John Coltrane 100: Transition and Sunship

By Brian Earley

 

When John Coltrane died in 1967 the jazz world felt a startling void. With the release of Expression, Coltrane’s final studio album, it must have felt like a narrative had been cut short of its intended ending. After all, unless Trane had recorded material that had never been released, that was it: no more new music from John Coltrane. 

 

We know the story 100 years after Trane’s birth, however. And did he ever record material that had yet to be released! Alice Coltrane worked relentlessly to preserve John’s towering musical legacy, and we know from Andy Beta’s incisive book on her life that after a long day of raising four children on her own, she would put the kids to bed, sit in meditation, and practice the music that meant so much to her and her late husband. What she also did was listen to unreleased recordings by John and prepare them for release.

Among the recordings made public in the immediate years following John’s passing were two absolutely stunning (I can’t emphasize this word enough–stunning!) recordings by the famed Classic Quartet of Trane, McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison, and Elvin Jones: Transitionin 1970 and Sun Ship in 1971.

Transition

 

 

 

McCoy Tyner related to writer David Wild that sometimes John would give them two notes, or maybe just a scale, as the basis of a composition before they recorded. The title track to the album Transition,recorded in the spring of 1965,certainly could be such a piece. The work features a tightly focused quartet that absolutely opens up the gates and begins to tear down the fences. “Transition” is one the group’s wildest, most ferociously open pieces. It’s as though the catalytic power of Ascension or Om has been concentrated into a narrow and controlled conduit. Both the kinetic energy coursing through that conduit and the narrowness of the channel itself create the conditions for tension and combustion.

 

The “Prayer and Meditation Suite,” on the other hand, is an absolute masterwork. I am of the persuasion that comparing works of Trane to other periods in his life can dangerously undervalue some of his accomplishments. Any suite, be it Meditations or “Prayer and Meditation” would beg comparison with A Love Supreme. Forget all that. “Prayer and Meditation” would stand as one the great works in the jazz canon if it were the only piece Coltrane and the Quartet created. Movement II: “Peace and After” is the sound of a quest for peace complete with all the pain inherent in that search. Movement IV: “Affirmation” picks up where “Transition” left off and rings with crisis, explosiveness, and spiritual urgency.

 

Violence was always slinking nearby during Coltrane’s life, as it is for us today, and his music embraces this reality, but I would never describe his music as “violent.” Just note the third remaining song on   Transition   : “Dear Lord.” It is hard for me to imagine there ever existed a world without this vulnerable dedication to peace. Urgency and catharsis. Peace and vulnerability. The circumstances without and the transition within.

Sun Ship

 

In the nighttime hours of August 26, 1965, John Coltrane and his classic quartet walked into an East Manhattan studio. That year Martin Luther King and hundreds of peaceful protestors were arrested in Selma for wanting voter registration fairness. Malcolm X was shot to death. The first massive contingent of US ground troops landed in Vietnam, and the United States would slaughter tens of thousands of people before the year ended using machine guns and missiles fired from military jets. In Los Angeles, unemployment rates for black Americans grew to levels greater than during the Great Depression, housing discrimination was bolstered by law, and Watts exploded in rioting after a violent encounter between police and a black man.

 

John Coltrane placed his mouth around his horn and blew. The sound that emerged, a passage of lyrical melody deeply tender and filled with solace, titled “Dearly Beloved,” lifted into the air. John embodied serenity and the path to it. People were dying and being denied their humanity by a power structure that required their destruction, and John never pretended this was not the case. The path to peace traveled through pain, not around it. People are dying right now as you read this, but life’s powerful play goes on, in all of its tragedy and real joy. Afterall, John’s baby boy Ravi had just been born, and John had assembled this collection of musicians to record at night because that day he was busy celebrating his first son, John Jr. 's, first birthday.

 

Attaining does not come without suffering, but it also arrives with beauty.

Attaining. Sun Ship. Ascent. Amen.