I've always felt a special affinity with certain jazz musicians - their music speaks more directly to me than most of their contemporaries. Just a handful are in this category - Billie Holiday, Fats Waller, John Coltrane, Miles Davis and Django Reinhardt among them. I'm sure you have your own special group.
The World According to John Coltrane is a great tribute on DVD to this outstanding saxophonist who, with Miles Davis in particular, broke so many boundaries of jazz, and proved himself the worthiest successor to the Bird, Charlie Parker.
The program is short, clocking in at just under an hour. But it's packed with personal reminiscences from many of the musicians who played with him, including his pianist-wife Alice Coltrane. And though there are only a few musical tracks, they are incandescent - especially Giant Steps performed with Miles Davis, and Coltrane's later Reverend King Alabama, a tribute to Martin Luther King, recorded long after Coltrane had left Miles Davis to go his own way.
There's historic footage of Coltrane in his earliest performing years with the beatnik-bebop king Dizzy Gillespie, and of Coltrane bringing into his group other rule-breaking saxophonists including the very young Eric Dolphy.
But it's John Coltrane we want to listen to. And the music footage, while limited, is truly outstanding. The energy is unquenchable and frenetic. And we're told that while the music was at its most free in form and time, John Coltrane was using his music to try to find a bridge between himself and his God - a very personal religious quest, more a mystical journey, undertaking explorations in Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam.
Coltrane died young, aged just 40, in 1967, with too many potential discoveries ahead of him. This is a wonderful tribute to him - if you want to hear more, I'd suggest starting with the classic Prestige recordings of the mid-1950s, recorded as part of the Miles Davis Quintet - Steamin', Workin', Relaxin' and Cookin' with the Miles Davis Quintet, before graduating to his own group recordings, including his most famous album, My Favourite Things.
The quality of the film depends on its age and circumstance. Most of the performance clips, from the 1960s, 1950s and 1940s, are in black and white, and are in variable condition. Interviews and some late documentary footage are in colour.
The transfer seems to have made the most of what was available. While the image is at times patchy, and is sometimes from fairly indifferent video sources, the sound is for the most part excellent. The image quality becomes very easy to accept; we feel privileged to be able to share in these performances.
Extras are a selected discography, a pretty indifferent photo gallery, and trailers for four music documentaries - the trailer for this Coltrane disc, alongside trailers for documentaries about Ray Charles, Sarah Vaughan, Thelonius Monk and the eternally great Billie Holiday.
