John Coltrane
The Olatunji Concert: The Last Live Recording
[Impulse!; 2001]
Rating: 10.0
"He not busy being born is busy dying."
- Bob Dylan, "It's Alright Ma, I'm Only Bleeding"
"Live flesh and coursing blood, hearts, brains, souls spluttering fire!"
-LeRoi Jones, "Black Art"
April 23rd, 1967. John Coltrane appears for his penultimate public performance
before a crowd at Babatunde Olatunji's Center for African Culture in New York
City. Three months later, liver cancer would claim his life. He would play
once more in front of a live crowd, but the last available live recording is
documented here. On this set, he's bolstered by drummer Rashied Ali, bassist
Jimmy Garrison, pianist Alice Coltrane, Pharaoh Sanders on tenor sax and Algie
Dewitt on bata drum (a Yoruba instrument). For legions of jazz aficionados
around the globe, this final live document is something of a Holy Grail. And
now, thanks to sound engineer Bernard Drayton (who still had possession of the
master tapes), anyone with $15 can finally get their mitts on one of the most
historic documents in all of 20th century American music.
Coltrane spent the last years of his life engaged in a mission that few could
understand. As witnessed on A Love Supreme and other recordings during
those later years, his ultimate objective was that of a continued spiritual
awakening. Whereas the objective itself was not that difficult to grasp,
Coltrane's means of attaining it were far from conventional. Abandoning the
preconceived notions of tonality, and immersed within a musical state of
dissonance, Coltrane's music became a communicative attempt at reaching a higher
plane.
Spawned during one of the most tumultuous eras in history, Coltrane's ideas were
reflective of a period in which the foundations of American life trembled to the
core. Influenced by the nation's entrenchment in war, its social and political
upheavals, and its civil rights and protest movements, John's music deserted
almost any semblance of traditional form in a move toward celestial harmony and
universality. In the early months of 1967, faced not just with the chaos of
society, Coltrane waged his own personal war with death and his music again
shifted. What's documented here is that personal warfare, replete with bursting
explosions and a splattering of machine-gun notes.
No sooner than Billy Taylor can introduce John as "one of the most remarkable
forces in jazz today," Coltrane comes up front and center on "Ogunde," opening
the set with a warm, bluesy moan. But this is only temporary. Almost immediately,
the rest of the band in tow, Coltrane embarks on a trans-dimensional flight,
bleating and coaxing sounds from his sax, and escalating at a fever pace to the
highest register with guttural whoops and hollers. "Ogunde," based on the
Afro-Brazilian song "Ogunde Varere," is an almost thirty-minute wall of
dissonance, peppered with shrieks and howls. It's as if Coltrane is expending
every imaginable source of personal energy here to create a swirling maelstrom
of noise.
Coltrane and Sanders swap solos: John rips out with a weeping wail before
ascending into a full-blown shriek attack; Pharoah begins playfully, reeling off
a fiery solo, dancing around a theme, and then descending into a grunt-filled
rage. Ali focuses on polyrhythms and spacial dancing, consistently adding
dimensions and crossing barriers, taking the band into something otherworldly,
while Garrison's bass remains muscular, anchoring the sound and expanding the
framework. Alice Coltrane's percussive plonks and thuds drift in and out of
the background before she rolls out her own deft solo, scrambling around the
melody and filling the space rapidly with sixteenth notes while the saxophonists
quietly wait for their scorching return. Soon, Coltrane roars back in, the band
following on his comet's tail. Coltrane and Sanders successively spit out
anguished yelps while the band soars into wraithlike dimensions, teetering on
the precipice of a volcanic eruption. From here, the track remains full-throttle
until it ends with Coltrane and Sanders invoking the spiritual via an ecstatic
rite of fire.
After Coltrane humbly gives his thanks to the elated audience, Jimmy Garrison
steps into the spotlight for a lengthy bass solo that introduces Rodgers and
Hammerstein's "My Favorite Things." A staple of Coltrane's set since the early
60s, "My Favorite Things" had now morphed from The Sound of Music's simple
innocence into something altogether beastly and monstrous. Garrison flexes his
chops for well over seven minutes with brawn and grit, piecing together a
skeletal structure and beating the path for the others' departure into unknown
terrain.
What follows is music overflowing with such emotional and spiritual intensity
that it floods your living room. Coltrane's bleats and squeals are drenched with
a searing pain. It's like the sound of rending flesh, the tune ripped apart and
broken into sorrowful hollers and moans. With the band thundering behind them,
the two sax players are intent on dousing every inch of that NYC block with their
incendiary fury. Explosions, barking yawps, shrill high-register runs, and throaty,
rasping groans-- the place sounds like it's going to spontaneously combust.
Occasionally, there's slight recognition of the Rodgers & Hammerstein theme as
Coltrane references the motif before descending into death howls and mournful
prayer. If "Ogunde" was a full-throttled blare, "My Favorite Things" clambers
rapidly out of this realm and into permanent celestial gravitation. Coltrane
maintains velocity at this pace for nearly twenty minutes, caught in a firestorm
from which no one will walk away unscathed.
For every intent and purpose, this is difficult music. It's the demanding sound
of a man faced with impending death, yet unafraid to carry forward and remain
steadfast to his intense, singular vision of music as a universal bridge. With
every note, Coltrane chases a higher power in an attempt to transcend the
corporeal. For the unprepared listener, it might all be too much-- not only
because of the sheer intensity of noise levels or dissonance, but because this
is the sound of a man who knows every breath he draws inches him one step closer
to the grave. Yet, the sadness this evokes is overwhelmed by the pure beauty of
a man being rebirthed, recreated, and reimagined. The Last Live Recording
is a deliriously scattered mess of joy and pain, intermingled and bound up within
Coltrane's unbridled and luminescent energy. And now it stands as his parting
gesture: one last moment bursting out at the seams with elation and ferocity, an
awe-inspiring testament to life.
-Luke Buckman, October 16th, 2001