How did I get hear? #14 - Jeremy Toy on John Coltrane's "Coltrane Live At Birdland"

In the early 2000’s Martin Winch had just released “Espresso Guitar” and I was playing in melodic hardcore bands and freaky free jazz funk bands, so it is safe to say that at my guitar lessons with him we were at either pole.

 

I was struggling with rudimentary Jazz of the stage 2 Auckland University Jazz education programme because what I was being forced to play sounded nothing like the guitarists I was raised on - George Benson, Barney Kessel, Grant Green or Kenny Burrell. Lessons were a struggle because I wanted to go 100km an hour but was forced to wait at road works traffic stop while the boxes were ticked.

 

Martin, being the very empathetic person he was, felt my pain but, also being the guitar Yoda he was, knew I needed to wait at the traffic stop for some much needed mindfulness. There is one lesson in particular that sticks in my mind. I was firing a myriad of questions at Martin about how, when I was forced to use chord tones 1,3,5, b7 over a dominant 7 chord, I never sounded even remotely like John Scofield.

 

Instead of answering me Martin, disappeared upstairs (I’m assuming he let out a tiny frustrated scream into a pullover) and came back with an album on record. It was John Coltrane’s “Coltrane Live at Birdland”. His selling point to me was how important that live recording on side A was as a time capsule of where Coltrane and his band was at in that period.

But far greater than side A was side B, as it had a studio recording of Coltrane’s composition Alabama, composed and performed as a response to the 16th street Baptist Church bombing in Alabama. The bombing was by ku-klux klan member. They killed 4 Black girls - Addie Mae Collins (14), Cynthia Wesley (14), Carole Robertson (14), and Carol Denise McNair (11) - say their names, send a prayer for them.


(photo by http://www.holyangels.com/images/church.bombing.girls.ap.jpg)

 

Martin put side B on while we sat there, listened to "Alabama" then discussed the intense feeling of the song, the ability for Coltrane, Jimmy Garrison, Elvin Jones and McCoy Tyner to express emotion so well that it was impossible not to feel the music. I went home from the lesson and straight to the record store and bought that record - yes, it was there waiting for me in the Coltrane section.

 

I’ve elaborated here for the sake of a good story, our conversation about the record was more like Martin saying “check this out, the whole band is together, what a feeling!” and then myself saying most probably something like “oh wow” but internally we both knew exactly what was going on.

 

Through this record I was once again reminded of the Black American experience, and the drive artists have to convey what is happening socially in their own personal way via their art. From blues to hip hop, this is the essence that keeps the music moving forward. And it goes almost without saying, in parallel with incredible control of the artist's chosen instrument.

 

I never did get the hang of a dominant 7 chord, but I feel every note.

More about Jeremy here at his Leonard Charles Records website