Last week, we post­ed an inter­view with the late, great Ray Brad­bury that was bril­liant­ly ani­mat­ed by the folks over at Blank on Blank. This week, they unveil a new piece fea­tur­ing John Coltrane. You can watch it above.

Coltrane is, of course, one of the true giants of 20th cen­tu­ry music. He first got atten­tion play­ing with the Miles Davis Quin­tet in the mid-1950s on albums like Relax­in’, Cookin’ and Steamin’ before he released his sem­i­nal solo album Blue Train. But his career quick­ly fal­tered. He was hooked on hero­in and Davis, a for­mer junkie him­self, fired him from the Quin­tet. When he cleaned him­self up, Coltrane found he was a changed man. “In the year of 1957,” he writes in the lin­er notes for his mas­ter­piece A Love Supreme, “I expe­ri­enced, by the grace of God, a spir­i­tu­al awak­en­ing, which was to lead me to a rich­er, fuller, more pro­duc­tive life.”

Through­out the 60s, Coltrane sought to express his rapid­ly evolv­ing sense of spir­i­tu­al­i­ty through music that grew ever more com­plex and avant-garde. Late peri­od Coltrane is a far cry from the moody grace of Blue Train; it’s a cas­cade of fren­zied notes that can be as sub­lime as it is dis­cor­dant and chal­leng­ing.

The piece above is a record­ing by Paci­fi­ca Radio reporter Frank Kof­sky who talked with Coltrane in Novem­ber 1966, just eight months before he died at the age of 40 of liv­er can­cer.

At one point in the piece, Kof­sky asks him how much he prac­tices. Trane was famous for the man­ic inten­si­ty with which he played. He once report­ed­ly spent ten hours per­fect­ing the sound of a sin­gle note. 12-hour prac­tice ses­sions were the rou­tine. In the inter­view, how­ev­er, Coltrane is non­cha­lant. “I find that it’s only when some­thing is try­ing to come through you know that I real­ly prac­tice and then it’s just, I don’t know how many hours, it’s just all day. “

Lat­er in the video, when Coltrane dis­cuss­es switch­ing from a tenor sax to a sopra­no, you get a glimpse of how dri­ven he was by his muse.

The sound of that sopra­no was actu­al­ly so much clos­er to me in my ear. I didn’t want admit this damn thing because I said well the tenor’s my horn, this is my baby but the sopra­no, there’s still some­thing there, just the voice of it that I can’t… It’s just real­ly beau­ti­ful. I real­ly like it.

But the most poignant moment comes at the end of video when he describes what kind of per­son he wants to be.

I mean I want to be a force for real good. In oth­er words, I know that there are bad forces. I know that there are forces out here that bring suf­fer­ing to oth­ers and mis­ery to the world, but I want to be the oppo­site force. I want to be the force, which is tru­ly for good.

For Jazz fans every­where, there is no ques­tion that he was a force for good. And it was all embod­ied in his music.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Coltrane Per­forms A Love Supreme and Oth­er Clas­sics in Antibes (July 1965)

John Coltrane’s Hand­writ­ten Out­line for His Mas­ter­piece A Love Supreme

Watch John Coltrane Turn His Hand­writ­ten Poem Into a Sub­lime Musi­cal Pas­sage on A Love Supreme

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of bad­gers and even more pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

“All the Things You Could Be by Now If Sig­mund Freud’s Wife Was Your Moth­er” appeared on Charles Min­gus Presents Charles Min­gus (1961). And it begins with this cryp­tic, hard-to-deci­pher ded­i­ca­tion to moth­ers every­where:

And now, ladies and gen­tle­man, you have been such a won­der­ful audi­ence. We have a spe­cial treat in store for you. This is a com­po­si­tion ded­i­cat­ed to all moth­ers. And it’s titled “All The Things You Could Be By Now If Sig­mund Freud’s Wife Was Your Moth­er.” Which means if Sig­mund Freud’s wife was your moth­er, all the things you could be by now. Which means noth­ing, you got it? Thank you.

Or was that a cryp­tic, hard-to-deci­pher non-ded­i­ca­tion to moth­ers every­where? With Min­gus, you nev­er can tell.

Round­ing out Min­gus’ quar­tet is Ted Cur­son on trum­pet, Eric Dol­phy on alto sax­o­phone and bass clar­inet, and Dan­nie Rich­mond on drums.

h/t Peter Kauf­man

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Charles Min­gus’ Instruc­tions For Toi­let Train­ing Your Cat, Read by The Wire’s Reg E. Cathey

Charles Min­gus Explains in His Gram­my-Win­ning Essay “What is a Jazz Com­pos­er?”

Charles Min­gus and His Evic­tion From His New York City Loft, Cap­tured in Mov­ing 1968 Film

Clas­sic Charles Min­gus Per­for­mance on Bel­gian Tele­vi­sion, 1964

By 1956, jazz was enter­ing its hard bop phase, far from its New Orleans birth­place. At the same time, it was frac­tur­ing into sev­er­al inter­na­tion­al gen­res, with the influ­ence of Latin rhythms and the south sea breezes of lounge.

Rock and Roll was just about to dis­place this music as a pub­lic men­ace du jour (or a pass­ing fad as some thought). This fas­ci­nat­ing Colum­bia release from 1956 finds the com­pos­er and con­duc­tor Leonard Bern­stein set­ting down his thoughts on the art form of jazz. A spo­ken word record with sam­ples from rag­time to Miles Davis, Bern­stein’s defense-as-lec­ture is a win­dow on the cul­ture wars at the time.

He’s here to defend jazz against its crit­ics, and argues against their opin­ions: jazz has low-class ori­gins, it’s loud, and it’s not art — the same cri­tiques to be lev­eled decades lat­er against hip hop.

In 1956, Bern­stein was already known to the gen­er­al pub­lic as an edu­ca­tor on clas­si­cal music. He gave lec­tures on CBS’ Omnibus TV pro­gram on the great sym­phonies, while he had already dab­bled in the instru­men­ta­tion and tex­tures of jazz in his score to On the Water­front, and was busy work­ing on West Side Sto­ry. So he was in a per­fect posi­tion to intro­duce a con­ser­v­a­tive mind to jazz. “I love it because it’s an orig­i­nal kind of emo­tion­al expres­sion, in that it is nev­er whol­ly sad or whol­ly hap­py,” he says.

Appear­ing on the album is Buck Clay­ton, Louis Arm­strong, Buster Bai­ley, Bessie Smith, Teo Macero, and Miles Davis. Davis, who had just been signed by Columbia’s George Avakian, plays “Sweet Sue,” mak­ing this track his first record­ing for the label. Bern­stein illus­trates jazz music the­o­ry, “blue notes,” dis­so­nance, rhythm and explores the African ori­gins of the music for 42 fas­ci­nat­ing min­utes. Did this LP turn a lot of clas­si­cal musos on to jazz? Did this influ­ence the chil­dren whose par­ents had this in their col­lec­tion? Was it all for­got­ten sev­er­al years lat­er with Beat­le­ma­nia? What­ev­er the answer, it’s an intrigu­ing rem­nant of a tran­si­tion­al time.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Leonard Bernstein’s Mas­ter­ful Lec­tures on Music (11+ Hours of Video Record­ed at Har­vard in 1973)

Leonard Bernstein’s First “Young People’s Con­cert” at Carnegie Hall Asks, “What Does Music Mean?”

Leonard Bern­stein Demys­ti­fies the Rock Rev­o­lu­tion for Curi­ous (if Square) Grown-Ups in 1967

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

What can I add to the cho­rus of voic­es in praise of John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme? Record­ed in Decem­ber of 1964 and released fifty years ago this month, the album has gone on to achieve cult status—literally inspir­ing a church found­ed in Coltrane’s name—as one of the finest works of jazz or any oth­er form of music. It cement­ed Coltrane’s name in the pan­theon of great com­posers, and re-invent­ed reli­gious music for a sec­u­lar age. Com­posed as a hymn of praise and grat­i­tude, “the bizarre suite of four move­ments,” wrote NPR’s Arun Rath last year, “com­mu­ni­cat­ed a pro­found spir­i­tu­al and philo­soph­i­cal mes­sage.” That mes­sage is artic­u­lat­ed explic­it­ly by Coltrane in the album’s lin­er notes as “a hum­ble offer­ing to Him,” the deity he expe­ri­enced in a 1957 “spir­i­tu­al awak­en­ing” that “lead me to a rich­er, fuller, more pro­duc­tive life.”

These phras­es speak the lan­guage of recov­ery, and Coltrane found God through a pro­gram of recov­ery from hero­in addic­tion. Like so many who have embraced faith after addic­tion, Coltrane’s devo­tion was ardent, but nei­ther dog­mat­ic nor judg­men­tal. He “refused to com­mit to a sin­gle reli­gion,” writes Rath, “His idea of God couldn’t be con­tained by any doc­trine. But with his sax­o­phone, and with his band, he could preach.” That he did, reli­gious­ly, no pun intend­ed. Before the record­ing of A Love Supreme, Coltrane’s clas­sic quartet—including drum­mer Elvin Jones, pianist McCoy Tyn­er, and bassist Jim­my Garrison—toured the U.S. for four years. As the BBC doc­u­men­tary above informs us, “The group’s appetite for per­for­mance was fero­cious.” They played “two gigs a day, six nights a week, tak­ing only short breaks in the stu­dio to record mate­r­i­al for more than fif­teen increas­ing­ly crit­i­cal­ly acclaimed albums.”

By the time the group record­ed A Love Supreme, they had devel­oped “an amaz­ing unspo­ken com­mu­ni­ca­tion.” Tyn­er recalled the album as “a cul­mi­na­tion and nat­ur­al exten­sion of chem­istry honed through years of play­ing togeth­er live.” (Despite all that, they would only per­form the suite of songs live once, in Antibes, France, result­ing in a live album and some frag­men­tary film of the event.) Nar­rat­ed by Jez Nel­son, the 2004 radio doc­u­men­tary (up top) presents inter­views with Tyn­er, Jones, mod­ernist com­pos­er Steve Reich, Coltrane’s wife Alice, and oth­ers, in-between pas­sages of Coltrane’s music, includ­ing his major break­out hit record­ing of “My Favorite Things.”

Among the many trib­utes to the album’s inspir­ing, tran­scen­dent genius, Coltrane schol­ar Ash­ley Kahn offers a very down-to-earth assess­ment of A Love Supreme’s impor­tance: “[Coltrane] was not a prodi­gy. He was some­one who worked very, very, very hard at his craft, and he showed us, and he shows musi­cians still, that it is pos­si­ble.” Whether we attribute Coltrane’s achieve­ments to divine inspi­ra­tion, incred­i­bly hard work, or some com­bi­na­tion of the two, the proof of his devo­tion stands the test of fifty years, and fifty years from now, I sus­pect we’ll say much the same.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Coltrane’s Hand­writ­ten Out­line for His Mas­ter­piece A Love Supreme

John Coltrane Per­forms A Love Supreme and Oth­er Clas­sics in Antibes (July 1965)

Dis­cov­er the Church of St. John Coltrane, Found­ed on the Divine Music of A Love Supreme

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness