John Coltrane, called Trane, was already a legend in his lifetime. He changed jazz like Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and Charlie Parker before him. He also seemed to share fate with the latter. Born on September 23, 1926, he was anything but a whiz kid. He grew up in the age of the great tenor saxophonists. Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young had shown the way, and the big labels of jazz like Prestige and Blue Note tried to get the instrumentalists from each other. Coltrane has released records on both labels, but on many of these recordings, which today run under his name, he was only led posthumously as a bandleader, because actually he was only involved in it as a sideman.
The man with the big sound who proclaimed the age of free jazz on his record "Freedom Suite" in 1958 was Sonny Rollins. He let himself be celebrated as Saxophone Colossus. With playful ease, Rollins fell to everything for which Trane had to fight hard. The worst snub for him, however, was that Rollins was four years younger and yet uncatchable. In 1956 Rollins' album "Tenor Madness" was the occasion for the great test of strength. From a historical point of view, the title track is as exciting as a crime thriller. After the short theme, Coltrane has the first solo. He wrestles like a maniac to show it to the younger one. But when he takes over, it only takes a few notes to bang Coltrane on the boards. Coltrane fights, Rollins dances.
Sheets of Sound
But Coltrane wasn't just fighting for the sound. Like countless other jazz musicians of his generation he also had to fight with heroin. In the long run, a hopeless fight. His genius first flashed at the side of Miles Davis, whose quintet he belonged to several times. In 1959 Miles Davis Sextet released the album "Kind Of Blue" with Trane. This was a completely new kind of jazz, in which improvisation was no longer done by hectic chord changes, but by hypnotic tone series, so-called modes, which allowed a much softer flow of improvisation while at the same time increasing the freedom of playing. Only three years after "Tenor Madness", "Kind Of Blue" featured an accomplished musician who was about to unhinge jazz. With his Sheets of Sound he had created a new playing style that gave the impression that he was pressing several notes simultaneously into his horn.
