Donnerstag, 16. Feb 2012, 19:32

I thought that this was interesting.

Just some thoughts by Ed Rhodes a few years ago about how much John Gilmore, the great tenor who played with Sun Ra, influenced John Coltrane.
(In the big picture, it dont really matter cause it's just artists making art. But, maybe it’s fun for some people to think about these things.)

I cleaned up typos, abbreviations and added links.
And, I also note that people now know that Sun Ra recorded the Jazz In Silhouette (Images And Forecasts Of Tomorrow) and Sound Sun Pleasure!! albums later in 1959 (March 6).

‹ Some comments are in order, particularly since the anniversary of Gilmore’s death has just passed.

‹ First, John Gilmore and John Coltrane had a complex, reciprocal influence on each other in a musical relationship that evolved and changed over the ten plus years between the mid-50s and Coltrane’s death. Second, it was almost certainly not a simple binary relationship. Other figures from Sonny Rollins to Albert Ayler played key roles, as did a number of more obscure musicians, some of whom, in Coltrane’s own words, ‘never recorded’.

‹ It’s useful to approach the subject chronologically since the nature and direction of the influences varied substantially over time. Also, unless one was fortunate enough to have heard both men perform live frequently and consistently between, say, 1956 and 1967, one must rely on recordings to draw conclusions. I refer all interested parties to Jed Rasula’s essay, ‘The Media of Memory: The Seductive Menace of Records in Jazz History’, which is included in Krin Gabbard’s collection of post-modern jazz writings, Jazz Among the Discourses. Rasula raises the issue of reification which is a particular problem in discussing Gilmore, given that one must rely on a small handful of solos which shed some light on his more radical leanings prior to 1964. That said…

‹ There is a substantial body of recordings by both men performing in their regular working bands from 1956. One can pick out solos from this year that show striking similarities in approach – try ‘Airegin’ from Cookin' With The Miles Davis Quintet vs. ‘Future’ from Sun Song – while other head-to-head’s (for example, any of the ballad performances) show marked differences. The similarities are, in my opinion, not evidence of the influence of either player on the other, though Miles Davis and Sun Ra performed on the same bill in Chicago early that year. What they show is that both were coming out of the same Dexter Gordon–Wardell Gray–Sonny Stitt influence. Though the jazz critics made a fuss about Coltrane’s tone and style, it was not unique, and he himself said so. Jimmy Heath and Yusef Lateef had very similar approaches at that point and the Gordon–Stitt thing was widely influential among the hard boppers.

‹ In 1957, the only extended look at Gilmore is on the Blowing In From Chicago record on Blue Note. It makes interesting comparison, though, with Coltrane’s Prestige work from that year, especially given that it was all recorded by Rudy Van Gelder. In my opinion, such comparisons tend to show that Gilmore’s sound was growing away from what the two had in common in 1956 while Coltrane sounds like a more polished version of his earlier self…except on the Thelonious Monk record. And, to put it simply without belaboring the point, there are no other tenor players, including Rollins, let alone Gilmore, who recorded anything like ‘Trinkle Trinkle’ in 1957.

‹ Things get interesing, in my opinion, in 1958 with the recording of ‘Star Time’ (Lady With The Golden Stockings, a.k.a. The Nubians Of Plutonia) by the Sun Ra Arkestra. There’s a double time passage in Gilmore’s solo which bears interesting comparison with some of Coltrane’s work from that year. Per the ‘Sheets…’ and ‘Moldy Sheets…’ threads from the early months of this list , I always looked upon Trane’s most radical 1958 work – for example, ‘If I Were A Bell’ (Jazz At The Plaza) and ‘Ah-Leu-Cha’, ‘Fran-Dance’ and ‘Bye Bye Blackbird’ from Newport (Miles Davis & Thelonious Monk Live At Newport 1958 & 1963) – as characterized by the groupings of notes in quantities that were not multiples of 2, in particular, not 16th notes. Gilmore’s ‘Star Time’ passage is 16th notes, but the intervals and timing – the cadence – suggest that he was listening to Coltrane. The other parts of the solo sound nothing like Coltrane. Coltrane’s Newport solo on ‘Straight No Chaser’ is also straight 16th notes and a comparison of the two double time passages is instructive. It’s also notable that Gilmore’s other 1958 solos, from the albums Jazz In Silhouette and Sound Sun Pleasure!! contain no comparable 16th note passages. (But, the reification piece rears its head here if all we can play for comparison is ‘Star Time’.) Also, dating is important. If ‘Star Time’ was recorded very early in 1958, it would give more credence to the notion that Gilmore’s 16ths represent parallel evolution rather than influence. The jury’s still out, but I hear the influence coming from Trane.

‹ 1959 doesn’t shed much light on such manners. Coltrane’s Atlantic recordings from that year (with the exception of ‘Harmonique’ (December 2, Coltrane Jazz)) are largely devoid of the ‘sheets’ passages you find in ‘If I Were A Bell’. Gilmore’s solos, notably from The Nubians Of Plutonia are, if anything, more conventional than ‘Star Time’.

‹ A more interesting comparison can be had in 1960. Gilmore’s solo on ‘Rocket Number Nine Take Off For The Planet Venus’ from Rocket Number Nine Take Off For The Planet Venus (a.k.a. Interstellar Low Ways, June 17) is critical to any consideration of his role as an innovator. It is unfortunate that it is the only solo from that year which confirms that role. But, confirm it does, reification be damned. Juxtapose it with any of the several versions of ‘So What’ recorded in March and April (Miles Davis en Concert avec Europe 1, Miles Davis in Stockholm 1960 Complete (disc 2), In Copenhagen 1960, Live In Zurich, Miles & Coltrane Quintet Live, First Time on Records). Note that it is Coltrane’s work that is full of multiphonics, false fingerings and other pyrotechnics while Gilmore’s radicalism is thematic and formal. This is the first time Gilmore actively and radically thinks in terms of groups of notes, something Coltrane was doing since ‘Trinkle Tinkle’. I still hear a Coltrane influence, but Gilmore is also creating phrasing that Coltrane did not use. The question then becomes, did this phrasing eventually come back to influence Coltrane?

‹ Conventional wisdom and Coltrane’s own testimony (Kofsky, 1966) says yes, that when Gilmore came to New York in 1961 Trane started listening to him. But what, if any, recorded evidence do we have of this? Trane said there is a Gilmore influence on the Village Vanguard recordings (The Complete 1961 Village Vanguard Recordings), and I think many people have concluded that this is where the pyrotechnics of ‘Chasin' The Trane’ (Live at The Village Vanguard) came from. But, Gilmore didn’t record any such effects for at least another year and, even then, in very different form. Gilmore’s only verified solos from 1961 are those on the Savoy date (The Futuristic Sounds of Sun Ra). ‘Jet Flight’ is about all we have to work with. But, compare the extended 8th note passage with the similar passage in the long, quartet version of ‘Impressions’ (Impressions) that brackets McCoy Tyner dropping out by minutes on each side. Coltrane doesn’t imitate Gilmore’s staccato attack, but the incessant reworking of the 8th and dotted 8th motifs is clear. I always thought this was quintessential Trane, but more recently I noted that there is none of this on the Sutherland Hotel recordings…and there’s little or none of it in Trane’s subsequent work, including the Fall 1961 tour that followed the Vanguard. Check it out for yourself.

‹ After this, it gets more convoluted. Yes. More.

‹ The real issue after 1961 is not the evolution of Trane’s modality but the transition from that modality, already in place at the Vanguard, to the free playing of 1965 and later. No one talks about this and the process involved, but I see a critical role for Gilmore here. Despite Robert Campbell’s ground breaking research, I continue to feel that the dating of Sun Ra’s discography between 1962 and 1965 is muddy. Still, we know that Gilmore made the transition to free playing at least a year and perhaps three years before Coltrane. The Paul Bley record (Turning Point), which is reliably dated to March 1964, makes that clear. Up to that point, Coltrane has no performances comparable to ‘Ictus’ (Turning Point), which I would characterize as proto-Aylerish. Campbell dates a similar solo on ‘Reflects Motion’ (Secrets Of The Sun) to 1962. Therein lies a rub. But, either way, Coltrane doesn’t attempt to record in that style until Ascension (June 1965). I’m talking about something a little different from what I hear on Transition, something a bit more evident in the second take of ‘Ascension’ (‘Ascension (edition II)’) and decidedly more developed in the little solo fragment at the end of ‘Afro Blue’ on the Seattle date (Live In Seattle). It’s about moving a little further away from a harmonic or modal structure defined by the composition and improvising a bit more freely simply utilizing scales or whatever it is. It’s also about developing a syntax for keeping the solo going when the drummer stops playing in a fixed meter. This latter piece is more evident in the second take of ‘Ascension’ and on Sun Ship, which was recorded a couple of months later.

‹ The question then becomes, can we trace the evolution from ‘Chasin’ The Trane’ to ‘Evolution’ (Live In Seattle)? And, can we track Gilmore in a comparable fashion? To the former, yes. To the latter, it’s not clear. But, there are a small handful of Gilmore solos recorded somewhere between 1962 and 1965 which suggest a direction: ‘The Rainmaker’ from When Sun Comes Out, ‘The Idea Of It All’ from When Angels Speak of Love, ‘Sketch’ from Other Planes Of There. ‘Sketch’ is arguably the most important. ‘The Idea Of It All’ is comparable but not enough people have heard it. ‘Sketch’ begins, syntactically, in areas which Coltrane and Gilmore had in common but progresses into areas where a Gilmore–Ayler comparison might be more appropriate. Coltrane had much more difficulty integrating the two approaches as he evolved towards the latter. I believe Gilmore helped show the way. Compare ‘Sketch’ to some of the work on Transition or First Meditations. Then, compare the Coltrane solo on ‘Om’ (Om) with, say, the Gilmore solo on ‘Next Stop Mars’ from the When Angels Speak Of Love album. Note how Coltrane evolved from ‘Om’ through ‘Manifestation’ and ‘Leo’ (Cosmic Music) and then to any number of performances from the 1967 quartet and duo dates. Then, go back to this Gilmore material. Do check it out.

‹ But, I said it’s not binary. Ayler is in this mix. And the dating of ‘Reflects Motion’ is even more critical to the Gilmore–Ayler relationship than it is to Gilmore–Coltrane. Is ‘Ictus’ characteristic of Gilmore’s development by 1964? Or, is it possible that the much more radical When Angels Speak Of Love album was recorded a year before, as Campbell asserts? To what extent, if any, did Ayler catalyze Gilmore’s move from ‘Jet Flight’ to ‘Reflects Motion’ and then on to ‘Cosmic Chaos’ (Heliocentric Worlds, Vol. 2) or ‘Next Stop Mars’? We know that Ayler was an influence on Coltrane. So, the dynamic begins to get really complicated.

‹ And, it doesn’t end there. The Gilmore–Coltrane scenarios have obscured another musical relationship where the lines of influence are, in my opinion, even clearer: John Gilmore and Pharoah Sanders. Pharoah’s ESP date (Pharoah's First) is relatively straightforward post-Trane, but the Sun Ra recording (Featuring Pharoah Sanders And Black Harold) made a little later in the year reveals a player with a fully developed alternative to Ayler. And, the unissued recording with Don Cherry from January 1964 has Pharoah playing in a manner that sounds like a cross between ‘Ictus’ and what we would later hear from Dewey Redman. Listen, for example, to ‘Sketch’ against Pharoah’s solo on the first take of ‘Ascension’ (‘Ascension (edition I)’). Listen to Gilmore on ‘Cosmic Chaos’ and then listen to Pharoah use that same leaping altissimo figure (to substantially different effect) on ‘The Father The Son And The Holy Ghost’ (Meditations) and ‘Sparkle Plenty’ (Symphony For Improvisers). On the other hand, listen to Pharoah’s influence on Coltrane (the influence going the other way is patently evident), for example, on the unissued broadcast title from Seattle or the Coltrane solo from the 1965 Down Beat festival. Per the latter, is that a Pharoah influence in the high note work or is it Gilmore? Or, is it Gilmore once removed through Pharoah? Or, Ayler once removed through Gilmore? Or, is Trane hearing his own innovations, namely ‘Chasin’ The Trane’, back through the players who used them as a starting point?

‹ Multipolar. What is it the post-modernists speak of? Intertextuality? Slippage and play? I assert there is no simple ‘Gilmore influence on Trane’. There is, rather, the still untold story of the evolution of the tenor saxophone after bop. A chapter, a book. No doubt that’s what it will take.

‹ Regarding whether Albert Ayler is completely one-of-a-kind, this is only true if ‘Reflects Motion’ turns out not to be from 1962. If Campbell’s dating proves to be correct, then this has to be rethought. If you have not heard ‘Reflects Motion’, consider if the dating of ‘Ictus’ was 1962 rather than 1964. Again, the issue is that we cannot establish that ‘Ictus’ is really where Gilmore was in 1964. If When Angels Speak of Love was really recorded in 1963, you have Gilmore coming on strong with fully developed Aylerisms, possibly before he could have heard Ayler using them. I still have questions about the 1963 date, but it certainly raises some critical questions. Perhaps, complications are simply a matter of the number of people involved. I’m simply saying that, in part because of Gilmore’s obscurity, and in part because the sui generis bit provides a basis for decontextualizing Ayler, the influences circa 1962–1964 have yet to be clearly delineated.

‹ I think it is possible – in fact, necessary – to discuss Ayler from within the jazz tradition in the same way one might discuss Sonny Rollins. And, I think it is impossible to explain what happened in jazz after 1964 or thereabouts, particularly with saxophonists, without reference to Ayler, who I think is the most important influence after Trane, both chronologically and substantively. Further, I think that influence plays out like the influence of, say, Dexter Gordon or Ben Webster, and it does not lie outside of the boundaries of what we understand to be jazz.

‹ It may be of some interest in this regard to point out that Gilmore and Ayler overlapped in Paul Bley’s band in early 1964. Ayler replaced Gilmore, and Sunny Murray replaced Paul Motion in the band that Bley recorded in March 1964 on a record titled Turning Point. At some point during the transition, in rehearsals or actual gigs…or both…Ayler and Gilmore played in tandem over a rhythm section of Bley, Gary Peacock and probably Murray. Bley discusses this in his autobiography, but there is a somewhat more extensive discussion in the April 1, 1979 issue of Coda (#166). There is also reference to it in the John Gilmore interview in Graham Lock’s ‘Chasin’ The Vibration’. ›

– Ed Rhodes