https://www.discogs.com/master/37368-John-Coltrane-Quartet-Crescent
Annotations: Nat Hentoff
In all of the writing – much of it bewilderingly contentious – about John Coltrane, his diversity of moods and the scope of his emotional range have often been overlooked. There are many Coltranes because, as he once pointed out, “an artist of ability may lead you down paths in music where many things can happen.” In addition, for example, to the fiercely searching, turbulently complicated Coltrane, there is the soloist-writer who focuses on reflective order, distilling his emotions into carefully shaped structures.
The introspective Coltrane has been in evidence in the past in such of his tender vignettes as Naima and Syeeda’s Song Flute. Since then, as Coltrane has written more and has developed a surer sense of how to adapt to his improvisational concerns to his compositions, his pieces have deepened in impact – as this album demonstrates with particular clarity. Coltrane prepared for this session for several months and the result is a chance for the listener to get an especially full-scaled impression of what could be called the more thoughtful, the more meditative elements of Coltrane’s musical temperament. It is as if this album is a summation of Coltrane’s present stage of self-exploration – a gathering together of his current attempts to fulfill his credo. “The main thing a musician would like to do,” Coltrane has observed, “is to give a picture to the listener of the many wonderful things he knows of and senses in the universe.”
In everything he does, Coltrane is fundamentally a lyrical musician. Ornette Coleman recently said that Coltrane “is the most lyrical player I ever heard.” And it is disciplined lyricism which pervades much of this album. The opening Crescent, for instance, begins with a contemplative theme which Coltrane then elaborates and intensifies, but throughout there is the sense of his authoritative command of his material as well as of his horn.
It has always been inexplicable to me that any critic could speak of Coltrane as “anti-jazz” when he has so often demonstrated how deeply rooted he is in jazz traditions. Not only in the blues but also in the quality of utterly unabashed delicacy and intimacy which are reflected in the way he sketches the portrait of Wise One. There are, to be sure, some jazzmen who are constantly engaged in careening technical exhibitionism or in self-conscious avant-gard-ism as a mask for their inability to be meaningfully simple when the occasion demands. But Coltrane, as Wise One demonstrates, is not one of them. He has the maturity and the degree of self-reflection and self-knowledge to be basic. It should also be noted that by now, his colleagues – Elvin Jones, Jimmy Garrison and McCoy Tyner – have become so sensitized to him and to each other that they move through Coltrane’s moos with a unity of feeling and subtle interplay of complementary ideas which make this one of the most organically fused combos in current jazz.
Another index of variegated moods of Coltrane is the brightly swinging Bessie’s Blues in which McCoy Tyner again demonstrates his skills as a crisp,. enlivening, economical soloist. In Lonnie’s Lament, the probing element of Coltrane’s lyricism recurs; and in the course of the number, Jimmy Garrison reveals his own growth as a soloist in an intriguingly developed, markedly personal solo.
The Drum Thing is, of course, a forum for Elvin Jones, one of the most resourceful of all jazz drummers and one whose irrepressible inventiveness makes him exactly the right choice for a Coltrane combo. After the oddly sinuous and wistful theme, Jones constructs a fascinatingly cohesive and yet continually unpredictable solo. As Ralph Gleason has noted about Jones’ playing – both in the rhythm section and as a soloist – it is his “ability to state the fundamental pulse so strongly that it runs the length of the tune without possibly ever being explicitly stated again while a whole superstructure of rhythms, sounds and contrasts of timbres is played on top of it that marks Elvin Jones as a member of the elite of percussion.”
The only predictable assessment of Coltrane is that he will keep on changing. He is always, he has said, searching. “I don’t know what I’m looking for,” Coltrane has added, “something that hasn’t been played before. I don’t know what it is. I know I’ll have that feeling when I get it.” This album represents, as I’ve noted, a summing-up time, a survey from inside of certain musical values which Coltrane found to be what he was looking for at this particular time of his career. It also re-emphasizes Coltrane’s expressive power as a composer and it further underlines the fact that Coltrane’s lyricism – when he is in a recollecting mood – is as direct and as free of posturing as is the best of the lyrical lineage in jazz.
Above all else, Coltrane is an honest musician and accordingly, he is never afraid of his feelings. At times, they roar forth, in a spiral of yearning and searching. At other times, they are softer but no less open and penetrating. John Coltrane’s autobiography in jazz continues to be one of the most consistent absorbing musical documents of these decades.