Ascension: John Coltrane and His Quest

Rating:
Summary: ALONE IN THE HOUSE WITH COLTRANE
Review: ALONE IN THE HOUSE WITH COLTRANE

-for eric nissenson

Lift the music into your own life.
Reggie Workman says, I used to follow John
like you would follow the sun. I'm listening.
The dogs are here. How can I be alone?
The clarinetist Don Byron says,
If a cat is taking risks at a moment,
years later you can still hear the edge of it.
I'm looking at all that gold paint Rex put
everywhere-in Coltrane's shirt
and in the saxophone itself.
Four song titles in gold criss-cross
their way through four bronze portraits
of Coltrane. The seeker is always alone.
Rex knew he was going back to Arkansas
when he gave me this painting.
There's as much music in the story
as there is in the music.
I had a couple of pieces and went with them.
They got mixed in with other stuff.
Some of it was right.
It helped take me down the road.

The tree pruner knocks on my door.
We talk about the Sweet Gum Tree
overlooking the Garden Room in the front yard.
Stems blow out of phase in old trees
like this. Blowing in and rebounding,
instances of the giant limbs pulling apart
under strong forces are rare. Support
at the extremities moves them where they
want to move. Do you know Coltrane? I ask.
Not personally, he says. I pull a notebook
from the back pocket of my jeans.
Coltrane follows the line to see what
it will bear, He adds drummers and saxophones,
as well as bells, to be limbs and branches,
to see what will happen in wind.

"You turn those trees into music," I say.

No way. I'm a climber. I've been looking at your tree.
It's been taken care of, I can go anywhere in that tree
I need to be in the wind. When I'm in a tree
I'm searching for those underlying principles-
the bones underneath it all. The pruner
knows the story without knowing
the music. I grew up in a house with no rules.
I needed limits. Vibrations and harmonies
cross-platforms to growing things.
I know the language of jazz and trees.
My wife doesn't. She thinks it's elevator music.
I walk him in the house,
show him Rex's painting of Love Supreme.
I'm astounded by the length of time
I rested here, in a lazy mix of myth and story.

Dear Eric, Your book arrives first,
but Simpkins' is the life I am looking for.
At first I think he's enough.
I love the way he opens up the story
through voice alone, introducing Coltrane and the players
like family at a holiday meal.
Impeccable manners and intimate talk.
It's the story the way my mother might tell it,
positive and straight to God.
I mark your Kesey story in the Preface
as one I'll share with friends.
I still think I have what I need in the story
Rex is an artist and teacher. Early 30's.
My friend. He painted murals
of black history in Yakima on community walls
for ten years before going back to Arkansas this summer.
The tree pruner shows up at my door.
Your book thrills me. ascension.
Baseball, Jesus Seminar, Textual criticism.
Three sources and the truth will set us free.
No compromises. The conversation
Coltrane would have chosen to have.
The one no one asked for.
Criticism as trance. The way Hugh Kenner
helped us with Pound. Or Taylor Branch with King.
An era as much as a man. For the poet
the poem is already an artifact.

About your courage.
Write what you know and then write above that.
Starting with Coltrane must have helped.
Work brings the duende against our will.
For moments like this: This is why Coltrane is a genius.
For showing me where to go: Dear Lord is the peaceful side
of the search for God, and Transition, the darker, terror-laden side.
For Ascension is a time capsule,
and meditation is cleaning the mirror of the self.
Like you say, credulity is in short supply.
Your careful writing on Jarrett and Marsalis
is as important as everything you say about Miles:
He never got over losing Coltrane.
I wrote my son what you said about Hendrix.
Nothing could have prepared us for Bush the younger.
Coltrane wouldn't recognize anger as anger.
It wouldn't make any sense to him.
Why are you angry? is a very funny question.
Mydentist creates a plastic form for my teeth.
He's interested in grinding teeth.
I put it in my mouth, a kind of bridle.
What will happen to my dreams, I ask.
I am interested in the left-handed way to God.
Never at home in my own church. Done with striving?
I've got friends who listen to Coltrane.
Barry Grimes gives me the Atlantic Years.
He looks at a word and sees the ocean.
Dan Peters finds Coltrane in the reservoir.

And what do you hear?
Opening with the bass and cymbals
I don't know if I can tell between
the soprano sax and the bass clarinet
when they get going. I want to hear
Dolphy's birds though. Coltrane's
way up high in India. Drum and bass
going at it. I can hear Dolphy now
in that bass clarinet. He's coming in low.
There's the piano a note at a time.
Tyner awfully quiet. I'm in India
but not any place I know.
I like knowing this comes after A Love Supreme.
The piano is starting to rumble now,
standing up to those drums. There's
a knock at the door. My dog barks.
I open my eyes. I haven't been sleeping.
I hear music stop and start.
Up against the wall. I've carried
these words my adult life.
I know policemen who could listen to this.

This morning alongside Meditations,
I turn to the last poems of Dr. Williams.
The smell of the heat is boxwood
when rousing us. These are desert poems
from 1954. Don't let me be a pretender, Lord,
not a pretender. This is my prayer.
I read before and after Asphodel, grateful.
And the last one, The Rewaking,
from 1962, Sooner or later,
we must come to the end
of striving. I turn back,
all works of the imagination,
interchangeable, and forward,
new ice on a country pool,
It doesn't matter what I choose,
In Deep Religious Faith,
invention is the heart of it.

The young fundamentalist tree climber
is more interesting to me than all of the priests of this world.

Jim Bodeen
Oct 1-13, 2004




Rating:
Summary: I recommend it
Review: An excellent introduction for newcomers to Coltrane. Highly readable and sustains the reader's interest. No, it isn't perfect - I was amazed the author could discuss Weather Report and make no mention whatsoever of Jaco Pastorius, for one example. But if you want to know something of Coltrane, his music and his times I highly recommend this book.

Rating:
Summary: Trane's Effect
Review: I'm what I guess, a Trane enthusiast who gobbles up anything to read with the name Coltrane in it, always less critical with what I've read, perhaps only allowing for disappointment. I have always found Nisenson's books enjoyable to read, as you will find this one. His information, passion and experience connecting stories only furthered my understanding of John Coltrane's ability to affect so many, in so many ways explanable and unexplanable! Buy It! You won't be disappointed!

Rating:
Summary: Trane's Effect
Review: I'm what I guess, a Trane enthusiast who gobbles up anything to read with the name Coltrane in it, always less critical with what I've read, perhaps only allowing for disappointment. I have always found Nisenson's books enjoyable to read, as you will find this one. His information, passion and experience connecting stories only furthered my understanding of John Coltrane's ability to affect so many, in so many ways explanable and unexplanable! Buy It! You won't be disappointed!

Rating:
Summary: I recommend it
Review: So the author tries to link things like Coltrane's music and unified field theory? So what? I didn't care. I found this book to be very informative and fun to read. I'm not sure what some of the complainers were expecting(?) If you are new to Coltrane this is a decent book to give you an idea of his impact on the times and on Jazz music. If you want something with more meat and discussions of Trane's music and music theory, try Lewis Porter's recent book on him.

Rating:
Summary: Thoughtful approach
Review: Too often the words written about the career of John Coltrane lapse into idolatry or overanalysis. Biographies by J.C. Thomas and Cuthbert Simpkins lack a sense of critical judgment, while Bill Cole's work is fine for the musician but difficult for the lay listener. Frank Kofsky's "Black Nationalism and the Revolution in Music," meanwhile, attempted to put Coltrane's music in a political framework he never intended.

Eric Nisenson's "Ascension," refreshingly, focuses on Coltrane's music, attempting to understand not only where it came from but also the extent of its influence on jazz since the saxophonist's death in 1967. Nisenson is clearly a fan of the music, but to his credit, his admiration does not cloud his critical judgment.

One important accomplishment of Nisenson's book is to establish a context for Coltrane's creativity and his late-life forays into free jazz. He revisits Coltrane's early life in North Carolina, where he grew up in relatively comfortable surroundings, exposed to the music of the church and of his father, a tailor and amateur musician. Nisenson also emphasizes Coltrane's early apprenticeships with Dizzy Gillespie, Earl Bostic, Cleanhead Vinson and his time in Philadelphia, a hothouse of jazz playing that produced many an important contemporary, including Lee Morgan, Benny Golson and Jimmy Heath.

In addition, Nisenson thoroughly explores Coltrane's important time with Miles Davis, during which he mastered not only his chordal approach but also the modal approach to music and improvisation that Miles took on with "Kind of Blue." And he thoroughly documents Trane's later interest in the Eastern, African and other world music, which strongly influenced many of his albums as a leader.

In fact, Nisenson's attention to the searching quality of Coltrane's mind and his music generates the key theme of the book: that the saxophonist's greatness was derived not only from his musical mastery but from his unceasing search for new modes of expression. It was this search, Nisenson argues, that ultimately led Coltrane to embrace the avant-garde experiments undertaken by younger musicians such as Archie Shepp, Albert Ayler and Pharaoh Sanders in the last few years of his life.

Nisenson does not downplay the courage required of Coltrane to push the limits of his music long after his fame had been established, and he could have played it safe, but neither does he shy away from being critical of some of the musician's later cacophonous efforts.

The sole criticism I have of the book is that it seems to reach the conclusion that since Coltrane, Miles and Ornette Coleman, there has been little in the way of true creativity on the jazz scene. A response would require another review, but suffice it to say that I disagree; that the current jazz scene may be more fragmented, and undoubtedly many musicians are playing it safe, but also that there are many young and older jazz musicians making very creative music on small labels.

That aside, this is a very worthwhile read for long-time listeners of Coltrane or for those coming to his music for the first time.