One of the things I did in the early days of my forced isolation period due to Covid was to work through a small pile of unseen jazz film dvd’s that I had gathered over time. Being far from an expert on jazz, it was pure joy to start with watching ‘Jazz on a Summer’s Day‘, the 1959 Bert Stern documentary on the 1958 jazz festival at Newport, Rhode Island. When you don’t feel all that well, this film is uplifting and magical, a cool breeze for heart and soul, a nostalgic trip! The opening tones of Thelonious Monk, Mahalia Jackson’s The Lord’s Prayer, Anita O’Day’s Sweet Georgia Brown, Louis Armstrong in duet with Jack Teagarden, Gerry Mulligan with his band and the Chico Hamilton quintet – each music item became for me a memorable moment.

William Dieterle’s 1942 film Syncopation has drawn much criticism for starting out showing all the black origins of jazz music, but then moving it into an all-white story, ending with a performance of the all-white All-American Dance Band. But nevertheless it is of course a treat to see Benny Goodman, Gene Krupa, Charlie Barnet and the likes playing together. Ragtime, Jazz, Swing, Boogie-Woogie, this film offered me an idea of the development of jazz during the period between the two world wars.

But the film that kept me enthralled start to finish and made me return to it for repeat viewing was the 2016 documentary Chasing Trane: The John Coltrane Documentary by John Scheinfeld. Not only did it help me to understand what an innovative artist and virtuose Coltrane was, but it also brought the man John Coltrane alive for me, his inner spirit and his spirituality. ”Coltrane did not play jazz or blues, he played life” is a comment made in the film. Carlos Santana adds to this: ”His sound is the sound of life, and the sound of love.” As a young player Coltrane got into heroin addiction which led to him being kicked out of the Miles Davis group. The film tells the story of his battle with addiction and discovery of a path to find his own voice.

Coltrane spoke through his music. There is not much footage of his speaking voice, but his tenor sax voice is extremely clear and moving in a piece like Alabama. He wrote this elegy, a cry of pain, yet undergirded by love and hope, in response to the murder of four Afro-American girls in the 1963 Baptist Church bombing by the Ku Klux Klan. In the documentary Cornel West comments: ‘Martin Luther King and John Coltrane walk hand in hand‘. Speaking the same language, the one with words, the other through his music. Coltrane died young of liver cancer in 1967, only 40 years old, but his voice through his music will never be silenced.

Rinus, August 2022