JOHN COLTRANE
Fearless Leader
Prestige
Hard to believe, but saxophonist John Coltrane’s legacy was built essentially on just ten years of work. You are reading these words, perhaps, based on those efforts; and in a magazine that prides itself on among other things, in bleeding beyond the lines of conventional musical thinking. Certainly, Coltrane’s influence continues to be felt both inside and outside of jazz (the Grateful Dead, for one, saw him as a major influence). Fearless Leader is the six-CD collection of what became 11 albums for Prestige Records from material recorded in just a little over a year and a half, between May 1957 and the end of December 1958. It was his “coming out” period as a leader, even as he remained in the employ of Miles Davis and was enjoying a brief, revelatory stint with Thelonious Monk. (Within a month, he would begin his even more explosive and equally brief tenure with Atlantic Records en route to his final, extended sprint to home plate at Impulse!)
By the time you read this, John Coltrane will have been dead for almost 40 years, that ten-year period beginning as the last of the recordings here are made. Fearless Leader is the most accessible Coltrane-as-leader available. Its many tracks are, by and large, standards, both ballads as well as reinvented burners. The first two and a half discs’ worth of material are recorded in mono, the remaining music heard in stereo, oddly enough echoing the gradual emergence of a sound more relaxed, intricate and personal. One of the many treats here is the presence of pianist Red Garland and bassist Paul Chambers on most tunes. Both members of the same Miles Davis unit with Coltrane, their contributions approximate Coltrane’s, as the leader gives them ample solo space. (Another Davis band member, drummer Jimmy Cobb, appears on disc 5.) Others on board include trumpeters Freddie Hubbard, Donald Byrd, Wilbur Harden and Johnny Splawn; a variety of name drummers but with Art Taylor heard most often; among others. But the feel overall is one of a Coltrane quartet sound (with delightful trio spots), despite the occasional added horns, intimating that this was his preferred style and one he would utilize most often until the end of his life.
The songs? Spread across such classic albums as Black Pearls, Lush Life, Traneing In, The Believer, Soultrane and his debut album Coltrane, we hear definitive versions of songs by Cole Porter, Jule Styne, Jimmy Van Heusen and Irving Berlin, among others. There’s an early take of what would become a Coltrane staple, Billy Eckstine’s “I Want to Talk About You,” “While My Lady Sleeps,” “You Leave Me Breathless,” “Come Rain or Come Shine,” “Lover Come Back to Me,” “Stardust,” “Time After Time” and Coltrane’s “Slowtrane,” “Black Pearls” and “Straight Street,” among many others. And while I enjoy the uptempo material where his “sheets of sound” are on display, it’s the slower, more beautiful renditions where John Coltrane really makes the deepest impressions overall.
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