Tag: jazz

John Coltrane and the Pulp Connection

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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 — except that, when we think about major artists, we so often imagine them having sprung into being fully-formed, if not in technique or approach, then at least in their essential selfhood. This is also often how we tell their stories: for example, in Coltrane: Story of a Sound (a book I’ve just …

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Traneing Up…

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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 Favorite Things.” Also a wonderful example of how a project-focused website should look. A link I discovered on the above site, which is also amazing, is to Improviz, a project by Jon Syndal to render visual representations of jazz improvisations. There are links to various PDFs …

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Jazz and SF

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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 why it resonates so powerfully with other forms of literature and narrative. I see a lot of the Gothic novel in the Western, and a lot of the Bible too. As for SF, let’s be honest: it didn’t really begin in America: the historian/theorists can fight …

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Clawing at the Limits of Cool: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and the Greatest Jazz Collaboration Ever by Salim Washington anmd Farah Jasmine Griffin

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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 the title of this book. Coltrane, after all, started out as a “junior” to Davis, if not in age then certainly in credentials and in the establishment of a personal, individual style. It’d be difficult to argue otherwise, but Griffin and Washington acknowledge this. However, they …

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