JOHN COLTRANE - IN A SENTIMENTAL MOOD

IN A SENTIMENTAL MOOD

JOHN COLTRANE

SONGWRITERS: DUKE ELLINGTON; IRVING MILLS & MANNY KURTZ

COUNTRY: U. S. A.

ALBUM: COLTRANE FOR LOVERS

LABEL: ATLANTIC

GENRE: JAZZ

YEAR: 2001

 

          John William Coltrane (Hamlet, September 23, 1926 - New York, July 17, 1967) was an American jazz saxophonist and composer, having performed mainly during the fifties and sixties. Commonly considered by specialized critics as the greatest jazz tenor sax and one of the greatest jazz musicians and composers of all time. His influence in the world of music goes beyond the boundaries of Jazz, ranging from Rock to Classical Music.

        Born in North Carolina, the grandson of an evangelical minister, John Coltrane grew up in High Point and New Jersey in a time of severe racial segregation in the mid-twenties, having had a poor childhood, like most black children of that time in his country. His interest in music started due to his father who played several musical instruments and who encouraged him to study music. During his adolescence, Coltrane lost several relatives, such as his aunt, grandfather and father. These losses would mark him for his entire life.

          Coltrane began his career playing in various big bands after the end of World War II. He played with several jazz giants such as Dizzy Gillespie and Paul Chambers (later he would play with him again in the Miles Davis quintet-sextet).

        From 1955 to 1960 he was part of Miles Davis' historic quintet, having participated in memorable albums such as Cookin', Relaxin', Steamin', 'Round About Midnight and Workin', all from 1956. The following year he recorded his first albums as leader, with Blue Train reaching greater prominence in the jazz scene. This was his first major phase as a musician, although it was a very difficult period in his personal life, due to an addiction to heroin, acquired in the late forties. This was the reason why Miles Davis fired him at the end of 1956. In 1957 he was hired by the great pianist Thelonious Monk and recorded a few albums with him, Thelonious Monk with John Coltrane being the most recognized.

       In 1958, Coltrane was rehired by Miles Davis starting his great phase as a sideman. In the coming years, he would record two albums that would go down in Jazz History:

              * Milestones (1958), a great Cool Jazz album.

        * Kind of Blue (1959), the iconic album of Cool Jazz.

       The Miles Davis sextet, in addition to John Coltrane, had two other great jazz musicians: the famous pianist Bill Evans and the great bassist Paul Chambers. This album was one of the biggest hits in the history of the genre.

       In 1960, after leaving Miles' group, Coltrane began a new phase, leading a quartet with McCoy Tyner on piano, Jimmy Garrison on double bass and Elvin Jones on drums, and began a bold and unprecedented exploration of jazz sound space. Coltrane developed an absolutely unique style, where the so-called sheets of sound (sheets or layers of sound) predominated, which were composed of long phrases of fast notes played in legato. Coltrane embarks on a radicalization of harmony that takes him to the brink of atonality. It also fragments and deconstructs the themes, leaving them almost unrecognizable under a jam of tortured phrases. Coltrane's quartet production between 1960 and 1965 is a milestone in jazz history, comparable to Miles' quintet. Coltrane's several, very long and impressive versions of My Favorite Things, Rodgers and Hammerstein's apparently banal waltz, are anthological. In 1965 the quartet creates what is unanimously considered their masterpiece, the four-movement suite A Love Supreme.

         Although coming from hard bop, Coltrane from 1955 to 1965 could already be considered in some sense a forerunner of free jazz. However, in 1965, his connection with the avant-garde became even more direct, when he joined free musicians such as drummer Rashied Ali, saxtenorists Archie Shepp and Pharoah Sanders, among others. His wife, pianist Alice Coltrane, also accompanies him in this new, daring and short phase. The disc Ascension is a masterpiece of that period, already detached from tonal harmony. Quite religious, Coltrane imbued his works from 1965-1967 with a strong religious and mystical content. He died suddenly and prematurely in 1967 at the age of 40 from liver cancer. After his death, a large amount of unpublished recordings were located and released, allowing the public to better assess how monumental his work is.

         "In a Sentimental Mood" is a jazz composition by Duke Ellington. He composed the piece in 1935 and recorded it with his orchestra during the same year. so the song was credited to all three. Other popular versions in 1935/36 were by Benny Goodman and by Mills Blue Rhythm Band.

In A Sentimental Mood

I can see the stars come thru my room

While your loving attitude

Is like a flame that lights the gloom

On the wings of ev'ry kiss

Drift a melody so strange and sweet

In this sentimental bliss you make my

Paradise complete

Rose pearls seem to fall

It's all like a dream to call you mine

My heart's lighter thing

Since you made me this night a thing divine

In A Sentimental Mood

I'm within a world so heavenly

For I never dreamt

That you'd be loving sentimental me

In A Sentimental Mood

I can see the stars come thru my room

While your loving attitude

Is like a flame that lights the gloom

On the wings of ev'ry kiss

Drift a melody so strange and sweet

In this sentimental bliss you make my

Paradise complete

Rose pearls seem to fall

It's all like a dream to call you mine

My heart's lighter thing

Since you made me this night a thing divine

In A Sentimental Mood

I'm within a world so heavenly

For I never dreamt

That you'd be loving sentimental me.