Chim Chim Cheree

I've been meaning to write about this track from the classic John Coltrane Quartet for a while. Now that it's co-author, Robert B. Sherman has passed away, here's the motivation to put it down.

This track, released in 1965 by the classic quartet of John Coltrane-soprano saxophone, McCoy Tyner-piano, Jimmy Garrison-bass, and Elvin Jones-drums on the album "The John Coltrane Quartet Plays", for me, embodies everything Coltrane was trying to achieve with his music at the time.  Coltrane was  known for taking some very "white culture" tunes and turning them into searching, soulful avant-garde jazz pieces.  Most notable was 1961's "My Favorite Things", a Rogers and Hammerstein tune from Disney's "The Sound Of Music", another was "Greensleeves", a traditional English folk tune.  Already having collaborated with Eric Dolphy and stretching things out with "A Love Supreme", the quartet was still moving ahead by 1965 when they took another Disney number to the outer limits.

As the studio track begins, Tyner, Garrison, and Jones provide a steady, loping vamp over which Coltrane states the main melody of the tune on the soprano. After about a minute he begins improvising over the increasingly wild drumming of Jones, complex, frenetic melodies that seem to fly in and out of the fray.  The "sheets of sound" he was known for appear near to the three minute mark as Elvin Jones chops away at the drum set.

Just after three minutes, McCoy Tyner takes over with an intelligent solo that seems to say "Okay, let's step back and take stock of what just happened. Don't worry, I'll guide you through this."  He seems to be providing a more rational explanation of the music that you are experiencing, preparing you for what's to come.  Some fast runs down the keyboard, then a jerky series of dissonant chords as Jones starts igniting things again.  Tyner breaks into an ascending crescendo ushering Coltrane back in at 4:36.  At this point the whole thing explodes into the cosmos!  Both Coltrane and Jones are ON FIRE!  Complete transcendent musical telepathy.  The sheer intensity of Elvin Jones' drum assault is jaw-dropping, and Coltrane wails and cries through the soprano like he's communicating the chaos and fury of the civil rights movement.  Great music makes visual images in my mind's eye.  I see Martin Luther King, riots, Viet Nam.  Back into the vamp as a coda and the track fades out.

This is one of the greatest moments in Jazz as far as I'm concerned.  It's like a distillation of Coltrane's entire arc as an artist.  It is believed that he had some kind of knowledge that his time was limited and that this knowledge made him progress so quickly, and this track, though he did not write it, may as well have been his because it is so potent a statement.  I got the chance to see Elvin Jones Jazz Machine live at Sprague Hall in New Haven years ago.  It was fantastic to see and hear him play.  At this show bassist Willie Ruff presented him with some kind of lifetime achievement award.  As he accepted the award on stage I was struck by how humble, even embarrassed, he was to be receiving such adoration from the audience.  He sure did deserve it.