lf. Pg. 5Coltrane?s belief was that Jazz relies heavily on improvisation. He was known to solo for forty five minutes at a time. One of the interesting things is the same piece might be unrecognizable when he played it month later. The best way to understand Coltrane is to listen to his music. Coltrane broke the jazz sound barrier with his restless experimentation and improvisations, his flamboyant free style of playing drove many listeners away. Joel Dorn describes in The Last Giant: The John Coltrane Anthology;?It's hard to realize, if you weren't there, the size of the controversy that whirled around John Coltrane and his music in the late '50s and early '60s. You either dug Trane or you didn't. They tacked that same shadow on Monk. But it was Trane who really stirred 'em up. Trane's music drove critics, fans, even musicians into violently pro- or con-Coltrane camps. I remember seeing guys coming to blows over his music. The fact that he was not even remotely involved in the controversy, just the music, increased its intensity. ?Other examples of Coltranes demeanor and style could be summed here by Mike Zwerin; ?He (Coltrane) disliked being restricted by any sort of rules whatsoever. He told Wayne Shorter that he was trying to learn how to start in the middle of a sentence and move in both directions at the same time. About Schoenberg's 12-note system, he said: "Damn the rules. It's the feeling that counts. You play all 12 notes anyway." A quote that I personally feel that exemplifies Coltrane?s music and style would have to be one by Dawn Severson;?The frequently mentioned dichotomy between Trane's fiery, explosive musicianship and his quiet, gentle demeanor existed in the midst of this multiplicity, surrounded by the controversies among the critics, whose portraits of Trane ranged from that of a blasphemous perpetrator of "anti-jazz" to that of a Pg. 6musician whose career as saxophone soloist, bandleader, and composer defined (...
