Happy New Year

And let's hear it for Lewis Porter's John Coltrane essays.

Thank you for reading!

I just love writing this Substack, it’s simply a privilege and a joy. I have big plans for Chronicles in the coming year, but without you, none of it would be possible. Your attention, comments, and support are the essential element.

Let’s give three hearty New Year’s cheers for Lewis Porter’s Substack, devoted to guided tours of the archives, arriving at fresh truths about the beauty that surrounds us!

I learn something from everything Lewis does, but I especially appreciate his writing on John Coltrane. Porter shows both the intellectual depth of Coltrane’s music and how Coltrane himself was always part of a broad and tight-knit community.

This one, about Coltrane’s practice buddies, is just magic. Definitely read his original before my take!

Here’s Porter:

[After moving to Dix Hills, Long Island, in 1964] believe it or not, the world-famous Coltrane went to the local music store, run by Frank Gambi, and asked if they knew anybody he could practice with…

…Frank recommended saxophonist Patrick “Pat” DeRosa¹, brother of the well-known jazz educator Clem DeRosa. Frank got Pat on the phone and put him and John in touch. Soon, the two saxophonists were practicing regularly, when Coltrane wasn’t away on tour.

DeRosa brought his 1957 Selmer Mark VI tenor sax to Coltrane’s house, or sometimes John came to his place. By mid-1967, there was even a plan to feature John at an upcoming performance with Pat’s big band, the Long Island Sounds. Pat was honored to have become Coltrane’s practice partner, but he was to be his last one. John died on July 17, 1967, and Alice called to tell Pat that John had passed away..

Imagine walking into that music store in 1965, with A Love Supreme already in the world, and overhearing John Coltrane ask about local saxophonists he might connect with.

If Lewis Porter writes that there were plans for John Coltrane to play with Pat DeRosa and the Long Island Sounds in 1967— the same year he recorded Interstellar Space and Stellar Regions— we can take that as a fact, one that expands our understanding of who Coltrane was and makes life a little more wonderful.

Interstellar Space and Pat DeRosa’s Long Island Sounds: the aspirational and the here-and-now. John Coltrane shows the way.

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I love Porter’s close tracking of Coltrane’s “Impressions”, from development in 1960 to release in 1963. Spread over four parts (part 1, 2, 3, and 4), each with a wealth of detail on Coltrane’s methods, here’s a summary I composed as sort of a study guide:

• “Impressions” is an original composition by John Coltrane derived from several sources.

• The harmony and form of “Impressions” is the same as Miles Davis’s “So What”.

• Coltrane’s melody for the A section of “Impressions” comes from the secondary theme of Morton Gould’s “Pavanne”, then a well-known piece. Coltrane started playing “So What” with a version of Gould’s melody in the summer of 1960, when he became a full-time bandleader. At the time, Coltrane just called the tune “So What”.

• While Coltrane was evidently satisfied with his Gould-inspired A section melody, he tried many different melodies for the B section.

• At some point in 1961, Coltrane settled on a melody for the B section, one which bears a ‘family resemblance’ to the pop song, “The Lamp Is Low”, by Mitchell Parish. “The Lamp Is Low” is based on a different piece also called “Pavane”, this one by Maurice Ravel, “Pavane Pour Une Infante Defunte”. That’s right— two pavanes in one “So What”!

• By 1961, Coltrane’s piece, very much an original composition by now, is essentially finished. But he hasn’t settled on a title, calling it “So What” sometimes, “Excerpts” other times. A staple of his live sets, he has yet to release a version of it.

• Erroll Garner recorded “The Lamp Is Low” under the title “Pavanne” in 1949. In the early Sixties, Atlantic Records (Coltrane’s label at the time) issued a few Garner LPs where “Pavanne” (which is actually “The Lamp Is Low”!) is followed by a Garner tune called “Impressions²”.

• Did Coltrane note the proximity of “Pavane” to his “Impressions” on the Garner LP and realize that “Impressions” was the title he’d been looking for? It’s possible!

• Regardless, Coltrane knew that “Impressions” was the final element needed to make complete his tune. Simple, beautiful, and memorable, the title can be taken as a reference to Coltrane and the listener exchanging impressions, or to the art movement known as Impressionism. We can also hear “Impressions” as a teasing hint that the melody is Coltrane’s ‘impressions’ of a pop-classical sound that, evidently, made quite an impression on him.

• The tune left an impression on his bandmates as well. Via drummer Pete LaRoca, the song appeared on records by vibraphonist Dave Pike and tenor saxophonist Rocky Boyd (under different titles still!) before Coltrane’s own version came out.

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One more once: this Substack is a joy and privilege, made possible by you. I could never say thank you enough for reading, commenting, and caring. Like Jeeves said, I endeavor to give satisfaction.

Difficulties abound, but there is no end to truth, beauty, and the stuff of life. With bottomless gratitude and respect, onward to 2026!

1. Pat DeRosa’s nephew, Rich DeRosa, was a professor at William Paterson University when I attended. Thanks Rich!

2. Garner’s “Impressions” is his impression of “Claire De Lune” by Claude Debussy. “Claire De Lune” of course means “moonlight”; “moonlighting” is slang for a side job, or as Wikipedia puts it, “unreported employment”, like Coltrane’s “unreported employment” of material from Miles Davis, Morton Gould, Maurice Ravel, and Mitchell Parish.