to be done? * "I thought I was going to die from the emotion. I'd never experienced anything like that in my life. I thought I was just going to explode right in the place. The energy level kept building up, and I thought, God almighty, I can't take it." - Saxophonist Joe McPhee, after seeing him at the Village Gate in 1965 _____ The Promise Afro Blue, a filmed performance John Coltrane, by Cliff Warner * "With Coltrane, sound ruled over everything. It eventually superseded composition: his later records present one track after another of increasing similarity, n which the search for sound superseded solos and structure. His authoritative sound, especially as he could handle it in a ballad, was the reason older musicians respected him so - his high-register sound, for example, in "Say It Over and Over Again." But it was also the reason younger and less formally adept musicians were drawn to him, and why they could even find themselves a place on his bandstand." - Ben Ratliff _____ A Love Supreme, a filmed performance JJM  The saxophonist Von Freeman said that Coltrane "…left a lot of wounded soldiers along the way. See, cats are still trying to recover from the Trane explosion. And, of course, they shouldn't look at it that way…Trane assimilated everything; they've got to assimilate everything up to Trane and move on."  What is he suggesting here? BR  I believe what he is saying is that Coltrane is part of you, it is filled in now, so don't worry about that so much. Learn about what produced a Coltrane so you can naturally find a way to get beyond him. Not every artist is patient enough and curious enough to look outside of their own art form to figure out what to do next, but Coltrane was. He was interested in life -- in science, math, religion, architecture, dance, history, and he was sort of self-taught in these areas, but he was sure that he could find ways of drawing on those interests and re-routing them back into his music. That kind of confidence is what we need to hear more of in jazz. JJM  Sure, because there is such a danger to any contemporary musician who falls too deeply into what Coltrane's sound was. After all, a major component in jazz is its individuality… BR  Yes, there is a danger in glorifying Coltrane's sound, of course. It is one of the best rules for any artist, including writers. You have to move on from what you loved when you were most impressionable. It isn't necessary to throw that stuff away, but you have to keep moving, you have to keep looking for something new. That's the point. JJM  Who among contemporary musicians comes closest to the influence Coltrane had on musicians? BR  It is very hard to say, and I really don't think I can come up with anyone, because we are not talking just about a "music as music" language, nor is it just an improvisational or sound language. It is a philosophical language. I am sorry to say that I don't think there is anyone out there doing this now, but that's ok -- there doesn't have to be somebody like that. We can do fine trying to answer other questions and trying to solve other problems. Coltrane was also a man who created great opportunities, and since he was well-liked and trusted, it might have been easier for him to have opportunities come his way. But it is important we don't forget that he was in the right place at the right time. The world was ready for a John Coltrane, and jazz was ready to receive him and elevate him. It is quite possible it isn't ready for someone like Coltrane right now. _______________________________________________________ Photo by Lee Tanner "Coltrane was always concerned with blazing ahead, one popular line of reasoning goes; he didn't place much value in what he left behind him." - Ben Ratliff _____ All Or Nothing At All My Favorite Things, a filmed performance Coltrane: The Story of a Sound by Ben Ratliff * About Ben Ratliff Ben Ratliff has been a jazz critic at The New York Times since 1996. He lives in Manhattan with his wife and their two sons. His New York Times Essential Library: Jazz was published in 2002.   * Critical Acclaim for Coltrane: The Story of a Sound "Ben Ratliff's Coltrane is criticism with a sense of the man. It sees the '60s anew without distorting them beyond recognition for someone who was there. It conceptualizes jazz as a still-living music. It makes you want to listen again and think some more." -- Robert Christgau "Ben Ratliff's Coltrane is an extraordinarily vivid account of the creative process -- both that of the artist and that of the people whose works respond to his. Ratliff is such a terrific writer that he can make musical points clear even to readers who know nothing about theory. This book will be passed from hand to hand." -- Luc Sante, author of Low Life and The Factory of Facts "A triumphant analysis, which captures in well-chosen words the charisma of Coltrane's sound, the excitement of his journey, and the unique quality of his influence, without ever surrendering to the usual jazz book gush. Ben Ratliff's measured intelligence and readable, elegant prose, his willingness to make necessary distinctions and unsentimental judgments, earn him a place among the best critics we have." -- Phillip Lopate "John Coltrane’s stylistic evolution in the 1950s and 60s was a signal cultural event—as much spiritual and political as technical--and one whose repercussions continue to haunt us. In taking a new look at how Coltrane changed and what those changes have meant to the musicians who followed him, Ben Ratliff brings a mercurial era lucidly to life, sometimes sharply questioning received wisdom, paying close attention to the needs and difficulties of working musicians, and underscoring the continued massive relevance of Coltrane’s music." -- Geoffrey O’Brien, author of Sonata for Jukebox * John Coltrane products at Amazon.com Ben Ratliff products at Amazon.com The A Love Supreme Interviews _______________________________ This interview took place on January 29, 2008 _______________________________ Other Jerry Jazz Musician interviews # Text from publisher.

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