In October of 1960, he recorded the My Favorite Things album. The title tune is a Richard Roger Waltz written originally for a musical - not one obvious for Modal treatment. The chord movement in the first sections is minimal Emi at first and a following section of GMaj - it is these sections which Coltrane utilizes for his Modal improvisation. This, coupled with his use of the soprano sax, make the treatment unique. Also, while the 8 Bar sections become obvious, it is his horizontal approach and Tyner’s tension building piano accompaniment which avoid the inherent monotony of scale based [vs chordal] improvisation. After this album, Coltrane recorded with Don Cherry - then a member of Ornette Coleman’s Quartet and the stage was set for John Coltrane’s move toward Free Jazz in next year.
Coltrane’s recording of ‘The Jazz Avant garde’ with Don Cherry can be used as the pivot point in his move toward Free Jazz. While it does hint at Coltrane’s later directions, the album is more symbolic than substantive. On this recording, Coltrane sounds hesitant - almost erratic - and Don Cherry much more conventional than was typical of his work with The Ornette Coleman Quartet. But, soon after, Coltrane collaborated with Eric Dolphy and this cleared his path toward Free Jazz.
Eric Dolphy started with Coltrane as the second woodwind soloist [Alto Sax, Flute, amp; Bass Clarinet].
While their backgrounds were very different, the common search for musical expansion and new means of expression provided a unity of musical direction.
Born in 1926 in Los Angeles, Dolphy started his career with Gerald Wilson and Buddy Colette - attaining his initial recognition with Chico Hamilton in 1958. He came into contact with the avant garde while working in the groups of Charles Mingus and George Russell. At the beginning of the 60’s, he like Coltrane, inhabited the border between the growing offshoots of Hard Bop and the radical approach of Free Jazz. But, unlike Coltrane - who steadily gained independence from traditional practice - vacillated between the Traditional and Free styles. He renounced the traditional harmonic and rhythmic practices on Ornette Coleman’s 1960 ‘Free Jazz’ album - of which he was coleader - but also was associated with Oliver Nelson and Booker Little in the Hard Bop vein. He worked with such standard materials as ‘Don’t Blame Me’ or ‘You Don’t Know What Love Is’ just before his death in 1964.
Dolphy’s collaboration with Coltrane was short - a few months - but still a dynamic influence on Coltrane. After this, Coltrane began to color individual tones reminiscent of Dolphy’s bass clarinet sound as well as the use of larger intervals characteristic of Dolphy’s solo lines. Coltrane had experimented before with tone color but now it sounded natural and fully integrated into the improvised line - the interval work was used much more sparingly than Dolphy and usually in contrast to a contoured eighth note line.
The partnership was not without controversy - the reaction was, in reality, not particular to these two but aimed at the ‘new directions’ - they just happened to be visible and the music did spark the 1961 Downbeat article by John Tynan: “At Hollywood’s Renaissance Club recently, I listened to a horrifying demonstration of what appears to be a growing anti-jazz trend exemplified by these foremost proponents of what is termed avant garde music….I heard a good rhythm section….go to waste behind the nihilistic exercises of the two horns….Coltrane and Dolphy seem intent on deliberately destroying [swing]…They seem bent on pursuing an anarchistic course in their music that can but be termed anti-jazz”.
One of the main charges hurled at the group was the excessive length of their pieces. While extended Eric Dolphy compositions and performances had been presented before, the nature of the Modal improvisation left listeners of the time without the familiar landmarks to follow. The abandonment of functional harmony and formal patterns - and with this a readily comprehensible time division - made for added difficulty in following the music. This new approach demanded new listening - and not everyone was willing to follow this particular path.
Culminating five years of musical experimentation, exploration, assimilation, and perceptions, Coltrane recorded ‘A Love Supreme’ in December of 1964. Ekkhard Jost states that with this album, Coltrane’s role as a pioneer of technical innovation was transformed into one of ‘a new self-realization’. This may be true, but the culture as a whole was reflective of this new self-realization and Coltrane, in the liner notes - reminiscing about his time addicted to narcotics and alcohol [mid 1957] - does state the following: “I experienced, by the grace of God, a spiritual awakening which was to lead me to a richer, fuller, more productive life…in gratitude, I humbly asked to be given the means and privilege to make others happy through music”.
Whatever the motivation for the concept - it was to mark a new direction for him.
The composition is a suite of four movements - each with a different structural framework
[‘Acknowledgement’ - relatively freely treated modality, ‘Resolution’ - cadential 8 bar periods, ‘Pursuance’ - 12 bar blues pattern with a modal flavor, ‘Palm’ - strict modality and intensive simplicity] reveals a new feature in Coltrane’s work - motivic ties between sections. These ‘ties’ occur in various permutations and connect the 4 movements. This technic would become a typical procedure in his later work - either sequencing the motif through the keys as it progresses through the different parts of a composition or superimposing it on a modal foundation in the bass and piano.
After this recording, Coltrane - ‘the man in the middle’ - became, with ‘Ascension’ made a half-year later, a central figure for the second generation of Free Jazz musicians. His musical journey wandered many paths and to my mind he was clearly the bridge between what came before and what is ‘now’ - just as Louis Armstrong and Charlie Parker had done previously. He died on July 17, 1967 - and I think of all he has done Archie Shepp summed his life the best: “He was a bridge, the most accomplished of the so-called postbebop musicians to make an extension into what is called the avant garde…He was one of the few older men to demonstrate a sense of responsibility to those coming behind him. He provided a positive image that was greatly needed and stood against the destructive forces that have claimed so many. Having suffered and seen so much himself, he tried to see that others coming along wouldn’t have to go through all that.”