Signifyin(G) with the Dead Musical Memorialization and Consolation at John Coltrane’S Funeral

Signifyin(g) with the Dead Musical memorialization and consolation at John Coltrane’s funeral Kevin Laskey MUS 507 Professor Keith Johnston December 8, 2014 On July 17, 1967, tenor saxophonist John Coltrane died of liver cancer at Huntington Hopsital in Huntington, New York. He was forty years old. Coltrane was arguably the central figure of the rapidly-evolving New York jazz scene at the time, and his death came as a shock to the musical community. Trumpeter Miles Davis, one of Coltrane’s former bandleaders, said, "Coltrane's death… took everyone by surprise. I knew he hadn't looked too good... But I didn't know he was that sick—or even sick at all.”1 Coltrane’s funeral would be held four days later at St. Peter’s Lutheran Church on Lexington Avenue and 54th street in Manhattan. St. Peter’s was an ideal setting for the funeral, as under the leadership of pastor John Garcia Gensel, the church had embraced New York’s diverse jazz community through a “jazz ministry” founded in 1964.2 Reporters estimated that nearly one thousand people filled the church for the service, including a who’s who of New York jazz musicians: Dizzy Gillespie, Max Roach, Gerry Mulligan, Archie Shepp, Milt Jackson, and Nina Simone, to name a few.3 The service featured readings, including friend and trumpeter Calvin Massey reciting Coltrane’s poem “A Love Supreme,” and musical performances by Coltrane’s saxophonist-peers Albert Ayler and Ornette Coleman.4 Ayler’s quartet, featuring Donald Ayler on trumpet, Richard Davis on bass, and Milford Graves on drums, opened the ceremony, while Coleman’s quartet, featuring David Izenson and Charlie Haden on bass, and Charles Moffett on drums, played just 1 Qtd in. Lewis Porter, John Coltrane: His Life in Music, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999, p. 290. 2 St. Peter’s commitment to serving the jazz community in New York has continued to the present day, as it continually hosts jazz vespers and jazz memorial services. See http://saintpeters.org/your-church/story/ for more information. 3 Ben Ratliff, Coltrane: The Story of a Sound, New York: MacMillan, 2008, p. 175. 4 Program from John Coltrane’s funeral, July 21, 1967. A digital copy can be found at http://illogicalcontraption.blogspot.com/2010/11/albert-ayler-at-john-coltranes-funeral.html. before the benediction.5 Both of these incendiary performances were captured on portable recording equipment—albeit with fairly low fidelity—and were eventually released on record.6 Befitting his overarching influence on the direction of jazz in the 1960s, Coltrane’s funeral was the largest public memorial service for a jazz musician to date.7 As evidenced by the range of musicians who came to the service, Coltrane played a major role in shaping several strains of modern jazz—bop (as on his 1959 album Giant Steps), modal jazz (as on his 1961 album My Favorite Things and 1965 album A Love Supreme), and free jazz (on his later albums like 1966’s Ascension). His influence could be heard in players from across the stylistic spectrum, and yet he was still in arguably the prime of his career. Egged on by Coltrane’s inveterate searching for new ways of playing, jazz was quickly becoming an accepted form of art and experimental music.8 How could one properly and publicly memorialize such a central figure in the jazz world—a task with very few prior antecedents? Because of Coltrane’s musical stature and the public nature of his funeral, the performances by Albert Ayler and Ornette Coleman have the power to establish the conventions of a modern jazz requiem. In this paper, I will show how these performances do in fact set conventions for a proper modern jazz memorial, articulating how the jazz community should both honor the dead and console the living. Through a process of musical integration, Coleman’s 5 Ibid. 6 Ayler’s performance can be found on the compilation Holy Ghost: Rare & unissued recordings (1962-1970), released by Revenant Records in 2004, while Coleman’s performance was originally released under the title “Holiday for a Graveyard,” on the album Head Start by the Bob Thiele Emergency on Flying Dutchman Records in 1969. Thiele was a close personal friend of Coltrane and had produced many of Coltrane’s albums for Impulse Records. See http://destination-out.com/?p=2372. 7 While Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington would receive larger public displays of mourning, they lived until 1971 and 1974, respectively. 8 New England Conservatory would create the first degree-granting jazz program at a major classical conservatory just two years later in 1969. See http://necmusic.edu/archives/gunther- schuller. and Ayler’s performances establish a unique mode of jazz mourning that is situated between traditional and modernist notions of mourning. Ayler and Coleman memorialize Coltrane not through imitation or pale attempts at resurrection, but by organically integrating aspects of Coltrane’s playing into their own distinct styles. In addition, both performances simultaneously console the audience and acknowledge the impossibility of true and complete consolation by integrating both traditional hymn-like materials and conventions of New Orleans jazz funerals into a more abstract, avant-garde milieu. Analyzing Ayler’s and Coleman’s performances Because of the lack of scholarly attention paid to these performances, it is important to start with a basic musical analysis of each. These analyses will establish the basis for my discussion of the modes of mourning that the performances suggest. By the summer of 1967, Albert Ayler had established himself as an enfant terrible of New York’s burgeoning avant-garde jazz scene. He had a big, burly sound on tenor saxophone that was evocative of bluesy swing-era players like Coleman Hawkins, but with an intensity turned up to eleven. His broad vibrato went beyond the confines of good taste into the territory of a buzz saw. He was interested in simple, hummable melodies, but would stretch them to their breaking point, rarely playing against a solid, swinging beat. With this controversial approach to music, Ayler had a difficult time finding opportunities to perform and record. However, his music caught the ear of John Coltrane, who would become Ayler’s most prominent artistic supporter—Coltrane helped Ayler sign a recording contract with Coltrane’s label, Impulse. Ayler would in turn influence Coltrane’s later moves toward free improvisation and emphasizing tone quality over melodic syntax. To open Coltrane’s funeral, Ayler would play a short medley of three original tunes. The first tune—“Love Cry”—was a relatively new tune that Ayler would record later that summer for Impulse.9 The next two, “Truth is Marching In” and “Our Prayer” (the latter composed by his trumpet-playing brother Donald), were standards in the Ayler repertoire. Both tunes had been recorded live at the Village Vanguard in Greenwich Village that previous December and released by Impulse earlier in 1967.10 “Love Cry” takes up the first minute and forty-four seconds of the recorded medley. Ayler plays a somber, searching melody in B-flat major over a bass drone and frenetic cymbal textures. At the ends of phrases, Donald Ayler adds little cadential ornamentations. The music is reminiscent of a spiritual, or a Muslim call to prayer, helping bring those present into a state of meditation. However, the rhythmic energy of the drums and Ayler’s own pleading tone subvert the calmness typically associated with these musical styles, creating a surprisingly unsettling ambience. At the 1:44 mark, the key shifts to D major, marking the transition to the second number of the medley, “Truth is Marching In.” The droning, meditative feel is replaced by traditional hymn-like contours and harmonies. Both Albert and Donald Ayler play a sort of messy chorale at a dirge tempo. While Donald holds onto the central melody, Albert flits around the trumpet line, sometimes playing straight harmonies in rhythmic unison, sometimes adding contrapuntal fills and commentary. Milford Graves raises the piece’s energy to a new level from the drums while maintaining the shimmering, unsettled feel of the opening section. At the 3:09 mark, Donald Ayler begins the melody of “Our Prayer,” which has the same hymn-like feel as “Truth is Marching In,” and is in the same key of D major. However, in this tune, there are fewer melodic 9 “Albert Ayler—Love Cry,” AllMusic Guide, http://www.allmusic.com/album/love-cry- mw0000273769 10 “Albert Ayler—In Greenwich Village,” AllMusic Guide, http://www.allmusic.com/album/in- greenwich-village-mw0000653878. John Coltrane was in the audience for this concert. notes held for longer periods of time, creating more space for Albert to comment on the melody. Albert’s lines have a strong sense of directionality, moving gradually upward note-by-note, rather than circling around a single pitch, or jumping across the range of his horn. His tone has an increasingly lamenting quality; his melodic phrases become literal embodiments of sighs. Suddenly at the 5:26 mark, Albert Ayler moves back to playing melodic material in B- flat major, very much in the vein of the “Love Cry” melody. Donald responds with a line that jumps between tonic and dominant, re-establishing the meditative mode of the opening section. Over this line, Albert begins to scream-sing, sometimes hitting discernible notes, other times unleashing more complex noise. Ayler’s vocalizations simultaneously evoke both terror and joy, inspiring the rest of the band to bring their improvisations to a fever pitch. Ayler then brings the saxophone back to his mouth and cues the band to fade with a plaintive “Amen” melodic resolution at 6:15.

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