A centennial celebration of John Coltrane

**Terry Gross** (0:00)
This is Fresh Air, I'm Terry Gross. The jazz saxophonist and composer John Coltrane was born 100 years ago. The centennial is September 23rd, and the celebration includes concerts, album reissues, and a new book of Coltrane photos edited by my guest Ravi Coltrane, the son of John and Alice Coltrane. Ravi is a highly regarded tenor saxophone player and composer who was recorded as a leader and in other bands. The book is titled Coltrane, The Definitive Visual Celebration of the Legend. And it includes an introduction by Ravi and several essays, including ones by Patti Smith, Carlos Santana, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and Phil Lesh. The Coltrane family is organizing some of the centennial events and overseeing the estates of Ravi's parents, John and Alice Coltrane. John Coltrane is one of the most influential musicians in the history of jazz. He was famous for his early recordings of Miles Davis' band, his transcendent ballads from the Great American Songbook, his modal music, his spiritual music, for popularizing the soprano saxophone in jazz with his recording of My Favorite Things, and for avant-garde free jazz like no one had heard before.
To quote what the late jazz critic Francis Davis wrote in The New York Times, full disclosure, Francis was my husband, Coltrane has come to stand for a disciplined mindset, a desire for spiritual ecstasy, a vision of music as ritual, and of performance as a holy rite. That's R-I-T-E.
Depending on what a listener wants from it, Coltrane's music is a cry for black liberation, the soundtrack of a spiritual quest, a backdrop for tripping, or the next evolutionary step for jazz after bebop. Unquote.
Alice Coltrane, Ravi's mother, was a pianist and harpist who played on John's final albums, recorded many albums under her own name, turned to Vedanta spirituality, and founded an ashram in LA.
Ravi Coltrane, welcome to Fresh Air. Congratulations on the book. I want to start with something from your father's ballads album, because I just think that album is gorgeous and so beautiful that it sounds a little spiritual to me, because it sounds kind of transcendent.

**Ravi Coltrane** (2:24)
Yes, absolutely.

**Terry Gross** (2:25)
Where do you see this album's fitting into your father's body of work before we hear a song from it?

**Ravi Coltrane** (2:32)
Well, first of all, thank you Terry for the invitation. It's an honor and pleasure to be speaking with you today.

**Terry Gross** (2:37)
It's a pleasure to have you.

**Ravi Coltrane** (2:39)
And yes, I think that album, it really displays his tone, his sound. And I think that all of the songs are very beautiful.
His interpretation of them, sonically, I mean, I think that's really where the record really gets its power from. His tone alone, you won't hear a saxophone, a tenor saxophone sound quite this beautiful on any recording. It's something to marvel at.

**Terry Gross** (3:11)
It has this uplift to it. I don't mean that it's uplifting, but his tone always sounds like it's kind of rising.

**Ravi Coltrane** (3:18)
Yes, it carries us. It carries the listener, really.

**Terry Gross** (3:21)
So let's hear You Don't Know What Love Is from John Coltrane's Ballads album.
So that was from John Coltrane's Ballads album, and we heard Elvin Jones on drums, McCoy Tyner piano, and Jimmy Garrison bass. So you just edited a collection of photos of your father, and there are a lot of iconic photos in there. You've looked at photos of him throughout your life. Do you look at his photos in the hopes of finding out more about who he was, but also who you are? And do you ever look at his photos and then look at your face in the mirror and see, like, if you can tell that you're his son?

**Ravi Coltrane** (5:24)
Well, I've been told throughout my life how much I favor my father, and, you know, at this point I've outlived my father by about 20 years. You know, he passed away at 40 I turned 61 this year.
And I think, especially with this photo book, you know, it was a real opportunity for me to, you know, not only seeing these iconic photographs that we all know, but, I mean, seeing a brand-new photograph for the first time, it's enlightening and elevating, you know.

**Terry Gross** (6:05)
Some people thought of Coltrane as having, of being divine himself. And there was, actually, I'm not sure if it still exists or not, there was a Coltrane Church in San Francisco called St. John's.

**Ravi Coltrane** (6:22)
Yeah, St. John the Divine.

**Terry Gross** (6:24)
Yeah, and the John was for John Coltrane. And there was even, like, a painting in the church of Coltrane as if it was, like, one of those...