Artist: John Coltrane
Album: First Giant Steps
Genre: Jazz
Bitrate: VBR Kbits/s
Playtime: 49:14 min
Tracks: 15
Rip Date: Nov-22-2006
Street Date: 000-00-0000
01 Embraceable You 02:47
02 Ornithology 02:34
03 Sweet Miss 02:53
04 It's Only A Paper Moon 01:50
05 Sweet Lorraine 02:42
06 Ko Ko 02:12
07 Now's The Time 02:42
08 Hot House 02:01
09 Thru For The Night 04:32
10 Castle Rock 04:26
11 Don't Blame Me 02:58
12 I've Got A Mind To Ramble Blues 02:25
13 Don't Cry Baby Blues 03:21
14 In A Mellow Tone 07:16
15 Burgundy Walk 04:35
Despite a relatively brief career (he first came to notice
as a sideman at age 29 in 1955, formally launched a solo
career at 33 in 1960, and was dead at 40 in 1967),
saxophonist John Coltrane was among the most important, and
most controversial, figures in jazz. It seems amazing that
his period of greatest activity was so short, not only
because he recorded prolifically, but also because, taking
advantage of his fame, the record companies that recorded
him as a sideman in the 1950s frequently reissued those
recordings under his name and there has been a wealth of
posthumously released material as well. Since Coltrane was
a protean player who changed his style radically over the
course of his career, this has made for much confusion in
his discography and in appreciations of his playing. There
remains a critical divide between the adherents of his
earlier, more conventional (if still highly imaginative)
work and his later, more experimental work. No one,
however, questions Coltrane's almost religious commitment
to jazz or doubts his significance in the history of the
music. Coltrane was the son of John R. Coltrane, a tailor
and amateur musician, and Alice (Blair) Coltrane. Two
months after his birth, his maternal grandfather, the
Reverend William Blair, was promoted to presiding elder in
the A.M.E. Zion Church and moved his family, including his
infant grandson, to High Point, NC, where Coltrane grew up.
Shortly after he graduated from grammar school in 1939, his
father, his grandparents, and his uncle died, leaving him
to be raised in a family consisting of his mother, his
aunt, and his cousin. His mother worked as a domestic to
support the family. The same year, he joined a community
band in which he played clarinet and E flat alto horn; he
took up the alto saxophone in his high school band. During
World War II, his mother, aunt, and cousin moved north to
New Jersey to seek work, leaving him with family friends;
in 1943, when he graduated from high school, he too headed
north, settling in Philadelphia. Eventually, the family was
reunited there. While taking jobs outside music, Coltrane
briefly attended the Ornstein School of Music and studied
at Granoff Studios. He also began playing in local clubs.
In 1945, he was drafted into the navy and stationed in
Hawaii. He never saw combat, but he continued to play music
and, in fact, made his first recording with a quartet of
other sailors on July 13, 1946. A performance of Tadd
Dameron's "Hot House," it was released in 1993 on the Rhino
Records anthology The Last Giant. Coltrane was discharged
in the summer of 1946 and returned to Philadelphia. That
fall, he began playing in the Joe Webb Band. In early 1947,
he switched to the King Kolax Band. During the year, he
switched from alto to tenor saxophone. One account claims
that this was as the result of encountering alto
saxophonist Charlie Parker and feeling the better-known
musician had exhausted the possibilities on the instrument;
another says that the switch occurred simply because
Coltrane next joined a band led by Eddie "Cleanhead"
Vinson, who was an alto player, forcing Coltrane to play
tenor. He moved on to Jimmy Heath's band in mid-1948,
staying with the band, which evolved into the Howard McGhee
All Stars until early 1949, when he returned to
Philadelphia. That fall, he joined a big band led by Dizzy
Gillespie, remaining until the spring of 1951, by which
time the band had been trimmed to a septet. On March 1,
1951, he took his first solo on record during a performance
of "We Love to Boogie" with Gillespie. At some point during
this period, Coltrane became a heroin addict, which made
him more difficult to employ. He played with various bands,
mostly around Philadelphia, during the early '50s, his next
important job coming in the spring of 1954, when Johnny
Hodges, temporarily out of the Duke Ellington band, hired
him. But he was fired because of his addiction in September
1954. He returned to Philadelphia, where he was playing,
when he was hired by Miles Davis a year later. His
association with Davis was the big break that finally
established him as an important jazz musician. Davis, a
former drug addict himself, had kicked his habit and gained
recognition at the Newport Jazz Festival in July 1955,
resulting in a contract with Columbia Records and the
opportunity to organize a permanent band, which, in
addition to him and Coltrane, consisted of pianist Red
Garland, bassist Paul Chambers, and drummer "Philly" Joe
Jones. This unit immediately began to record extensively,
not only because of the Columbia contract, but also because
Davis had signed with the major label before fulfilling a
deal with jazz independent Prestige Records that still had
five albums to run. The trumpeter's Columbia debut, 'Round
About Midnight, which he immediately commenced recording,
did not appear until March 1957. The first fruits of his
association with Coltrane came in April 1956 with the
release of The New Miles Davis Quintet (aka Miles),
recorded for Prestige on November 16, 1955. During 1956, in
addition to his recordings for Columbia, Davis held two
marathon sessions for Prestige to fulfill his obligation to
the label, which released the material over a period of
time under the titles Cookin' (1957), Relaxin' (1957),
Workin' (1958), and Steamin' (1961). Coltrane's association
with Davis inaugurated a period when he began to frequently
record as a sideman. Davis may have been trying to end his
association Prestige, but Coltrane began appearing on many
of the label's sessions. After he became better known in
the 1960s, Prestige and other labels began to repackage
this work under his name, as if he had been the leader, a
process that has continued to the present day. (Prestige
was acquired by Fantasy Records in 1972, and many of the
recordings in which Coltrane participated have been
reissued on Fantasy's Original Jazz Classics [OJC]
imprint.) Coltrane tried and failed to kick heroin in the
summer of 1956, and in October, Davis fired him, though the
trumpeter had relented and taken him back by the end of
November. Early in 1957, Coltrane formally signed with
Prestige as a solo artist, though he remained in the Davis
band and also continued to record as a sideman for other
labels. In April, Davis fired him again. This may have
given him the impetus finally to kick his drug habit, and
freed of the necessity of playing gigs with Davis, he began
to record even more frequently. On May 31, 1957, he finally
made his recording debut as a leader, putting together a
pickup band consisting of trumpeter Johnny Splawn, baritone
saxophonist Sahib Shihab, pianists Mal Waldron and Red
Garland (on different tracks), bassist Paul Chambers, and
drummer Al "Tootie" Heath. They cut an album Prestige
titled simply Coltrane upon release in September 1957. (It
has since been reissued under the title First Trane.) In
June 1957, Coltrane joined the Thelonious Monk Quartet,
consisting of Monk on piano, Wilbur Ware on bass, and
Shadow Wilson on drums. During this period, he developed a
technique of playing several notes at once, and his solos
began to go on longer. In August, he recorded material
belatedly released on the Prestige albums Lush Life (1960)
and The Last Trane (1965), as well as the material for John
Coltrane With the Red Garland Trio, released later in the
year. (It was later reissued under the title Traneing In.)
But Coltrane's second album to be recorded and released
contemporaneously under his name alone was cut in September
for Blue Note Records. This was Blue Train, featuring
trumpeter Lee Morgan, trombonist Curtis Fuller, pianist
Kenny Drew, and the Miles Davis rhythm section of Chambers
and "Philly" Joe Jones; it was released in December 1957.
That month, Coltrane rejoined Davis, playing in what was
now a sextet that also featured Cannonball Adderley. In
January 1958, he led a recording session for Prestige that
produced tracks later released on Lush Life, The Last
Trane, and The Believer (1964). In February and March, he
recorded Davis' album Milestones..., released later in
1958. In between the sessions, he cut his third album to be
released under his name alone, Soultrane, issued in
September by Prestige. Also in March 1958, he cut tracks as
a leader that would be released later on the Prestige
collection Settin' the Pace (1961). In May, he again
recorded for Prestige as a leader, though the results would
not be heard until the release of Black Pearls in 1964.
Coltrane appeared as part of the Miles Davis group at the
Newport Jazz Festival in July 1958. The band's set was
recorded and released in 1964 on an LP also featuring a
performance by Thelonious Monk as Miles & Monk at Newport.
In 1988, Columbia reissued the material on an album called
Miles & Coltrane. The performance inspired a review in Down
Beat, the leading jazz magazine, that was an early
indication of the differing opinions on Coltrane that would
be expressed throughout the rest of his career and long
after his death. The review referred to his "angry tenor,"
which, it said, hampered the solidarity of the Davis band.
The review led directly to an article published in the
magazine on October 16, 1958, in which critic Ira Gitler
defended the saxophonist and coined the much-repeated
phrase "sheets of sound" to describe his playing.
Coltrane's next Prestige session as a leader occurred later
in July 1958 and resulted in tracks later released on the
albums Standard Coltrane (1962), Stardust (1963), and Bahia
(1965). All of these tracks were later compiled on a
reissue called The Stardust Session. He did a final session
for Prestige in December 1958, recording tracks later
released on The Believer, Stardust, and Bahia. This
completed his commitment to the label, and he signed to
Atlantic Records, doing his first recording for his new
employers on January 15, 1959, with a session on which he
was co-billed with vibes player Milt Jackson, though it did
not appear until 1961 with the LP Bags and Trane. In March
and April 1959, Coltrane participated with the Davis group
on the album Kind of Blue. Released on August 17, 1959,
this landmark album known for its "modal" playing
(improvisations based on scales or "modes," rather than
chords) became one of the best-selling and most-acclaimed
recordings in the history of jazz. In between the sessions
for the album, Coltrane began recording what would be his
Atlantic Records debut, Giant Steps, released in early
1960. The album, consisting entirely of Coltrane
compositions, in a sense marked his real debut as a leading
jazz performer, even though the 33-year-old musician had
released three previous solo albums and made numerous other
recordings. His next Atlantic album, Coltrane Jazz, was
mostly recorded in November and December 1959 and released
in February 1961. In April 1960, he finally left the Davis
band and formally launched his solo career, beginning an
engagement at the Jazz Gallery in New York, accompanied by
pianist Steve Kuhn (soon replaced by McCoy Tyner), bassist
Steve Davis, and drummer Pete La Roca (later replaced by
Billy Higgins and then Elvin Jones). During this period, he
increasingly played soprano saxophone as well as tenor. In
October 1960, Coltrane recorded a series of sessions for
Atlantic that would produce material for several albums,
including a final track used on Coltrane Jazz and tunes
used on My Favorite Things (March 1961), Coltrane Plays the
Blues (July 1962), and Coltrane's Sound (June 1964). His
soprano version of "My Favorite Things," from the Richard
Rodgers/Oscar Hammerstein II musical The Sound of Music,
would become a signature song for him. During the winter of
1960-1961, bassist Reggie Workman replaced Steve Davis in
his band and saxophone and flute player Eric Dolphy,
gradually became a member of the group. In the wake of the
commercial success of "My Favorite Things," Coltrane's star
rose, and he was signed away from Atlantic as the flagship
artist of the newly formed Impulse! Records label, an
imprint of ABC-Paramount, though in May he cut a final
album for Atlantic, Olé (February 1962). The following
month, he completed his Impulse! debut, Africa/Brass. By
this time, his playing was frequently in a style
alternately dubbed "avant-garde," "free," or "The New
Thing." Like Ornette Coleman, he played seemingly formless,
extended solos that some listeners found tremendously
impressive, and others decried as noise. In November 1961,
John Tynan, writing in Down Beat, referred to Coltrane's
playing as "anti-jazz." That month, however, Coltrane
recorded one of his most celebrated albums, Live at the
Village Vanguard, an LP paced by the 16-minute
improvisation "Chasin' the Trane." Between April and June
1962, Coltrane cut his next Impulse! studio album, another
release called simply Coltrane when it appeared later in
the year. Working with producer Bob Thiele, he began to do
extensive studio sessions, far more than Impulse! could
profitably release at the time, especially with Prestige
and Atlantic still putting out their own archival albums.
But the material would serve the label well after the
saxophonist's untimely death. Thiele acknowledged that
Coltrane's next three Impulse! albums to be released,
Ballads, Duke Ellington and John Coltrane, and John
Coltrane with Johnny Hartman (all 1963), were recorded at
his behest to quiet the critics of Coltrane's more extreme
playing. Impressions (1963), drawn from live and studio
recordings made in 1962 and 1963, was a more representative
effort, as was 1964's Live at Birdland, also a combination
of live and studio tracks, despite its title. But Crescent,
also released in 1964, seemed to find a middle ground
between traditional and free playing, and was welcomed by
critics. This trend was continued with 1965's A Love
Supreme, one of Coltrane's best-loved albums, which earned
him two Grammy nominations, for jazz composition and
performance, and became his biggest-selling record. Also
during the year, Impulse! released the standards collection
The John Coltrane Quartet Plays... and another album of
"free" playing, Ascension, as well as New Thing at Newport,
a live album consisting of one side by Coltrane and the
other by Archie Shepp. 1966 saw the release of the albums
Kulu Se Mama and Meditations, Coltrane's last recordings to
appear during his lifetime, though he had finished and
approved release for his next album, Expression, the Friday
before his death in July 1967. He died suddenly of liver
cancer, entering the hospital on a Sunday and expiring in
the early morning hours of the next day. He had left behind
a considerable body of unreleased work that came out in
subsequent years, including "Live" at the Village Vanguard
Again! (1967), Om (1967), Cosmic Music (1968), Selflessness
(1969), Transition (1969), Sun Ship (1971), Africa/Brass,
Vol. 2 (1974), Interstellar Space (1974), and First
Meditations (For Quartet) (1977), all on Impulse!
Compilations and releases of archival live recordings
brought him a series of Grammy nominations, including Best
Jazz Performance for the Atlantic album The Coltrane Legacy
in 1970; Best Jazz Performance, Group, and Best Jazz
Performance, Soloist, for "Giant Steps" from the Atlantic
album Alternate Takes in 1974; and Best Jazz Performance,
Group, and Best Jazz Performance, Soloist, for Afro Blue
Impressions in 1977. He won the 1981 Grammy for Best Jazz
Performance, Soloist, for Bye Bye Blackbird, an album of
recordings made live in Europe in 1962, and he was given
the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1992, 25 years
after his death. John Coltrane is sometimes described as
one of jazz's most influential musicians, but one is hard
put to find followers who actually play in his style.
Rather, he is influential by example, inspiring musicians
to experiment, take chances, and devote themselves to their
craft. The controversy about his work has never died down,
but partially as a result, his name lives on and his
recordings continue to remain available and to be reissued
frequently.
