Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue changed jazz. It changed music, peri­od. So I take it very seri­ous­ly. But when I see the ani­mat­ed sheet music of the first cut, “So What,” I can’t help but think of Charles Schultz’s Peanuts car­toons, and their Vince Guaral­di com­po­si­tions. I mean no offense to Miles. His modal jazz swings, and it’s fun, as fun to lis­ten to as it is to watch in ris­ing and falling arpeg­gios. The YouTube uploader, Dan Cohen, gives us this on his chan­nel Ani­mat­ed Sheet Music, with apolo­gies to Jim­my Cobb for the lack of drum nota­tion.

Also from Cohen’s chan­nel, we have Char­lie Parker’s music ani­mat­ed. Nev­er one to keep up with his admin, Park­er left his estate unable to recu­per­ate roy­al­ties from com­po­si­tions like “Con­fir­ma­tion” (above).

Nonethe­less, every­one knows it’s Bird’s tune, and to see it ani­mat­ed above is to see Park­er dance a very dif­fer­ent step than Miles’ post-bop cool, one filled with com­plex melod­ic para­graphs instead of chordal phras­es.

And above, we have John Coltrane’s mas­sive “Giant Steps,” with its rapid-fire bursts of quar­ter notes, inter­rupt­ed by half-note asides. Coltrane’s icon­ic 1960 com­po­si­tion dis­plays what Ira Gitler called in a 1958 Down­beat piece, “sheets of sound.” Gitler has said the image he had in his head was of “bolts of cloth undu­lat­ing as they unfurled,” but he might just as well have thought of sheets of rain, so mul­ti­tude and heavy is Coltrane’s melod­ic attack.

See Cohen’s Ani­mat­ed Sheet Music chan­nel for two more Char­lie Park­er pieces, “Au Pri­vave” and “Bloom­di­do.”

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Miles Davis Plays Music from Kind of Blue Live in 1959, Intro­duc­ing a Com­plete­ly New Style of Jazz

Char­lie Park­er Plays with Jazz Greats Cole­man Hawkins, Bud­dy Rich, Lester Young & Ella Fitzger­ald (1950)

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

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

Do you ever have déjà vu? Last week we post­ed Jack Ker­ouac’s U.S. Naval Reserve enlist­ment mugshot from 1943 and the response was enthu­si­as­tic. Many of you were fas­ci­nat­ed to see the great Beat writer at such a ten­der age and in such an atyp­i­cal, unlib­er­at­ed con­text. Today we offer an eeri­ly sim­i­lar pho­to of anoth­er free­wheel­ing icon of 20th cen­tu­ry art: John Coltrane, when he was 18 years old.

Coltrane entered the Navy on the same day the Unit­ed States dropped the atom­ic bomb on Hiroshi­ma (August 6, 1945) and was assigned reserve sta­tus, as were many African-Amer­i­cans at that time. Accord­ing to Lewis Porter in John Coltrane: His Life and Music, only lim­it­ed num­bers of black men served as sea­man after 1942. Pri­or to that, they were only allowed to work as kitchen help. The Navy was seg­re­gat­ed, and Coltrane was sent to boot camp at the black sec­tion of Samp­son Naval Train­ing Cen­ter in upstate New York. By the time he fin­ished train­ing, World War II was over.

In late Novem­ber of 1945, after a tran­si­tion­al month at Camp Shoe­mak­er near San Fran­cis­co, sea­man sec­ond class Coltrane was assigned to active duty in Hawaii. Sta­tioned on the island of Oahu, Coltrane played clar­inet and alto sax­o­phone in a black Navy band called the Melody Mas­ters. He made his first record­ings with some of the musi­cians from the band in the sum­mer of 1946. But all the while Coltrane was serv­ing, the Navy was in the process of down­siz­ing. With the war over, bands were no longer need­ed to boost morale. So on August 11, 1946–just over a year after his enlistment–Coltrane was dis­charged from the Navy and sent home.

Relat­ed con­tent:

John Coltrane and His Great Quin­tet Play ‘My Favorite Things’

John Coltrane Plays Only Live Per­for­mance of A Love Supreme

John Coltrane: Three Great Euro­pean Per­for­mances, 1969, 1961 and 1965