Biography
1960 marked a decisive shift for John Coltrane, who entered the world on September 23, 1926, and departed it on July 17, 1967. That year he permanently parted ways with Miles Davis, elevated modal jazz above hard bop as his central pursuit, and assembled the New York-based John Coltrane Quartet. Its first roster featured Coltrane himself on tenor and soprano sax, McCoy Tyner at the piano, Elvin Jones behind the drums, and Steve Davis on bass. Davis departed quickly, prompting brief tenures by Art Davis and Reggie Workman until Jimmy Garrison joined in 1961. Much like his earlier employer Miles Davis, Coltrane remained an unceasing innovator committed to forward motion, a drive the quartet embodied fully between 1960 and 1965.
Throughout the preceding decade his emphasis had rested on hard bop, a style epitomized by the 1959 recording “Giant Steps,” widely viewed as the definitive bop vehicle for extended improvisation. Yet that same year he appeared prominently on Davis’ landmark modal album Kind of Blue, an experience that prompted a thorough embrace of modality once he launched his own ensemble in 1960. The quartet’s Atlantic debut My Favorite Things, released that year, advanced modal approaches with an impact comparable to Kind of Blue itself. Its title track, along with “Impressions,” “Equinox,” “Miles’ Mode,” and other early-sixties pieces, stands among the clearest illustrations of modal post-bop.
After switching from Atlantic to Impulse! in 1961, Coltrane periodically enlarged the group; reedman Eric Dolphy, for instance, participated for a short stretch that year. Even so, the quartet remained his preferred format through 1964 and exerted considerable sway. In the first half of the decade its explorations shaped the work of saxophonists Wayne Shorter, Joe Henderson, and Jackie McLean, as well as trumpeter Freddie Hubbard and organist Larry Young. By 1965, the year following the quartet’s spiritual Impulse! recording A Love Supreme, Coltrane turned toward atonal free jazz, thereby concluding both his modal phase and the celebrated lineup of Coltrane, Tyner, Garrison, and Jones. Nevertheless, the quartet’s reach endured: every subsequent practitioner of modal jazz has drawn, knowingly or not, from its example.
Throughout the preceding decade his emphasis had rested on hard bop, a style epitomized by the 1959 recording “Giant Steps,” widely viewed as the definitive bop vehicle for extended improvisation. Yet that same year he appeared prominently on Davis’ landmark modal album Kind of Blue, an experience that prompted a thorough embrace of modality once he launched his own ensemble in 1960. The quartet’s Atlantic debut My Favorite Things, released that year, advanced modal approaches with an impact comparable to Kind of Blue itself. Its title track, along with “Impressions,” “Equinox,” “Miles’ Mode,” and other early-sixties pieces, stands among the clearest illustrations of modal post-bop.
After switching from Atlantic to Impulse! in 1961, Coltrane periodically enlarged the group; reedman Eric Dolphy, for instance, participated for a short stretch that year. Even so, the quartet remained his preferred format through 1964 and exerted considerable sway. In the first half of the decade its explorations shaped the work of saxophonists Wayne Shorter, Joe Henderson, and Jackie McLean, as well as trumpeter Freddie Hubbard and organist Larry Young. By 1965, the year following the quartet’s spiritual Impulse! recording A Love Supreme, Coltrane turned toward atonal free jazz, thereby concluding both his modal phase and the celebrated lineup of Coltrane, Tyner, Garrison, and Jones. Nevertheless, the quartet’s reach endured: every subsequent practitioner of modal jazz has drawn, knowingly or not, from its example.
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