by Lori Lakin Hutcherson (@lakinhutcherson)
In today’s Daily Drop, for #JazzAppreciationMonth we offer a quote from jazz legend and pioneer, the unparalleled saxophonist, composer and musician, North Carolina native John Coltrane. To hear it (and more on Coltrane), press PLAY:
You can follow or subscribe to the Good Black News Daily Drop Podcast through Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, rss.com or create your own RSS Feed. Or just check it out every day here on the main website. Full transcript below:
Hey, this Lori Lakin Hutcherson, founder and editor in chief of goodblacknews.org, here to share with you a daily drop of Good Black News for Sunday, April 3rd, 2022, based on the “A Year of Good Black News Page-A-Day Calendar” published by Workman Publishing.
Today, we offer a quote from jazz legend and pioneer, the unparalleled saxophonist, composer and musician, John Coltrane:
“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.”
It makes complete poetic sense that the name of the band John Coltrane played in while enlisted in the U.S. Navy was the Melody Masters.
With Johnny Hodges and Dexter Gordon as musical heroes and from a young age in thrall to big band music and its emerging successor, bebop, a young Coltrane dedicated himself to hours upon hours upon hours of practice, gigging whenever and wherever he could, and learning from whoever he could learn from.
Coltrane mastered and some even say transcended what was understood or known about the structure and composition of jazz music in the 1950s and 60s. After stints working with and learning from Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk and Ornette Coleman, among others, Coltrane began creating and recording with his own band.
Not only could Coltrane reimagine, reinvigorate and repopularize standards such as My Favorite Things, he composed the bulk of classic works such as Blue Train, Giant Steps, and his undisputed masterpiece recorded one day in 1965, A Love Supreme.
Coltrane passed in 1967 but his music and legacy live on.
In 1995, the United States Postal Service created a commemorative John Coltrane postage stamp and in 1997, the Grammys honored him with a Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2001, the National Endowment for the Arts chose “My Favorite Things” for its list of 360 Songs of the Century, and in 2007, Coltrane was awarded a Pulitzer Prize as a Special Citation for a lifetime of innovative and influential work.
To learn more about Coltrane, check out the official website johncoltrane.com, which contains audio interviews with Coltrane, watch the 2016 documentary Chasing Trane, now streaming on Hulu, read Coltrane on Coltrane: The John Coltrane Interviews edited by Chris DeVito, John Coltrane: His Life and Music by Lewis Porter, visit or support the John and Alice Coltrane Home in New York, which is on the National Register of Historic Places.
And of course, perhaps most importantly, buy or stream Coltrane’s music. Links to these sources and more are provided in today’s show notes and in the episode’s full transcript posted on goodblacknews.org.
This has been a daily drop of Good Black News, based on the “A Year of Good Black News Page-A-Day Calendar for 2022,” published by Workman Publishing.
Intro and outro beats provided by freebeats.io and produced by White Hot.
Excerpts from “Blue Train,” “My Favorite Things” and “A Love Supreme, Pt. 1: Acknowledgement” performed by John Coltrane are included under fair use.
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Sources:
- https://www.johncoltrane.com/biography
- https://www.allmusic.com/artist/john-coltrane-mn0000175553
- https://www.biography.com/musician/john-coltrane
- https://www.jazzwise.com/features/article/how-john-coltrane-made-giant-steps
- https://www.gq.com/story/the-john-coltrane-record-that-made-modern-music
- https://www.jazziz.com/tag/john-coltrane/
- https://youtu.be/MXKPONrVt3c
(amazon links are paid)
