Coltrane

John Coltrane was a key figure in jazz, a pioneer in world music, and an intensely emotional force. This biography presents interviews with Coltrane, photos, genealogical documents, and musical analysis that offers a fresh view of Coltrane's genius. It explores the events of Coltrane's life and offers an insightful look into his musical practices.

No other jazz musician has proved so inspirational and so fascinating as Coltrane. Ben Ratliff, jazz critic for the New York Times, has written the first book to do justice to this great and controversial music pioneer. As well as an elegant narrative of Coltrane's life Ratliff does something incredibly valuable - he writes about the saxophonist's unique sound.

The Giants of Jazz series is designed to provide a method for studying, analyzing, imitating and assimilating the idiosyncratic and general facets of the styles of various jazz giants. The Coltrane book provides many transcriptions, plus discography, biographical data, style traits, genealogy, and bibliography.

Alice Coltrane was a composer, improviser, guru, and widow of John Coltrane. Over the course of her musical life, she synthesized a wide range of musical genres including gospel, rhythm-and-blues, bebop, free jazz, Indian devotional song, and Western art music. Her childhood experiences playing for African-American congregations in Detroit, the ecstatic and avant-garde improvisations she performed on the bandstand with her husband John Coltrane, and her religious pilgrimages to India reveal themselves on more than twenty albums of original music for the Impulse and Warner Brothers labels. In the late 1970s Alice Coltrane became a swami, directing an alternative spiritual community in Southern California. Exploring her transformation from Alice McLeod, Detroit church pianist and bebopper, to guru Swami Turiya Sangitananda, Monument Eternal illuminates her music and, in turn, reveals the exceptional fluidity of American religious practices in the second half of the twentieth century. Most of all, this book celebrates the hybrid music of an exceptional, boundary-crossing African-American artist. Ebook Edition Note: All images in center photo section have been redacted.

Edited by prominent musician and scholar Leonard Brown, John Coltrane and Black America's Quest for Freedom: Spirituality and the Music is a timely exploration of Coltrane's sound and its spiritual qualities that are rooted in Black American music-culture and aspirations for freedom. A wide-ranging collection of essays and interviews featuring many of the most eminent figures in Black American music and jazz studies and performance --Tommy Lee Lott, Anthony Brown, Herman Gray, Emmett G. Price III, Tammy Kernodle, Salim Washington, Eric Jackson, TJ Anderson ,Yusef Lateef, Billy Taylor, Olly Wilson, George Russell, and a never before published interview with Elvin Jones -- the book examines the full spectrum of Coltrane's legacy. Each work approaches this theme from a different angle, in both historical and contemporary contexts, focusing on how Coltrane became a quintessential example of the universal and enduring qualities of Black American culture.

The Giants of Jazz series is designed to provide a method for studying, analyzing, imitating and assimilating the idiosyncratic and general facets of the styles of various jazz giants. The Jazz Style of John Coltrane provides many transcriptions, plus discography, biographical data, style traits, genealogy, and bibliography.

Saxophonist John Coltrane was one of the most innovative, creative, and influential jazz artists of the 20th Century. Both stylistically and harmonically, he opened doors for others to follow. This book will focus on the first period of Coltrane's career, when he was with Miles Davis, and the jazz vocabulary he used. First, to help the student better understand Coltrane's bebop style of improvising, the authors discuss the use of guide tones, bebop scales, three to flat nine, targeting, and other techniques. Then the text presents numerous one-, two-, and three-measure jazz lines in Coltrane's style grouped by the harmony over which they can be used. the accompanying play-along CD provides the rhythm parts for each section, including a track for each section that modulates through the cycle of fourths, helping you master the phrases in all keys. By combining various lines, musicians will be able to mix and match numerous combinations of these lines to play over ii-V-I progressions, turnarounds, and other harmonic situations. Incorporate these essential jazz lines into your vocabulary and you will be able to create your own lines in the style of John Coltrane.Also available in Japanese from ATN, Inc.