Tuesday, May 08, 2007

My Favorite Coltrane

National notice at age 29, solo career by age 33 and dead by age 40 in 1967.
John Coltrane packed an extraordinary musical legacy into such a short life.
I have been listening to "The Very Best of John Coltrane" while driving around today.
The compilation pulls together songs 'Trane recorded as a leader at Atlantic Records from 1959 to 1961.
I adore his version of "My Favorite Things."
While the later "A Love Supreme" can sometimes seem to me to be other-wordly and beyond human -- like music sent down directly from heaven, "My Favorite Things" seems to me more like a great jazz player stretching the boundaries of a song with a soprano saxophone.
Here is how Coltrane himself described his approach to the song, as quoted by writer Ashley Kahn:
"I try to pick... a song that sounds good and song that might be familiar... and then I try to have parts in the song where we can play solo... in a modal perspective, more or less. So therefore, we end up playing a lot of vamps within a tune."
"My Favorite Things" is my favorite Coltrane, I think, because it seems within the real of human possibility. Not an ordinary human, mind you.

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