[ENERGETIC JAZZ MUSIC]
[MAN 1] John Coltrane,
he could get in his spaceship
and it could take him anywhere he
wanted to go.
[MAN 2] Just to say the name
John Coltrane, it makes me shake
and tremble.
It's like talking about Beethoven, Shakespeare.
You're talking about an artistic genius and
a spiritual giant.
[MAN 3] Trane had a sound
that was heavenly, it was like, oh, my God.
[MAN 4] Coltrane's strength of
character is in his journey through music.
He sacrificed, and he had the
insight and the consciousness to touch
that thing that's inside of all of us.
[ENERGETIC JAZZ MUSIC]
[MUSIC - "TRANE'S BLUES"]
[MAN 5] Right now,
we're gonna take you down to a favorite
little spot of ours here in New York,
Café Bohemia.
Down there at the present time is
a young man whose name is Miles Davis.
I'm sure you know who he is.
He's a real cool stylist,
Miles Davis is.
[ASHLEY KAHN] 1957, John Coltrane is
part of one of the groundbreaking
groups of the day, the Miles Davis Quintet.
Miles Davis is looked upon as the harbinger
of everything new.
He is on the cutting edge,
everyone is looking at him for the promise
of what is to come.
Are you really asking me a question like that?
[LAUGHS]
How good was that band?
[LAUGHS]
Well, I think it was
probably one of the- the greatest,
uh, jazz bands that was ever formed.
[MAN] Everybody in the band
had their own voice, and John was really,
really special in that regard,
in that you could hear that he was
going somewhere,
and I think that Miles heard that he
was going somewhere.
[JAZZ MUSIC]
[MAN] Being with Miles Davis
was huge for Coltrane,
absolutely huge.
It catapulted him from being somebody
that only really serious record collectors
knew about to being somebody that
everybody knew.
[ASHLEY KAHN] John Coltrane's
experiences in Miles Davis' quintet
was sort of like going up to the
high diving board every night,
allowing himself to be scared,
allowing himself to not know exactly what
was gonna be ahead of him.
[SONNY ROLLINS] It's of a high, high
caliber to be able to play on a level
which is exceptional.
You've got to be touched by the
supreme whatever to be able to play
like Miles played and like Coltrane played.
[MUSIC - "SYEEDA'S FLUTE SONG"]
[ASHLEY KAHN] At this time,
Coltrane is a relative newlywed with the
entire Miles Davis band as best men.
Coltrane marries Naima Austin,
a woman he'd met in Philadelphia.
Naima has a child, Antonia.
This is a man who
gets his first experience at fatherhood
with me, you know, so, and I was a handful,
OK, I was a handful.
[MUSIC - "NIXON, DIXON AND YATES BLUES"]
I was remembering one
time John had this gig, it was a bad night,
snowy, he did the gig.
I needed some shoes.
He walked back from that gig home so he
wouldn't spend any of the money so
that I could get the shoes the next day.
You know, then you make that sacrifice,
you work all night and then you walk home
so that I can get a pair of shoes?
That's father.
[ASHLEY KAHN] John Coltrane is
working consistently to support the
wife and daughter he adores.
Life is good, but there's a problem.
[MUSIC - "SLOWTRANE"]
[JIMMY HEATH] We are playing in
nightclubs where the pimps and hustlers
are around, and you, uh, go for the hype,
and hey, man, you take some of this
and you feel up and good, you feel good,
and you go for it and then you're stuck.
[SONNY ROLLINS] Hard drugs is an addiction.
Charlie Parker, a great prophet
before Coltrane, Charlie Parker,
he was on drugs.
He wanted to get off. He didn't quite make it.
[ASHLEY KAHN] There was the misguided
notion that artistic ability was enhanced
with hard drugs.
Charlie Parker is the example.
[BENNY GOLSON] You're gonna turn from
somebody that can't play into Charlie Parker
by doing this?
It doesn't happen. It's a myth.
Geez, and some of my friends, I mean,
they died following that trail.
[LEWIS PORTER] Before Coltrane was
really aware of it,
he was using the needle and he was
really heavily addicted.
He had become a heroin addict,
and it's not generally known that he
was also drinking to excess.
The funny thing about him, though,
is everybody loved him.
I'd spoke to over 250
people when I did my book, and I couldn't
find anybody that said, oh,
when he was drunk, he was a terror.
They all said, oh, I didn't even know
when he was drunk because he was always
so sweet, you know?
He was that kind of person,
but he was unreliable.
Miles Davis famously wrote in his
autobiography, he would come to
the gig in clothes that looked liked he
had slept in them, so this was not making
a great impression on Miles Davis.
[ASHLEY KAHN] John Coltrane's fired.
He's never been higher in his career,
and so the drop down is long and hard,
and he realizes that he can go the
way of Charlie Parker and just continue
in a self-destructive path or really is he
gonna find a way to dedicating himself to
a clean, spiritual existence that brings
together everything that has inspired
him from the time he was a child?
And so here's John Coltrane at
a pivotal point of his life.
He's gotta make a decision.
[MUSIC - "COUSIN MARY"]
[WASHINGTON AS COLTRANE] I was born in a small town called
Hamlet in North Carolina in 1926.
My family moved from there when
I was a few months old to High Point.
I was an only child. I was brought up Methodist.
It wasn't too strict, but it was there.
In my early years when I was going to
church every Sunday, I was under the
influence of my grandfather.
He was the dominating cat in the family.
Both of my grandfathers were ministers.
I grew up in that and I guess just accepted it.
[ASHLEY KAHN] To understand
John Coltrane's beginnings is to
understand that he comes from the American South,
and the racial realities that he
grew up with, the idea that the
black church was the primary force that
held his family together and also
it was the source point for his first
musical experiences, and the fact that music
and the spirituality were there as one
at the very beginning, is to really get at the
DNA of what John Coltrane is all about.
[GRIM SAXOPHONE MUSIC]
[PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON] The Jim Crow South
was basically a reference to what
the South was like after the Civil War,
after Reconstruction, where segregation
had been re-imposed.
It was a place ready-made for the blues,
ready-made for jazz, ready-made for people
using their pain to catapult their art.
[DR. CORNEL WEST] The Jim Crow South
where Coltrane grew up proceeded
from slavery and under slavery,
it was against the law for us
to read or write.
How will our humanity be expressed,
creativity, courageously?
It was against the law for black people
to worship God without white supervision,
so what do you do?
You steal away at night near the creek,
hold hands in a ring shout and
lift your voice.
Lift your voice, vocals,
create a community, camaraderie and so forth.
[MUSIC - "SPIRITUAL"]
Black music was the
black response to being terrorized
and traumatized.
We're gonna share and spread some
soothing sweetness against the backdrop
of a dark catastrophe.
That's black music.
[SOMBER JAZZ MUSIC]
John grew up in an extended family.
He was living in the same house with his
mother and father, his grandfather and
grandmother and aunt and uncle and cousin,
and then within a period of two years,
his father died, his uncle died,
his grandfather died, and eventually,
so did his grandmother.
It was a devastating few years for
the family.
He's only 12 years old.
Can you imagine what that does for
any human being?
How you gonna respond?
[ASHLEY KAHN] And the one thing
that happens just at the point in
John Coltrane's life is that he started
to take up music.
He's gone from playing clarinet to
alto saxophone, and it's almost like
he hangs onto music like a life preserver.
He finds in music a way of dealing with
these harsh, harsh realities that are
suddenly thrust upon the Coltrane family.
[LEWIS PORTER] Their standard of living
was all of a sudden totally changed,
all the men are gone, and Coltrane's mother
just had to leave and go north to find work.
[MUSIC - "NITA"]
[WASHINGTON AS COLTRANE] When I finished high school,
I moved to be with my mother in Philadelphia.
This was 1943.
I worked for a year in a signal depot.
We had a war, you know.
Then I decided to study music again.
My mother made many sacrifices to
enable me to study music,
and I was able to take lessons
from a private saxophone instructor.
[BENNY GOLSON] I was 16.
I'd been playing saxophone for
two years when one of the kids came
home from school.
He said, "There's a new guy that moved
into the projects and he plays alto,
and he sounds just like Johnny Hodges."
I said, "Really?
"Do you think you can bring him by
the house tomorrow?"
He says, "I think so."
About four o'clock, the doorbell rang
and there was this country bumpkin
looking guy standing on the street,
and he stood in the doorway with this horn,
just stood there.
I didn't know what to say.
The only thing I could think to say was,
"Play something."
[LAUGHS]
And that's what he was waiting for.
Now, John and I became very close,
and he joined our little coterie there.
He was quiet.
I had to talk all the time.
He never talked until he put that
saxophone in his mouth.
[LAUGHS]
Yeah.
[MUSIC - "HOT HOUSE"]
[DR. CORNEL WEST] June 5, 1945,
first time Coltrane sees Charlie Parker,
blows his mind.
What kind of person is he?
This brotha got so much creativity in him,
willing to cut against the grain,
courageous to the core, and you can just
see Coltrane just, his mind was blown.
John and I were screaming, screaming.
It's a wonder we didn't fall over the balcony.
We had never heard anything like that
in our lives.
We never heard double time.
[IMITATES DOUBLE TIME MUSIC]
It's impossible.
[MUSIC - "HOT HOUSE"]
[WASHINGTON AS COLTRANE] The first time I heard
Charlie Parker, I knew that was the thing for me.
Charlie Parker did all the things I would
like to do, and more.
He really had a, a genius.
[MUSIC - "HOT HOUSE" 1946 NAVY BAND RECORDING]
[LEWIS PORTER] Coltrane was in the
Navy in 1945 to '46,
and stationed at Pearl Harbor.
[RAVI COLTRANE] The very first
John Coltrane recordings, quote-unquote,
come from 1946 when he's a part of
a Navy band and they do this recording
in Hawaii and they're playing Bird tunes
and, uh, you can hear
this very young John Coltrane, uh,
playing in, uh, and imitating the style
of Charlie Parker, his hero.
[MUSIC - "HOT HOUSE" 1946 NAVY BAND RECORDING]
When you hear that
recording from when he was in the Navy,
he doesn't play that well.
It's not possible to even believe
it's Coltrane.
[BEN RATLIFF] Some people blossom
very early.
For Coltrane, that was not the case.
I don't think you could listen to that
and say great things ahead.
And just that he could
go from that way of playing to what
he became, man, that's all you need to
know about him.
Heh heh.
[MUSIC - "HOT HOUSE" 1946 NAVY BAND RECORDING]
[CHEERING]
[MUSIC - "SAY WHEN"]
[WASHINGTON AS COLTRANE] After a year in the Navy,
I came back to Philadelphia
and then went on the road.
I accepted work with all kinds of groups,
even if I didn't agrees with their musical
tenets, because I could learn something
while I was making a living.
They were, in comparison to baseball,
like the minor leagues.
I then went with Dizzy Gillespie from
1949 to 1951.
I wanted to find my own way,
but I wasn't ready.
There was so much to learn yet.
[ASHLEY KAHN] For John Coltrane
to be playing with someone of Dizzy's
stature had to be like waking up to
all of your Christmases at one time.
[JIMMY HEATH] Dizzy was wonderful
in every way you can imagine.
His sense of humor was incredible-
that's how he got the name "Dizzy"-
but he was a genius.
[ASHLEY KAHN] So Dizz was hearing
something in Coltrane's playing
as being promising, as being filled with
possibilities and that this guy
needed nurturing.
[JIMMY HEATH] When we finally got
with Dizzy's band, John would be practicing
in the hotels, and invariably,
somebody would holler, "Hey!
"Tell that guy to stop all that noise
up there with that horn!"
And Trane would stop practicing and just
finger the horn for an hour,
just practicing fingering.
I never seen anybody do that.
[BENNY GOLSON] He always had that horn.
He'd play it all day long,
and when he worked, at work
during the intermission, he was in the men's room
playing his horn.
I mean this is Spartan practice,
you know?
Not everybody was into that.
I wasn't into that, but it was like
he was trying to best himself.
[MUSIC - "SAY WHEN"]
[LEWIS PORTER] Dizzy had a very
strict rule about drug use, and that
December of 1950, he caught Coltrane
and Jimmy Heath shooting up.
[JIMMY HEATH] We were getting high
down in the basement, and Dizzy came
down in intermission and he caught us,
you know, and he fired us,
but Trane begged his way back in
and I-I didn't.
[LEWIS PORTER] Coltrane begged.
"No, please, I won't do it again.
"Let me stay.
I really love playing with you," so forth
and so on, and it worked.
Dizzy let him stay,
but it only lasted a few more months.
By April of '51, Coltrane was out again.
[MUSIC - "BY THE NUMBERS"]
[WASHINGTON AS COLTRANE] I stayed in obscurity
for a long time because I was happy to play what was
expected of me without trying to add anything.
All this time, musically,
I was progressing very little in the
way I wanted.
I had not reached the point when
I could take active steps by myself.
In fact, I don't think I reached that
point until after I'd got with Miles.
It was Miles who made me want to be
a much better musician.
In 1955, I joined Miles on a regular
basis and worked with him until the
middle of 1957.
Why he picked me, I don't know.
Maybe he saw something in my playing
that he hoped would grow.
I had this desire, which I think we
all have, to be as original as I could be,
but there were so many musical conclusions
I hadn't arrived at that I felt inadequate.
[MUSIC - "ROUND ABOUT MIDNIGHT"]
[ASHLEY KAHN] In the spring of 1957,
Miles Davis hits a breaking point
with John Coltrane in his group.
John Coltrane's drug habit is getting
in the way of the music.
For Miles, there's no way of
getting past that.
[LEWIS PORTER] Getting fired by Miles
was really the shock of his life,
and there was no other gig like
a Miles Davis gig
that was the top of the field,
number one, and number two is that
he was kind of counting on this gig for
security and stability and building
a home and having a married life.
[PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON] John Coltrane was
by no means the only great musician
who had drug problems.
It killed Charlie Parker at an early age,
and many others were afflicted.
When he looked into the abyss,
he decided that he couldn't stay
where he was.
He was either gonna go down and die
or go up and become even greater.
[MUSIC - "THE DRUM THING"]
[LEWIS PORTER] He quit, what they call "cold turkey,"
which means he didn't go to an institution,
he didn't have any kind of medical support.
During the days, he would just stay
home and keep the door closed.
[MUSIC - "THE DRUM THING"]
[ANTONIA ANDREWS] Only one time did it
ever become difficult for me,
and that was when he was withdrawing
and I could hear him.
I could see Mommy taking him
to the bathroom because he was
always regurgitating.
He was doing the cold turkey.
One night it was really, really bad,
and I became really afraid,
and I remember praying,
saying to myself, "Please, God, don't.
Don't take my father."
[GRIM SAXOPHONE MUSIC]
[CHURCH BELLS TOLL]
[WOMAN CRYING]
And each night he
seemed to, um, not be as sick.
[MUSIC - "THE DRUM THING"]
[CHIMES]
[CARLOS SANTANA] And we thank God,
you know, that He allowed John Coltrane
to get past, you know,
the gates of hell.
[BILL CLINTON] He just decided to do it,
and by the strength of will and faith,
he did it.
[REGGIE WORKMAN] So he cleaned up,
and when he cleaned up,
things began to unfold.
[MUSIC - "STRAIGHT STREET"]
[WASHINGTON AS COLTRANE] During the year 1957,
I experienced, by the grace of God,
a spiritual awakening,
which was to lead me to a richer, fuller,
more productive life.
At that time, in gratitude,
I humbly asked to be given the means
and privilege to make others happy
through music.
[ASHLEY KAHN] John Coltrane returns
to New York after he gets himself clean,
and he's very much like a man
on a mission.
[ANTONIA ANDREWS] After going cold turkey
and not using drugs, his energy level
went up a notch.
He smiled more.
You know, that gorilla off your back.
Yeah. I think he was really happy.
[WASHINGTON AS COLTRANE] When I stopped drinking and all
that other stuff, it helped me in all
kinds of ways.
I was able to play better right then,
you know?
I could play better and think better.
Everything.
[LEWIS PORTER] Very significantly,
that's also the time period that he started
playing with Thelonious Monk on an
informal basis and then joined his band
in July of '57.
If you say Thelonious Monk's name to any musician,
say it to Miles, "Thelonious Monk,"
said, "Oh, Monk, Monk."
Dizzy-"Oh, whoa, whoa, Monk, Monk, Monk."
First, his musicianship was supreme.
Just his knowledge, his ability to play,
his harmonic sophistication, the structures
of his songs, and it's Coltrane
learning from Monk.
Trane would come in the morning, and they would just
practice all day.
You know, when you're
spending time in Monk's house,
and he's going through things,
that level of genius taking time to
help nurture your genius...
[LEWIS PORTER] After working with
Thelonious Monk, Coltrane is fully
on his feet.
[ASHLEY KAHN] He's got the confidence now,
and it is in 1957 that he records
his first album as a leader.
[LEWIS PORTER] The cover says, "Coltrane".
You know, it's like once you're known
just by your last name,
you know you're already getting big,
and then it said up in the corner,
it said, "The NEW", in capital letters,
"tenor saxophone STAR."
And the other thing is that he had an
opportunity to do some of his own
original music.
[MUSIC - "LOCOMOTION"]
His music sounded different.
It was like there was new blood in it.
His playing, there was new blood in
his playing.
There was a certain kind of
almost recklessness.
[MUSIC - "LOCOMOTION"]
He's pushing forward
such that he may not even know
what he's pushing forward to.
[MUSIC - "UNTITLED ORIGINAL" (EXOTICA)]
[WASHINGTON AS COLTRANE] After my late teens,
I questioned a lot of what I had found in religion,
but I never did anything about it.
I was too busy doing other things.
Recently, I started looking into what
people are thinking when I saw there
was so many religions and kind of
opposed somewhat to the next and so forth.
It screwed up my head.
I just couldn't believe that one guy
could be right, because if he's right,
somebody else has got to be wrong.
The three of us,
we didn't go to church every Sunday,
but I knew that my parents believed in God,
they had a strong belief in God.
We had bibles, we had the Quran.
My father was looking at different
Eastern religion, Buddhism, Shinto.
[RAVI COLTRANE] He never set out
specifically to say I'm a Christian
or I'm Muslim
or I'm Hindu or a Buddhist.
I think he studied all of these religions
and understood that there is something
higher than that.
There's something that a... that,
that all these religions are basically
saying that's, you know, universal.
I like to describe
it as a little picture, which is our world,
and the big picture.
John was about the big picture.
John was very celestial.
Celestial meant spiritual.
He had a deep understanding,
a deep feeling for higher worlds than
this world.
[ASHLEY KAHN] Coltrane was definitely
someone who was inspired by the concept
of the infinite and imagining how science
and music and math all work together
and that there was some kind of
universal truth, and so for Coltrane
to be inspired by Albert Einstein,
who is a deep thinker, not just about
space travel and time and energy,
but the biggest of the big questions:
Why are we here?
What are we supposed to be doing,
and where are we supposed to take ourselves?
Coltrane was absolutely on
that same road.
[MUSIC - "SO WHAT"]
[LEWIS PORTER] At the end of 1957,
Coltrane came back into Miles' band.
The difference, though, the second stint
with Miles is that now Coltrane kinda had
a sense of who he was.
One of the reasons that being with Miles
was so productive for Coltrane is that
Miles gave him tons of space.
Miles let him solo at length, and,
you know, he really didn't try to edit Coltrane.
He didn't say, you know,
"When you're playing with me,
you gotta play shorter solos than I do."
Almost invariably, Coltrane played
longer solos.
There is a famous story about Miles making
a joke to Coltrane and saying, uh,
"Why do you play so long?"
And Coltrane saying, "Well, I can't find
a good place to stop,"
and Miles saying, "Well, you could just
take the horn out of your mouth."
[MUSIC - "SO WHAT"]
[WASHINGTON AS COLTRANE] Miles is a strange guy.
He doesn't talk a lot and he rarely
discusses music.
You always have the impression that
he's in a bad mood and that he's not
interested in or affected by what
other people are doing.
It's very hard in a situation like
that to know exactly what you should do,
and maybe it's because of that that
I just started to do what I wanted.
[MAN ON P.A.] Here we go.
[MILES DAVIS] Wait. OK.
Uh, Trane and I,
Trane and I'll play one, you know,
together out.
You know what I mean? Can you hear me?
Yeah. Let's go.
[MUSIC - "SO WHAT"]
[JOHN DENSMORE] Oh, "Kind of Blue" was
one of the greatest records ever made.
It's just got a great feel.
You can never grow tired of that album,
and it crosses all boundaries.
People who don't understand jazz get it.
[ASHLEY KAHN] "Kind of Blue" is so
key to understanding where John Coltrane
would go in the 1960s.
That really is sort of the fuse to the
Coltrane explosion later.
It's very interesting.
You've got the first session for
"Kind of Blue" in early '59.
A little while later, about a month and a half,
you've got the second session.
In between, John Coltrane's doing
"Giant Steps."
[MUSIC - "GIANT STEPS"]
[DR. CORNEL WEST] It was unprecedented
that it was something that forced all of us
to call into question what we had been
hearing as that which was innovative.
[LEWIS PORTER] Every tune on
"Giant Steps" was composed by Coltrane,
so that album was huge for him because
it showed something that I don't think
people yet knew, which is that he
was as brilliant a composer as he
was a saxophonist.
[WASHINGTON AS COLTRANE] Writing has always been a secondary
thing for me, but I find that lately,
I'm spending more and more time at it.
I'm trying to tune myself,
to look to myself, and to nature
and to other sounds in music
and interpret things I feel there.
[BEN RATLIFF] So Miles' band was
a great environment for Coltrane to grow,
and he grew so much that he
grew too big for the band.
I mean he grew out of it.
He couldn't exist in it anymore.
[WAYNE SHORTER] He was actually saying
to me he was gonna leave Miles Davis,
he said, "I'm gonna leave Miles because
"what I'm playing with that group
sounds incorrect, sounds wrong."
It's like he took off a suit of clothes
that he wasn't going to wear anymore.
[BENNY GOLSON] And from the time
we started out in my living room,
he knew nothing was going to happen.
It just happened when it happened,
but when it did happen, I said it should have
happened because he was really ready.
He had his stuff together then.
Yes, this should be.
You know, some people play jazz, some people play reggae,
some people play blues and,
you know, he played life.
[MUSIC - "NAIMA"]
[SONNY ROLLINS] You can't describe
music with words.
We can say, oh, yeah, this guy was doing
a lot of technical stuff, wow,
when we analyze it and wow,
look at this.
Look at these changes and these harmonics,
but it's not about that.
It's about hearing it.
[CARLOS SANTANA] His sound, you know,
it makes people cry, like, "Oh, damn,
"you know, what, what is this tears?
"Why am I crying?
Wh-what's going on?"
Your body's doing something that your
mind don't want to do.
[CROWD APPLAUSE]
[PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON] His sound is stunning.
It ranges through the different emotions
people have in a way that very few
people can do, and as I said,
he did it, uh, partly from his
own inner spirit, but he also was
intellectually brilliant.
That is, he wrote brilliant music,
and he could take a standard
and play it in a way that made you
think you were hearing it for
the first time.
[MUSIC - "MY FAVORITE THINGS"]
[JOHN DENSMORE] Within a year of leaving
Miles Davis for good, John Coltrane
has an incredible radio hit with this
tune that is from "The Sound of Music."
[MUSIC - "MY FAVORITE THINGS"]
So here's this Broadway,
uh, melody, oh, and he just transforms
it into this gorgeous thing.
[WYNTON MARSALIS] "My Favorite Things"
was a record that I actually played
for my friends because I felt like
they would like it.
The reason that music touches everybody
is that was Coltrane's intention,
and he put a lot of everybody's music
in that music, you know, and then that
soprano-saxophone, that kind of nasal
sound is really popular all over
the world.
Coltrane had worked on that
his entire life.
How can I bring people together
and how can I bring these cultures
and how can I bring this music together?
And what allowed him to bring it together
was a spiritual consciousness.
[MUSIC - "IMPRESSIONS"]
[WASHINGTON AS COLTRANE] I've gotta keep experimenting.
And I feel that I'm just beginning.
I have a part of what I'm looking
for in my grasp, but not all.
I like Eastern music, Africa, Spain,
Scotland, India or China.
It's that universal side of music
which interests and draws me,
and that's where I wanna go.
[BEN RATLIFF] For Coltrane,
I think there was a pattern of doing
something that is unexpected when
you look at what came before it,
so he would do something that would
sort of trip himself up so he could
figure out what to do next,
and that sense of struggle and
thinking through the next problem
propelled him and made him
keep getting better and stronger
and more interesting and challenging.
[KAMASI WASHINGTON] There's an intensity
that I've never heard anything like
it before him or after him.
I always liken it to like looking
at the sun.
Like hearing John Coltrane is like
the brightest light you can hear.
I mean his tone is,
is so unique.
I mean it's so striking.
I mean no one had that tone on the,
on the horn, uh, during that time.
It became the standard.
[MUSIC - "IMPRESSIONS"]
[KAMASI WASHINGTON] It's not the car,
it's the driver, so his sound,
it sounds like it's coming from some deep
part of himself, and even though,
like, you hear him on different horns,
you hear him on different mouthpieces.
You can see him playing different setups,
like, but still, it doesn't matter,
like it's coming from that soul.
His grandfather was
a preacher, and I can hear that,
uh-they said there's
a wailing sometimes, a wailing.
I can hear Trane's appreciation for
what his grandfather's mission was.
[ASHLEY KAHN] The evolution of
John Coltrane's band, 'til he develops
what we now called 'The Classic Quartet,"
is typical Coltrane experimentation.
It's him trying out new ideas,
new players, new things.
[SONNY ROLLINS] He went through
a lot of try-outs with different people
and finally, he got the group
that he wanted, and he was able to
fly like he wanted to do.
[MUSIC - "PURSUANCE"]
[MUSIC - "THE DRUM THING"]
[MUSIC - "LONNIE'S LAMENT"]
[MUSIC - "TUNJI"]
[WASHINGTON AS COLTRANE] I'm very lucky.
I work with very fine musicians.
They are very inventive.
I don't have to tell anybody
what to do.
We have a great confidence in one another.
That's essential.
They're with me and always wanting
the band to move into new areas.
We don't believe in standing still.
[MUSIC CONTINUES]
And just to have Elvin,
the level of intelligence and seriousness
he was on, and Jimmy, the type of
heart he had, and McCoy was the young-
was a kid.
They are originals.
They set music in another direction,
gave us another way to perceive the
universe through the music.
People who heard them would, would-
their lives were transformed.
[ENERGETIC JAZZ MUSIC]
[JOHN DENSMORE] When I was 17,
I had heard that Coltrane was coming
to Shelly's Manne-Hole in Hollywood,
saw them, oh, I don't know,
five or six times.
Unbelievable.
I didn't know that Coltrane would
be such an icon, but I sensed that
I was witnessing magic.
It would be just like Coltrane
would be saying something on his
tenor or soprano... [VOCAL SOUNDS]
Elvin would answer- [VOCAL SOUNDS]
And then it would get all intertwined,
and, uh, it was free.
[SHUDDERS]
[MUSIC - "CHASIN' THE TRANE"]
Elvin Jones gave
me my hands, which he did.
I copied all his style,
and then I found my own.
I think it gave me the courage to maybe-
A drummer's job is to keep the beat,
but then if you can be expressive,
have a conversation with the singer
or the soloist, you can push him,
and I witnessed that with Elvin and Coltrane,
and I pushed Jim Morrison
because of those guys.
The greatest quartet in the history of jazz.
Miraculous.
We were like brothers
and we were there for a reason,
which was to create beautiful music,
you know?
I use the word beautiful because
I couldn't think of a better word.
[LAUGHS]
But it, uh, we were committed.
[MUSIC - "VIGIL"]
We thought that what
we were doing, the gift came
from the almighty,
not that we were walking around, "I'm th-,
I'm, you know, I'm this, I'm that."
It's not, it's not ego at all.
It's what you were put here for.
What your, what's your reason
for being here?
[MUSIC - "VIGIL"]
[CHEERS AND APPLAUSE]
[MUSIC - "ALABAMA"]
Birmingham is a symbol of hardcore resistance
to integration.
[SIRENS]
It is probably the most thoroughly segregated city
in the United States,
and the injustices inflicted upon Negroes
are the notorious realities.
[MUSIC - "ALABAMA"]
[ANTONIA ANDREWS] Growing up in the South,
of course, I know he wanted
things to be better,
but he didn't talk about it.
I think he put that in his music.
[EXPLOSION, GLASS SHATTERING]
[MUSIC - "ALABAMA"]
[LEWIS PORTER] Coltrane did talk
politics in his music.
It was only a few months after that horrible
bombing of a church and he wrote
a piece called "Alabama."
[PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON] And it shows the
creativity and depth of Coltrane,
a beautiful elegy screaming with pain,
undergirded by love.
I mean it was just, it's-it's-it's a
masterful piece, really.
[Martin Luther King, Jr. These children,
unoffending, innocent and beautiful,
were the victims of one of the most
vicious and tragic crimes ever
perpetrated against humanity.
[ASHLEY KAHN] Coltrane himself
told McCoy Tyner, his piano player,
that he developed the melody out of
a speech that Martin Luther King gave.
[MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.] And today as I
stand over the remains of these
beautiful darling girls,
I paraphrase the words of Shakespeare,
goodnight sweet princesses,
goodnight those who symbolize a new day,
and may the flight of angels
take thee to thy eternal rest.
Martin Luther King, Jr.,
John Coltrane go hand in hand, hand in hand.
Why? Because they're love warriors.
They represent the best,
not just of black people, not just for America.
They represent the best
of the human spirit.
That song has a soul
that lets you know that it was
a lot of pain going on there,
but it's something that's inspirational
about that song.
When you hear "Alabama,"
you feel all that struggle from
those times,
the times of the civil rights days,
but you also feel the progress.
[DR. CORNEL WEST] John Coltrane was
ahead of his time.
I don't think that his music
is a thermometer, it's a thermostat.
See, a thermometer just reflects the climate,
a thermostat shapes the climate.
So when you hear "Alabama,"
it's not just his deep love
of the precious four girls who were
killed by cowardly white supremacists
in 16th Street Baptist Church,
it's not just a refiguration
musically of certain speech patterns
of Martin Luther King, Jr.
He's looking at black people all the
way down the road.
[MUSIC - "ALABAMA"]
He's already telling us you're gonna need courage,
vision, and most importantly,
love at the center of it.
[COMMON] As black people,
we've been through a lot in this country,
and we stay hopeful,
and that's what I feel in "Alabama"
is the pain we went through,
but the hope that we have.
[MUSIC - "I WANT TO TALK ABOUT YOU"]
[ANTONIA ANDREWS] It was at night
when all of a sudden the voices
got louder and louder and louder,
and I'm like, "Uh-oh.
Oh dear. What is going on?"
[MUSIC - "I WANT TO TALK ABOUT YOU"]
[ASHLEY KAHN] It's hard to know
specifically what was happening in
John Coltrane's personal life
in the early '60s,
but certainly there's indications that
he was not that happy with
his marriage to Naima.
[ANTONIA ANDREWS] They didn't know
I was sitting around the bend
of the stairway,
but I could hear everything.
Neither one of my parents were arguers,
so when that argument erupted,
I knew something was really,
really, really bad, and, um,
that was the, the day he left...
but he came back and he talked to me.
He said, "There are things
"going on I can't explain.
"I love you very much.
"You're my daughter.
I'll always take care of you,"
and that was it.
[MUSIC - "I WANT TO TALK ABOUT YOU"]
[MUSIC - "UP 'GAINST THE WALL"]
My mother,
Alice McCloud, at the time,
was playing with a vibraphonist
named Terry Gibbs,
and they were doing a double bill
with John Coltrane's Quartet at
the original Birdland on
52nd Street in New York City.
They noticed each other,
and it was a little bit like, you know,
there's a young lady here and, oh,
she's a pianist.
John definitely stuck around to hear
a little bit of her playing
and admired that.
[RAVI COLTRANE] Something in the
sound of his tenor caught her ear,
and, uh, at one point in between
the breaks of the band,
my father started to follow my mother
around the club with his horn.
So he was serenading her through the club,
and I guess at that point,
they began to sit and have conversations.
[MICHELLE COLTRANE] They spoke,
they had a lot of things in common
when they spoke.
[ORAN COLTRANE] I just remember my
mother saying that he's a very,
just a very kind, gracious person,
a very decent man,
and they hit it off very well.
[MICHELLE COLTRANE] She was interested
in the harp,
and he bought her a concert-size harp.
Beautiful, it's painted in gold,
you know, like a real,
like what an orchestra would have.
I think that's true love-
[LAUGHS]
When someone buys you a harp.
[MICHELLE COLTRANE] They're both gentle people,
I think perfectly paired by the universe.
[ASHLEY KAHN] John Coltrane used
to leave little notes, little poems expressing
his love for Alice around the home.
He would leave for the gig,
you know, she would come back
to the house and she would find these
little messages,
and I don't think the romance ever left
John and Alice's relationship.
[RAVI COLTRANE] You know,
he was married before,
and for whatever reason,
did not have any children with Naima.
Clearly when he met my mom,
they, uh, they didn't waste much time.
In a very short span,
three sons were born.
He was an only child, and his father
was an only child, as well,
so I think maybe there-
it was something that he wanted to do in,
in his lifetime to father children,
and I think it,
I think it made him extremely happy.
[MUSIC - "MY ONE AND ONLY LOVE"]
[MUSIC - "PURSUANCE"]
[ASHLEY KAHN] John Coltrane has
set aside some time, and he secludes
himself above the garage in his
house at Dix Hills, Long Island,
to put together what he sees as a suite.
He doesn't know how it's gonna go.
He has some loose melodies,
some ideas.
Mrs. Coltrane tells the story about
him coming down and grabbing little
bits of food now and again,
and then disappearing for a whole day.
This is just after John, Jr. is born,
so she's got her four year old daughter,
and an infant,
and a disappeared husband.
And she said he was upstairs.
It was like two weeks he was up there,
and she always related these stories
to us, you know, in a, in a happy way,
that what he was doing was significant
and important and she understood
that as if he was on a mission
and she was there to support it.
[ASHLEY KAHN] A few days later,
he comes down the stairs,
and as Mrs. Coltrane put it,
it was like Moses coming
down from the mountain.
And for once, the guy who really
thought and re-thought
about music seemed very satisfied
with where he was with his project
and his words to Mrs. Coltrane were,
"It's the first time I have everything ready.
"I've completed the project on paper.
"I know exactly what I'm gonna do
in the studio."
[MUSIC - "ACKNOWLEDGMENT"]
[WASHINGTON AS COLTRANE] All praise to God.
This album is a humble offering to him,
an attempt to say, thank you, God.
Through our work, even as we do
through our hearts and with our tongues,
may He help and strengthen all
men in every good endeavor.
[DR. CORNEL WEST] It's the individual
expression of a, um,
a musical titan who wants to give
a certain message to the world
in light of his own
relationship to God.
[MUSIC - "ACKNOWLEDGMENT"]
[ASHLEY KAHN] "A Love Supreme"
is something I think every great
musician aspires to, which is finding
that one moment or that one song
or that one recording,
that one album which really kind
of encapsulates everything that they are,
what their message is.
[WYNTON MARSALIS] The thing about "A Love Supreme",
all of Trane's mysticism is in it.
The totality of his consciousness
expresses itself most fully on that record.
I don't even think he knew why.
Sometimes in the life of artists or people
who search and practice
and study and work on stuff,
they find things and it's, it's in there,
and, and, uh, it was in there.
[JIMMY HEATH] The second piece
on there is the one that touches me.
[HUMMING MELODY OF "RESOLUTION"]
[MUSIC - "RESOLUTION"]
That's the one that touches me, that melody.
[INTERVIEWER] Where does it take you?
It takes me to heaven
where I want to be when I leave here.
That's it, isn't it?
[LAUGHS]
[ASHLEY KAHN] And the audacity
that someone would absolutely speak
to the heavens using a jazz group,
it speaks to the singularity of
John Coltrane's vision.
I think I've played
that album more than I've played any other
album in my life.
When somebody's music is that uplifting,
it's something angelic about it,
it's something that just touches you
in your spirit where you're like
I know this is coming from another place.
I just thought, "Oh, my God.
"You know, this guy,
"his mind and his heart is so-
"they're in a place that everybody
ought to reach for."
[MUSIC - "RESOLUTION"]
[WASHINGTON AS COLTRANE] May we never forget
that in the sunshine of our lives,
through the storm and after the rain,
it is all with God, in all ways and forever.
All praise to God.
[MUSIC - "ASCENSION"]
[WASHINGTON AS COLTRANE] I myself don't recognize
the word jazz.
I mean we're sold under this name,
but to me, the word doesn't exist.
I just feel that I play John Coltrane.
I think the main thing a musician would
like to do is give a picture to the listener
of the many wonderful things he knows of
and senses in the universe.
That's what music is to me.
It's just another way of saying this is a big,
beautiful universe we live in that's been
given to us, and here's an example
of just how magnificent
and encompassing it is.
[BENNY GOLSON] John Coltrane,
he was outward bound the way he was playing.
He could get in his spaceship,
metaphorically, and it could take
him anywhere he wanted to go.
That's the way he was.
[ASHLEY KAHN] One of the most incredible
chapters in John Coltrane's
life is 1965, 'cause he has achieved
a level of success that includes
Grammy nominations.
He's been inducted into the
"Downbeat" Hall of Fame,
one of the very first living
jazz musicians to be afforded that honor.
He has an outstanding best-selling album in
"A Love Supreme."
There's an awareness that is starting
to creep into all levels of music fandom,
and he starts to dismantle that because
he is now gonna try new musical ideas,
musical ideas that are not popular,
musical ideas that challenge most ears,
musical ideas that in effect will
take apart his classic quartet.
By the end of 1965,
he will lose Elvin Jones and McCoy Tyner
because of this new path that he's
going along, and he will replace
them with a very young drummer
named Rashied Ali from Philadelphia
and his wife Alice Coltrane on piano,
and he'll expand the band
and bring in a second horn
with Pharaoh Sanders.
[JOHN DENSMORE] Here's the thing.
John Coltrane went from bebop to
Miles Davis quintet, modern cool,
to his own quartet.
He went the whole transition,
so he could play standards.
He had the right to go out as far as he wanted.
John Coltrane's sound
rearranges molecular structure.
People were like... "What?"
[MUSIC - "MY FAVORITE THINGS"]
[CHEERING]
[BENNY GOLSON] Some said that he
was taking jazz in the wrong direction,
which was of course, a lie.
He's taking it forward
and the reason you're not aware of it,
because you've never heard it before.
[ASHLEY KAHN] Coltrane was definitely
one of the scientists of the saxophone,
someone who was pushing the instrument
to its limit, kind of what Jimi Hendrix
would later do with the electric guitar.
[MUSIC - "MY FAVORITE THINGS"]
[JIMMY HEATH] I don't care what the critics say.
If you like it, you like it.
If you don't, you don't.
He may have been reaching for something
else spiritually that they don't understand.
Would you want him to tiptoe, to,
to where he's trying to get, you know?
It, you know, John Coltrane is,
you know, he's mean.
[DR. CORNEL WEST] You know,
I don't understand it.
I'm open to it. I try to embrace it.
I try to follow it.
But it's not the kind of, uh,
music I would just sit there
and listen to all the time.
I got to really gotta zero in,
and I still don't fully grasp what's going on.
[MUSIC - "VIGIL"]
[JOHN DENSMORE] Later when I saw
him play, I would say half
the audience left before it was over.
They just didn't know they were
witnessing something ahead of its time,
something spiritual but cathartic
and tumultuous, and I just ate it up.
He could go to Mars.
I'm with him.
[WASHINGTON AS COLTRANE] I have no fear about my music being
too way out.
My goals remain the same,
and that is to uplift people
as much as I can to inspire
them to realize more and more of their
capacities for living meaningful lives
because there certainly is meaning to life.
[MUSIC - "WELCOME"]
[OSAHARU FUKUSHIMA SPEAKING JAPANESE]
[TRANSLATED] I was a first year student
in junior high school when it happened.
I saw the flash and gazed at the center
of that overpowering light.
The Earth was shaking.
The heat was intense.
Much of Nagasaki vanished.
Perhaps as many as 75,000 people
died instantly, and another 75,000
were wounded and exposed to
massive radiation and an uncertain future.
[WASHINGTON AS COLTRANE] I dislike war. Period.
So therefore, as far as I'm concerned,
it should stop.
[MUSIC - "CRESCENT"]
[SPEAKING JAPANESE]
[TRANSLATED] It was July 14th, 1966,
when I went to pick up John Coltrane
and his musicians at the train station.
Everyone came out except Coltrane.
I looked all over for him and found him
in a car of the express train playing the flute.
I was so surprised.
Then he looked at me and grinned.
I asked him a question,
"Why were you playing the flute?"
He said that he was searching
for the sound of Nagasaki.
I was extremely moved by this.
I asked him if he wanted to go
straight to his hotel, and he said no.
He said he wanted to go to the atomic
bomb hypocenter.
For me, that place is sacred.
It's the same as a gravesite.
[MUSIC - "PEACE ON EARTH"]
[OSAHARU FUKUSHIMA SPEAKING JAPANESE]
[TRANSLATED] He took a wreath
of flowers and put it down in front
of the pillar, and then he stood up
and he prayed.
He was praying and looking up at the sky.
He just kept staring up above
the pillar for a
considerable amount of time.
I asked him why,
and he replied that he was
imagining the sounds, the plane, the bomb,
the suffering of the Japanese people.
I think that Coltrane had studied about
all of these things,
and for that reason,
he chose to come to Nagasaki on
his Japanese tour.
Coltrane's concert in
Nagasaki was something special.
I was the announcer that night.
The second song was "Peace on Earth."
He must have wanted to perform
that here in Nagasaki.
The whole concert hall was
totally caught up in Coltrane.
It was an amazing atmosphere.
At that time,
we were still so struggling from the
atomic bombing and many people
are still struggling,
and, uh, Coltrane was so kind to play for us.
[MUSIC - "PEACE ON EARTH"]
Coltrane composed the song
"Peace on Earth" almost as
requiem for victim of the atomic bomb
as well as his wish to stop all war.
His passion was
peace and love for the universe.
[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]
[MUSIC - "AFTER THE RAIN"]
[SONNY ROLLINS] You know,
the last time I talked to John
on the phone, his, uh, his voice sounded-
it sounded, uh...
[ASHLEY KAHN] There were indications
by the end of 1966 and into '67
that Coltrane wasn't doing well.
His sidemen later would report that he
was holding his side like he was in pain,
and sure enough,
he was later diagnosed with liver cancer.
[LEWIS PORTER] At first when Coltrane died,
I think it was just shock.
I mean he was only 40,
and he hadn't been ill for a long time.
[MICHELLE COLTRANE] My mother did speak
of John's death in this way,
which it was, this just floored me.
Uh, she said it was beautiful.
It was warm, and the breath when
went out of him.
He was not in any pain.
She said at the very-this is the, the moment of transition.
She used the word beautiful.
That's what- how she revealed it to me.
[BENNY GOLSON] All the things flash
through my mind that we had done together,
and I went into my apartment,
shut the door and cried.
[HOLDING BACK TEARS] Boy.
That was rough.
Phew.
That really got me,
and you can see it's getting me now.
I'm sorry.
[MUSIC - "AFTER THE RAIN"]
[JIMMY HEATH] I was at the funeral.
They wanted me to be a pallbearer,
and I, man, but I could not do it.
I looked at him in the casket
and the way he was embalmed and all that.
Only thing I recognized was his hands.
He had fingers that went kinda strange,
'cause I've been looking at his hands.
We'd been practicing together,
and that's the only thing that reminded
me of Trane, you know,
so that wasn't him.
He had passed on to the next place.
His spirit was gone.
[MUSIC - AFTER THE RAIN"]
[SONNY ROLLINS] John was my best friend.
He wasn't like 99 percent of other people.
He existed in the real world.
I mean he had a family,
he had kids,
but that's not where he was at.
He was not in the real world.
He was someplace else.
So he's, he's cool.
He's cool.
He was cool when he was here
and he's cool in the big picture.
He's cool.
[MUSIC - "MOMENT'S NOTICE"]
[WYNTON MARSALIS] Since Trane passed away,
his music has transcended,
and it's more and more known, people-
That type of artistic
achievement stays around.
It's mythic because of the,
the sacrifice involved,
and it will remain mythic.
[PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON] If you go to any
kind of comprehensive retrospective
of Picasso's art,
it's breathtaking what he did,
how he went from being a very good
traditional painter to the blue period,
his abstract and then his cubist work.
If you think about what John Coltrane did,
moving through his various phases
of musical creativity,
he basically did everything Picasso
did in about 50 years less time,
and I just think that if you got any kind of
love for music and regard for the craft,
you hear three or four notes and say,
this man owns this horn,
owns this music,
and at least when he's playing,
is the master of his soul.
[DR. CORNEL WEST] His spirit is still
very much alive,
and he's saying, "I'm gonna use music
"to try to convince you to grasp
"in time a love supreme so that you
"don't remain just a prisoner of time.
"You will be a maker,
a creator of a better world."
That is a Coltrane version of what
he learned in Sunday school,
what he was taught, that the kingdom
of God is within you,
and everywhere you go,
you ought to leave a little heaven behind,
and he left some heaven behind.
[MUSIC - "MOMENT'S NOTICE"]
[WASHINGTON AS COLTRANE] To be a musician is,
it's really something.
It goes very, very deep.
My music is the spiritual expression
of what I am.
My faith, my knowledge, my being.
I know that there are bad forces.
I know that there are forces out here
that bring suffering to others
and misery to the world,
but I want to be the opposite force.
I want to be the force which is truly for good.
[MUSIC - "GIANT STEPS"]