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John Coltrane
Looking back across the turn of the decade to the waning
of the Sixties, it's unmistakable that the great watershed, the
supreme musical turning point, was the release of Miles Davis '
In A Silent Way album. Although the advances that that
record made possible really began with its predecessors like
Filles de Kilamanjaro, In A Silent Way brought a new direction
to a whole generation of musicians. Incorporating elements of
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rock, electronic music, centuries old folk song with traditional
jazz and previous Miles music, the influence of that album and
its successors, such as Bitches Brew, has been so vast that it
probably can t be measured for years. For a time it seemed as
’
if every band in the world was trying out its chops on the new
Miles riffs (which pianist Joe Zawinul, late of Weather Report,
had as much to do with creating as Miles himself) and you
almost began to wonder if the brilliance of the Davis- Zawinul
feat hadn’t had the same ironically deleterious effect on lesser
musicians that Charlie Parker had in the Fifties. Now, however,
things have begun to level off, and musicians everywhere are
applying what they’ve learned from Silent Way and its further
definitions to the forging of their own songs.
A musician with a British rock background who played
with Miles and has made a strong impact on his own is John
McLaughlin. His first album with the Tony Williams Lifetime
(a group led by arguably the best drummer in the world, and
one who deserves to be heard more in ’72) appeared around
the same time as Silent Way, on which he also played. Since
departing both Miles and Williams, McLaughlin has formed his
own band, the Mahavishnu Orchestra, which plays a highly
spiritual, highly energized brand of music, beyond stereotypes
of “jazz ” and “rock. ” Its power must be heard to be believed.
There are many people who think this man is already the
single most influential guitarist of the ’70s.
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The spirituality that marks McLaughlin s work is a theme
—
running through a great deal of the jazz played in the last few
years some of it rather naive and pretentious, most of it
both profound and musically apposite. In a very real sense,
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John Coltrane was the father of this - in such albums as A 5
Love Supreme, Meditations and Ascension he reached levels of ~
personal and musical transcendence that can be called cosmic ?
without embarassment. His wife Alice has kept the spirit of his 5
music alive in her own, as has his onetime sideman Pharoah
s
Sanders, in a series of sweepingly beautiful albums manifesting brief Iatc- 60 ’ period of doldrums, when some people seemed
both the religious nature of Trane s legacy and an increasing to take the release of Sgt. Pepper s Lonely Hearts Club Band as
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reflection of the struggle for Black Liberation. a signal that jazz was “dead - but literally exploding. Sun Ra
"
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The twin themes of spirituality and Black liberation - or is still conducting audiences full throttle on his Nova Express,
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cross- cultural, cross racial liberation, really — infuse much of still as many light- years ahead as he was in the 50 s, except
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the new, free music of the ’70 s: perhaps most notably that of that today the audiences arc younger and more diverse than
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the firebrand tenor man Archie Shepp• , but the fusion is also ever. Barbieri has applied the rhythms of his Latin roots to
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evident in the work of Chicago s AAC! M enclave, who will be free music, with fantastic success. Joe Zawinul has moved
one of the high points of this festival for many of us, as well as from Miles through a solo album that was one of the most
Roland Kirk, Marion Brown , the late Albert Aylcr, Gary Bartz, moving records of 1971 to Weather Report, a brilliant
Charlie Haden’s Liberation Music Orchestra, Miles Davis again, aggregation whose second album lived up to their initial
and the New York Jazz Composer’s Orchestra. “supergroup hype to the point of surpassing all expectations.
”
As for Ornette himself, he has paralleled the stunning In the end, perhaps the greatest indication of the present
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brilliance of Charles Mingus’ comeback with his own, and is healthy state of the music and spirit- feel known as jazz can be
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making the finest music since his early 60 s Free Jazz album, summed up in a single sentence: Some of the musicians are
another, equally far-reaching watershed. Everywhere one actually beginning to make money.
looks, jazz is not merely healthy - in contradiction to the Lester Bangs
November, 1972 79