[NewMusic] Wynton chatter assailed

[Phillip Greenlief]

-----Original Message-----
On Behalf Of Chris Broderick
Subject: Re: [NewMusic] Wynton chatter assailed

'[Wynton] seems to have bought into some of the
theories of Coltrane's white critics who say that
'Trane's music during his sessions with Eric Dolphy
was "hate music."'

What the hell is he talking about?  What white critics
said that?  I would have thought that they'd be more
critical of his recordings with Pharoah Sanders than
his recordings with Dolphy.  

PG:
Well, the first recordings to "cross the line" (from jazz into the avant
garde) for a lot of critics were the Vanguard recordings with Dolphy,
and even some of the earlier world-music fusions (Africa/Brass, Ole,
Kulu Se Mama, - a lot of the early Impulse! recordings). Go back and
check the archives...there were plenty of critics that felt this way,
long before those recordings with Pharoah Saunders. Numerous articles in
Downbeat, Village Voice etc. posited this point of view. This POV was
mainly an American perspective; he didn't have as difficult a time with
the European critics. But they also "exoticized" (referring to Braxton's
use of the word) these recordings, seeing them as purely political in
nature - a call of the repressed black man in white America. As tempting
as it may be, it is perhaps too easy to see his work as a part of the
civil rights movement. But Coltrane never admitted to any political
stances as far as I know, the biographies don't do much to illuminate
this POV. His quest seemed to be mainly a spiritual one. But to untangle
the spiritual from the political in this case would be difficult I
think.

It's been a long time since I read those articles (25 years ago?) but I
remember their sentiments very well. On the other hand, you will see a
small handful of writers like Nat Hentoff consistently not taking the
bait. Coltrane continued to have a small camp of (white) journalists who
understood where the music was coming from (the remained focused on the
music, not extra-musical considerations). His detractors were not only
white. 

I think Trane tried to answer the critics with the liner notes to Love
Supreme (yes, even this was jeered as "hate music" - superbly ironic,
given the title, I should think), and that record appeared before any of
the work with Saunders, Rashied Ali, et al. These claims started as
early as the late 1950's/early 1960's, when Coltrane was lauded as one
of the "angry tenors". I'm referring to those wonderful Atlantic
recordings that he did, along with his work with Monk in 1957/1958
(after he left Miles Davis' band - before rejoining them to make those
famous recordings in 1959 - Kind of Blue, etc.). This was all long
before the recordings with the expanded ensembles that did well to raise
more than a few eyebrows.

Some critics and listeners thought that his Ballads recording was an
answer to this criticism, because it came out fairly late (later than
many assume). But apparently Coltrane was having problems with his teeth
(an agonizing nemesis in his later life) along with mouthpiece problems,
and he wanted to make a recording that would allow him to step aside
from the more hard blowing aspects of his work. It had nothing to do
with proving he was a nice guy.

The teeth thing is connected to all of this. Coltrane rarely smiled in
photographs because of his teeth - he was ashamed of them and didn't
want to reveal them by smiling. This was an early cue (to more than a
few imbeciles) that he was an angry young man...