Reactions to John Coltrane.

reggaenaut

Addicted Member
Today if John Coltrane were alive he would be 81 years. A local station, the Columbia University fm WKCR 89.9KHz has a 24 hour marathon of John's music. I have been listening and cannot help musing about my extreme reactions over the years to the music of this great Jazz man. Reactions:from ecstasy to dispair.
 
Thanks for the heads up I will tune in as soon as I finish listening to Coltrane's Sound on the Turntable now! It's the Autumnal Equinox an appropriate time to listen to Coltrane. There is never an in appropriate time as far as I am concerened. John's music provided a form of ecstasy or catharsis transcending the limitations, dreariness, and desperation of ordinary existence.
 
Our local jazz FM station was playing early Coltrane this morning - fabulous stuff.

Cheers, Snade
 
Coltrane was born in my home town here. There is a Historical marker on Hwy. 74 just one block from where he was born. The building still stands.
 
When I am in the mood to listen to jazz, I am always ready to hear the music of John Coltrane, especially anything from around 1956-1965.
 
The station is playing "In a sentimental mood" Duke Ellington on piano. The tone of the sax is pristine:pure joy.
 
Coltrane's hometown

Coltrane was born in my home town here. There is a Historical marker on Hwy. 74 just one block from where he was born. The building still stands.

I visited your home town, and this site, a while back (late '90s). You're in Hamlet, a sleepy town that must have had a river run through it or something, just to get it to sprout into being. Please dont take offense - it's the kind of town I wish I grew up in. Towns like your's are throughout the Midwest, too: old 1 and 2 story buildings comprised of former storefronts that most likely had some great stories to tell... they're the America you see in panned still-shots of Ken Burns' documentaries.

Coltrane's birthplace is a building that's now an NAACP space, right? I recall an historical marker being there. If I ever win the lotto, they've got my dough to turn the whole block into a Coltrane museum.

Later in his life, his mom moved to nearby High Point. He brought Miles Davis and others to her house when they needed to take a break from touring. I visited this town twice a year for a home furnishings trade show in the 1990's. The only thing that kept me sane during those two-week periods of sales bullshit was the fact that Coltrane used to live there.

I was reminded of that fact every morning by the installation of another historical marker for Coltrane - this one's in an insulting location (IMHO) a block or so from Main Street. It's in the median of a little connector road just before a traffic light. Every time I looked at it, I made a pledge (unfullfilled to this day) to plant flowers around the posting, just to get people to look at it. I took solice thinking that maybe this exact location was where his mom's house was located...

When that marker was put in place, I heard an NPR broadcast (about 10 years ago) They spoke of Coltrane being from this little town that's now the furniture capital of the world. But the point of the story was that nobody they interviewed in High Point had ever heard of him.

They say the fruit doesn't fall far from the tree - but Coltrane rolled so far the tree forgot who he was.

I'm glad an AK'er like you, JIMFET, is there to represent - now get a regular listening session going on in that NAACP building he was born in and plant the seeds for this town to become the Coltrane mecca of the world. I envision an annual Sturgis-sized musical event, but with a race relation twist that's endorsed by the NAACP and attended by people from all over the world. Right there in the middle of North Carolina they will come... hippies, jazz freaks, big-city intellects and all sorts of musicians coming together in celebration of John Coltrane.

Why not?
 
Now that I think of it, Hamlet is at the southern end of North Carolina, not "right there in the middle."

Regardless, it's a nice to be.
 
"Wise One" is probably my favorite. The delicate suspended piano chords at the beginning are pure magic. Of course, I don't want to slight Coltrane's other works; A Love Supreme, Giant Steps, and Africa Brass are all phenomenal albums, and that's just to name a few. I feel he introduced a sort of spiritual element to jazz that had previously been absent.
 
I'm a fan of everything Coltrane, but my favorite things are recorded on Miles Davis' "Live in Stockholm" (1960) - the last stint with Miles before starting his own quartet.
 
It doesent surprise me a bit that few people in High Point, NC knew who John Coltrane was. I live about 45 min North in VA, right on the border. The music scene around here SUCKS. I am a musician and have always complained that I would have to travel to find an audience that would listen to an original Blues act. From a historical standpoint many people seem to be oblivious to anything that happened AT ALL more than 10 years ago.

What really sucks is I live in an area that is JAM packed with so much great musical history. My God the Carter family came from around here, and VA at least is the Bluegrass capitol of the WORLD!! I should be in musical BLISS! No so unfortunatly. The only culture I seem to find is around the College towns.

I could attend more of the Bluegrass events that go on if I wanted to but Bluegrass isnt my BIG thing. I like a lot of it but my thing is more Blues, Rock, Jazz. At least the Bluegrass events would expose me to SOME sort of music culture.

I want to add some Coltrane to my collection. Again you don't hear much around here but what I have heard at a record store was SUPERB. Really "far out" for Jazz. I wish I could name what I heard. I asked the attendant but it was several years ago so I have forgotten the title.
 
Now that I think of it, Hamlet is at the southern end of North Carolina, not "right there in the middle."

Regardless, it's a nice to be.

Kuma..You are correct on everything in both of your post. Good memory.
 
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