America is celebrating the centennial of jazz giant John Coltrane this year. And in Detroit, the visionary saxophonist, composer, and bandleader’s legacy is thriving.
Coltrane was a frequent presence on the city’s stages alongside veterans like Donald Byrd after World War II – the golden age of bebop – and made some of his most compelling music in the company of legendary drummer Elvin Jones, a native of Pontiac. But John Coltrane’s deepest tie to the city is his marriage in 1965 to multi-instrumentalist, composer, spiritual seeker, and Detroiter Alice Coltrane (née McLeod).
In Andy Beta’s new biography, Cosmic Music: the Life, Art, and Transcendence of Alice Coltrane, Detroit is the backdrop for Alice’s formative period studying at Cass Tech’s famed music program, her work in gospel settings, and her adult years on Detroit stages.
“She is a historical part of the Detroit jazz music scene,” said Beta, speaking to Stateside about the mind-bogglingly rich environment that nurtured Alice Coltrane.
“John Lee Hooker was recording not far from where she lives. Berry Gordy, the future founder of Motown, is her next door neighbor, and [their] families are very close through most of her life.” Beta says he gained an understanding for Alice Coltrane’s work through Detroit jazz history: her half-brother Ernie Farrow played with Yusef Lateef, and “the people who were kind of just before her, like the harpist Dorothy Ashby, and another bebop pianist Terry Pollard, who was very much a mentor and a big sister to [Coltrane]. She's the one who gives the family the first piano, and sets Alice on this path.”
John Coltrane had been performing in Detroit for about a decade when he met Alice McLeod in the early 1960s. She joined his band at the keyboard, and their mutual interest in the divine gave rise to some of Coltrane’s most memorable compositions, like A Love Supreme. Beta said Alice Coltrane also deserves credit for Coltrane’s position in American culture.
“We're celebrating John Coltrane's centennial and the legacy of John Coltrane,” he said. “And that's all due to the work that she did in the wake of his passing. Of making sure that his legacy lived on, that his catalog lived on. There [are] at least a dozen records that of his that saw release because of her curation and her dedication, to say nothing of the John Coltrane Festivals that she put on through the ‘80s and ‘90s.”
In later years, after her husband's death, Beta said, Alice Coltrane moved West, immersing herself in Eastern religion, and founding an ashram. Adopting the name Swamini Turiyasangitananda, her music ventured into previously unexplored sonic territory, beyond the strictures of straight-ahead jazz.
Beta’s affecting treatment of Alice Coltrane’s life and music deliver a revitalized appreciation for an artist who faced down multiple personal and professional challenges, while staying true to her personal journey. While in her lifetime, critics often dismissed her work, her role as a forerunner in jazz and pop gets its due in this telling.
A week of events celebrating John Coltrane’s centennial culminate with a free concert in Detroit’s Campus Martius Park this Wednesday, September 23 from 6:30 p.m. - 9 p.m.
Also on Wednesday, Andy Beta will discuss Cosmic Music: the Life, Art, and Transcendence of Alice Coltrane, in a digital event for Detroit Public Library at 6 p.m.
