Ben Ratliff — a jazz critic for The New York Times, among other things — is like Trane in that he comes straight out with what he’s up to, though it might not be right away that you realize it. The title Coltrane: The Story of a Sound, if you look at it carefully,...
Read more →I just ran across a really interesting quote on American culture, which was embedded in a discussion of jazz, but seems to apply quite well to American SF as well. Apparently, from 1961 to 1965, a British literary critic named A. Alvarez ran a show on BBC radio where writers talked about the intellectual...
Read more →Not long ago, I mentioned John Coltrane’s youthful interest in SF and pulp zines. But he was apparently also quite interested in science itself, something I’d suspected but don’t remember seeing confirmed as clearly as in this anecdote from David Amram, a French horn-playing jazz man who knew Trane in New York in the...
Read more →Arguably one of the most significant musicians in American history (and unarguably one of the most significant saxophonists and jazz musicians ever), John Coltrane grew up in High Point, North Carolina. It might be a weird thing to bring up — where he grew up, that is...
Read more →Some John Coltrane-related links, because yes, I’m working on that story that involves him again: John Coltrane, Avant Garde Jazz, and the Evolution of My Favorite Things is a thesis by Scott Anderson which he has generously (and stylishly) put online. It traces the development of the Coltrane Quartet/Quintet’s handling of the tune “My...
Read more →I’ve heard people, time and again, compare jazz to SF in terms of them both being very “American” artforms, and, along with the cowboy movie, among America’s original contributions to the common human repository of art and culture. The cowboy movie, I’m afraid, has roots that go way deeper than American history, which is...
Read more →Clawing at the Limits of Cool: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and the Greatest Jazz Collaboration Ever by Salim Washington anmd Farah Jasmine Griffin. The University of Michigan Press (Ann Arbor, 1998.) The collaboration between Miles Davis and John Coltrane is an interesting topic, and it’s especially interesting that it’s framed as such right from...
Read more →A student I know, who is into jazz, emailed this link to me. Listen up, Mary Lou Williams is hot on the piano, y’all…
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