My man Ezra flipped a sweet Dazed article about music and heroin into our {R}emnants mag on Flipboard yesterday, and sitting down to post it caught my eye. Here’s a bit from Dazed…

But heroin has consistently eluded this ebb and flow, from its prominence and influence in the jazz and blues era of the 30s, 40s and 50s (Billie Holiday, John Coltrane, Chet Baker) to the rockers of the 60s, 70s, and 80s (Keith Richards, Sid Vicious, Nikki Sixx) and the heroin chic trend of the 90s, made popular by Calvin Klein’s ‘waif’ models and further pushed by the grunge movement (Kurt Cobain, Hole, Alice In Chains, and more).

In the 21st century – and specifically in the United States – the opioid epidemic is now at an all time-high, with The New York Times citing it as “a modern plague” with 59,000 drug overdose deaths in 2016 alone, the largest annual jump ever recorded in the US. With the country’s “drug-infested dens” (as President Trump so tactfully described earlier this year) becoming a national crisis, the topic of heroin addiction is coming out from under the bridge…

Follow the article link above to hear a playlist of heroin’s greatest hits. The list is jammed with rock and funk, but when I think of heroin and music I think of Miles and Coltrane and Bill Evans — I think of jazz. Here’s Bruce Weber’s poetic black and white study of Chet Baker, Let’s Get Lost…

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Observing John Coltrane’s birthday last week, I was reminded of this great documentary about one of the few Texans actually worthy of the Lone Star hype. If Coltrane is the Heavyweight Champion, Ornette Coleman is Bruce Lee. Here’s Ornette: Made in America directed by the late, great Shirley Clarke…

OMIA from Saxology on Vimeo.

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This month we remember the death of John Coltrane on July 17, 1967. Coltrane’s resume stretches from R&B honking to playing with be-bop legends like Miles and Monk, to pioneering his own spiritually illuminated free jazz in the last decades of his life. A true giant of American music, Coltrane makes my shortlist of heroes of any kind, and I’m psyched to share The World According to John Coltrane in celebration of his luminous legacy…

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More than a year ago, on this blog, I added a post about John Coltrane. It was a July entry, remembering the giant’s death in that month in 1967. Today I’m remembering Trane’s birth on September 23, 1926. Here’s the same post from last summer. Whether in life or in death, Coltrane looms large for me and I can’t say more or offer a better example of the man’s greatness than I did than I did 14 months ago…

On this day in 1967 we lost a giant of jazz. John Coltrane is a personal hero of mine. As a saxophonist I’ve always been enthralled by the instrument’s superlative ability to mimic the human voice and one is hard pressed to find any other horn man in jazz who exemplified the saxophone’s potential for eloquence like Coltrane.

The following clip is my favorite John Coltrane document of all time: the video captures his classic quartet at the height of their power, literally steaming as they strain to realize every moment of this electrifying expression; it demonstrates the influence that Eastern music had only begun to have over the musician and composer, and it finds Coltrane poised directly between his be-bop roots and the free jazz frontiers that he would help to map in the second half of his career.

This video is officially one of “My Favorite Things”…

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50 years ago in February, 1965, John Coltrane released A Love Supreme. One of the greatest albums in any genre, the record represented the culmination of Coltrane’s spiritual rebirth after recovering from heroin addiction nearly 10 years earlier. Coltrane pledged his horn to god during his struggles and Supreme is the sound of a man who was good to his word. Here’s a remembrance from The Economist…

…“Supreme” manages to combine the technical mastery and intellectualism of mid-1960s Coltrane, but is reasonably easy listening.

“Supreme” is also Coltrane’s most spiritual album. And for this reason it gives some insight into a person that no one, not even the most devoted jazz fans, feels that they really know. He died young. He practised furiously, it is said for up to 12 hours a day, becoming perhaps the most technically accomplished saxophone player ever…

While recovering from heroin addiction in the late 1950s, Coltrane became deeply religious, and “Supreme” has explicitly spiritual overtones. In the liner notes, he calls the work a “humble offering to Him”. In the first movement, “Acknowledgment”, Coltrane chants the words “A Love Supreme” in a gospel-like manner. (Some people reckon that he is actually saying “Allah Supreme”—a claim that even serious jazz scholars do not see as totally implausible.)

…Lastly, “Supreme” is important because of the context in which was released. Coltrane was dead a few months afterwards. No saxophonist has since earned the same level of popular and critical acclaim. Around the time that “Supreme” came out, jazz’s popularity started to plunge…

In that sense, widespread reverence for “Supreme” is partially explained by what it now signifies. It was the last album of what most people would consider “proper” jazz to have had popular appeal. It was a final salvo of an art form that was dying, and which has never really recovered.

Here’s a documentary that came out a decade ago to celebrate the album’s 40th anniversary…

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On this day in 1967 we lost a giant of jazz. John Coltrane is a personal hero of mine. As a saxophonist I’ve always been enthralled by the instrument’s superlative ability to mimic the human voice and one is hard pressed to find any other horn man in jazz who exemplified the saxophone’s potential for eloquence like Coltrane.

The following clip is my favorite John Coltrane document of all time: the video captures his classic quartet at the height of their power, literally steaming as they strain to realize every moment of this electrifying expression; it demonstrates the influence that Eastern music had only begun to have over the musician and composer, and it finds Coltrane poised directly between his be-bop roots and the free jazz frontiers that he would help to map in the second half of his career.

This video is officially one of “My Favorite Things”…

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Elvin Jones was a proud son of Pontiac, Michigan and one of my favorite jazz drummers of all time. Jones’ pioneering polyrhythmic style paired with his hard-hitting, aggressive playing made him one of the most recognizable and innovative drummers of the post-bop era. Here’s a word about this documentary which tells the story of the man and his music:

Jazz bassist Ron Carter might have put it best when he stated in the 1979 video documentary Different Drummer: “The only way to illustrate or accurately define Elvin’s contribution is to play a recording of a pre-Elvin Jones drummer, play a recording of Elvin Jones, and then play a recording of a post-Elvin Jones drummer. I think these three examples would best illustrate all of Elvin’s contributions to the drums better than words could ever say.”

Jones’ tenure with John Coltrane marks the formation of one of the most important musical lineups in any genre and it’s no exaggeration to say that Jones’ imaginative, expressive drumming helped to make Coltrane’s cosmic explorations possible. Jones died of heart failure in 2004. He was 76 years old.

Here’s Different Drummer: Elvin Jones

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