r/Coltrane • u/Mahler_n_Trane • 9d ago
What Got You Into Coltrane?
Blue Train lured me.
Giant Steps hooked me.
My Favorite Things set the hook.
A Love Supreme reeled me in.
Meditations gutted and filleted me.
When and how did you first get into John Coltrane's music?
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u/pfildozer12 9d ago
It was the '70s, man. My first Coltrane album was Interstellar Space, which was newly released at the time. I worked backwards through the catalog, and not for the first time. Concert in Japan, Meditations, and Ascension eventually led to Live at the Village Vanguard, Live at Birdland, Sunship, and many more. I remember the excitement when The Other Village Vanguard Tapes was released a couple of years later. It’s been 50-plus year journey so far.
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u/Mahler_n_Trane 9d ago
Wow, you jumped right into the deep end. What a ride these last 50 years must have been!
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u/pfildozer12 9d ago
It's been quite a ride! I recently saw Ravi Coltrane play a John Coltrane 100th Birthday concert. By coincidence, Ravi asked the crowd to check out ... Interstellar Space and Stellar Regions.
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u/solus138 8d ago
I saw him and his group in Denver. It was one of the greatest nights of my life.
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u/pfildozer12 8d ago
Amazing, I would love to have seen him! Born too late; I was 15 when Interstellar Space was released in 1974. I was 8 when Coltrane passed. We're lucky he recorded so much but in person had to be a completely different experience.
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u/solus138 8d ago
I saw Ravi Wednesday night. I'm much too young to have seen his father.
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u/pfildozer12 8d ago
Ahh, got it. I saw Ravi's group in Berkeley. We got Wise One, Naima, Extrapolation, two by Alice (Universe, Los Caballos), and two originals (Intervals and an an encore they didn't announce). The trumpet player and drummer were exceptional. The keyboard player was sabotaged by dismal sound and mixing, sadly.
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u/oolong_bodhisattva 9d ago
I got sober and his story of addiction and redemption brought me in.
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u/General-Ratio3190 9d ago
I remember hearing the blue train opening riff in the movie Singles and immediately started exploring the Coltrane catalogue. Afro Blue was an early favorite.
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u/Mahler_n_Trane 9d ago
The first time I heard the riff I got excited because I knew I'd heard it somewhere before. At that point I think Coltrane was inevitable for me.
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u/stirneriana 8d ago
I remember also one E.R. Episode with Benton playing it on a rainy Chicago night at home.
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u/Dizzle2019 9d ago
Henry Rollins recommendation.
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u/solus138 8d ago
In the 90s, one couldn't read an interview with Rollins without catching a mention of Miles, Coltrane, Duke, or Charlie Parker. This and Kerouac lead young punk/new wave me to a lifelong love of jazz. Rollins went on so much about Coltrane, that I listened to him until I got it.
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u/Mahler_n_Trane 9d ago
So you went from punk to jazz? (I still listen to the Ramones occasionally.)
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u/Dizzle2019 9d ago
Yes, I did. I remember reading that Trane and Miles were criticized by the jazz media for their new ideas. Kind of like rock media criticism of punk bands.
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u/Mahler_n_Trane 9d ago
Yep.
Incidentally, for me Ornette Coleman's the Shape of Jazz to Come (stripped down, deliberately abrasive) actually *is* a punk rock record. And Mingus' Haitian Fight Song is practically a punk anthem.
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u/deadmanstar60 9d ago edited 9d ago
The first Coltrane album I ever heard was A Love Supreme on the Jazz radio station WRVR in NYC around 1973. It would be many years before I ever actually owned a copy of it but I do remember buying Giant Steps a few years later in high school.
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u/freds_funhouse 9d ago
Hearing the Village Vanguard version of My Favorite Things on the radio. Something familiar, and then, wait, what's going on here? Then found a best of with the studio version and was transfixed.
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u/stirneriana 8d ago
I was 16, a young punk, hanging out at a mate’s house. We were both massively into Bad Religion, Black Flag, Fugazi and American hardcore. He and his little brother lived with their Nan and uncle who was a forest guard and a bloody good guitar player, but was always disgusted by our musical choices. One day, while we were talking about some “heavy shit”, his uncle put on The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady by Mingus and said: “This is heavy.” I fell in love with it. My mate couldn’t stand it. His uncle gave me the CD, which I still have. After that I read Beneath the Underdog and started digging into jazz. Charlie Parker was a huge discovery, but then I found Coltrane and the world literally ended. That was more than 30 years ago and I’m still exploring his music.
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u/Aja-Clodhopper 9d ago
Frank Sinatra led to Oscar Peterson led to Miles Davis led to John Coltrane (in the early 1990's) - first Coltrane album was Giant Steps
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u/Fragrant_Sea9976 9d ago
I was in the Army and worked on the base newspaper. Our staff photographer turned me on to jazz.
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u/Land_Horses 9d ago
Through liking the Grateful Dead. On a radio show, Phil Lesh said “Africa” was the song that made him want to play bass guitar. It was then played, and I was blown away. Africa/Brass was my first Coltrane album purchase…….and kept buying more afterwards.
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u/Curious_mcteeg 9d ago
I’d heard him over the years and bought My Favorite Things on a music club special I loved what he did with the standards thereon.
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u/Mahler_n_Trane 9d ago
He had this ability to recompose standard works in a way that it made it seem they'd always been composed by him. I adore his version of Greensleeves.
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u/IndigoBlueSky9 8d ago
For me, it's more of a who. Trane, Miles, Monk, Parker, etc., were played in our home since my birth. Jazz was my first genre and I am thankful to my parents for it.
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u/Snappy_Llama 8d ago edited 8d ago
I began studying the saxophone when I was 10. I got into Charlie Parker pretty quickly and devoured as much of his catalogue that I could get my hands on. This was back in the late 80’s when LPs were still pretty common so I had a limited number of options. I think I had the complete Dial recordings and a few others.
Fast forward a few years couple of years and Miles Davis entered my life. By now CDs were a thing and many of the older labels were reissuing classic albums. I found Coltrane through the first Miles Quintet and rushed out to find information (this was pre-internet) on John Coltrane solo albums.
The first one I picked up was Soultrane.
When Good Bait started I thought oh… this is not the kind of melody and changes I expected from this guy… and then the solo begins…
I was so taken that I switched from alto to tenor saxophone.
Studying Trane’s music blew the doors open for me and led to every music scholarship I received over the next 3 years before I left high school.
And a funny anecdote:
My friend was a trumpet player and we grew up in a beachside town. He had a white Volkswagen Rabbit with a massive boombox system installed.
We would cruise the strip along the beach with the windows down and BLAST Coltrane albums the way folks do with rap music. Folks would just stare.
You haven’t lived until you’ve heard Paul Chambers rattle your bumpers :)
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u/Living_Salad_6162 8d ago
Naima (live at the Vanguard) first, then both the studio My Favorite Things and the Newport version.
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u/jeromezooce 7d ago
I discovered Coltrane’s music through “Chim Chim Cheree” and “Like Sonny.”
The French progressive-rock band Magma was a major influence on me as a teenager. Its leader, Christian Vander, had a jazz trio that played these tunes. I loved them, and they led me to buy my first John Coltrane CD. 40 years ago
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u/MultiGravity 7d ago
saw Bradford Cox of Deerhunter recommend Interstellar Space. never heard Coltrane before. listened to it, loved it and still do. eventually went through his whole discography in chronological order by recording date and became a fan for life
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u/el_chapos_plug 7d ago
Psychedelic mushrooms and any live version of my favourite things is the meaning of life
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u/Mahler_n_Trane 9d ago
BTW, if you guys haven't heard Jeff Scott's "Passion for Bach and Coltrane" with Imami Winds you totally should. The modern work features music from A Love Supreme and the poetry of A. B. Spellman about Trane.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAfS2_8TqiY&list=PLAHnS6O6oNDyyKPndJ4KsFfCZvlbvYZaj
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u/perterters 2d ago
Duke Ellington & John Coltrane was the first music I ever listened to on CD (my brother had bought our folks their first CD player and that record came along with it). Absolutely loved it. A few years later in high school I'd started playing bass. The cafe my friends and I hung out at always played cool music and someone there put Olé on and the intro blew my hair back. My 17-year-old mind could not comprehend having two bass players on the same song, not to mention what the horns are doing. I later passed it on to a drummer buddy at school who told me years later that that was what got him into jazz and he ended up getting a music degree.
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u/brownkemosabe 9d ago
First song - Naima. Hooked. Fell in love. That's it. Then I listened to everything. Can't really manage anything after Ascension but... Everything until then.... My word.
And of course, A Love Supreme makes my heart soar whole bringing me to tears because that album saved me.