"P0SSIBLY THE MOST POWERFUL HUMAN SOUND EVER RECORDED" - COLTRANE'S ASCENSION

 

 

I knew from an early age that this was a sine qua non in jazz. A large-ish group of players, many of whom I had already heard individually and found to be, in varying degrees, intimidating, if not actively terrifying. This was supposed to be the big blowout, the freeform frenzy to finalise it all. But in late seventies Glasgow, at a time when jazz was beyond question the least fashionable and marketable form of music, the record, in common with most of the important post-war jazz records, was impossible to find - even A Love Supreme remained out of print until 1979.

Jazz Journal was an irritating entity at the best of times but did have its uses in that it carried advertisements for specialist record shops, mainly in London. I was particularly taken by Dave Carey's Swing Shop, opposite St Leonard's Church in Streatham; even though I never ordered anything from it, there was a sweetly sour romanticism about the concept of a place like Streatham, and when I eventually passed through it for real on the train a few years later, I sighed to myself: "hello, old friend." Nevertheless, both Mole Jazz and Honest Jon's regularly benefited from my teenage custom - their catalogues looked like mislaid treasure, refound - and it was from the latter that I sourced, for an outrageous £2.49 plus postage and packing, a mint used copy of the LP of Ascension.

I remember the postman delivering the record to our door at seven o'clock on a Thursday morning. The Chiswick postmark on the package made me think of Hancock (Tony, not Herbie - "Le Café de la Belle Marguerite, Chiswick"). I couldn't wait to get it open, put the record on and listen to it. Doing so, I felt for the first time in my life what a euphoric experience going to church could be (as opposed to the dour Damoclean sword of The Church suspended over the heads of the parish).

It wasn't the extravagant freakout some people had warned me that it might be - to my younger ears there was what sounded like deep distress, a restless uncertainty. I had already heard Ornette Coleman's Free Jazz for double quartet (1976 Atlantic That's Jazz reissue, Bacofoil silver cover, House of Fraser in Buchanan Street, cut-out racks, £1.29) and that had sounded playful and courtly. The eight players were audibly having fun upturning expectations of tonality and harmonics.

But Ascension sounded heavier, in every possible way. It begins with a low-pitched five-note melodic motif which is gradually picked up by all eleven musicians until the volume and intensity steadily rise and you realise that they are collectively preaching, relating a gospel to you. The concept of the Ascension relates to Christ's final ascent from Earth to Heaven, as witnessed by eleven of his apostles - do you see what's happening here (although this may not have been what was planned - Rashied Ali was asked to be a second drummer on the session but, with the hurt arrogance of youth, declined because he wanted to be the only drummer playing. He later regretted that decision, and on the final recording only Elvin Jones appears at the drums. Other young musicians were invited by Coltrane to participate, including tenorist Frank Wright, who reluctantly turned the invitation down because he didn't yet think he was technically good enough as a musician to participate. There is also talk of two trombones having been considered - presumably played by Roswell Rudd and Grachan Moncur III - but no doubt there was concern that the end result might have proved too long for a long-playing record. In any case, this eleven is, I think, quite sufficient for the record's purposes).

The musicians collectively improvise on the opening motif and then the music opens up so that each of them has a solo. This is repeated throughout the record until the piece is resolved. No one player gets more solo time than anyone else, not even Coltrane, who here sounds, if anything, slightly confused - clearly wanting to rip through the vivid velvet of decorum and join Albert Ayler on the outlands, but never forgetting in his mind how Red Garland might have responded to his lines in 1955. He sounds slightly hesistant to break free. But perhaps, as chief instigator of the project, he had to maintain presidential impartiality.

Others meet the improvisatory challenge with differing degrees of success. After Coltrane comes a feature for trumpeter Dewey Johnson - the one name on the record who never really came through to the major league of improvisers. He does his exploratory best but is clearly still learning the parameters (tragically he more or less disappeared from sight after Ascension; psychiatric problems and eventual homelessness were to follow, and for the remaining years of his life - he died in June 2018, aged 78 - he was a resident of the Coler Specialty Hospital nursing home on Roosevelt Island).

There is no such hesitation for Pharaoh Sanders, who leaps out of the ensemble for his feature like a giant shark erupting from the centre of the ocean, and fearlessly (and jubilantly) overturns all preconceptions of musical expression. He is absolutely unafraid of freedom and in that aspect is probably miles ahead of everybody else on this session. But his art was always about joy and harmony; those idle souls who sneeringly dismissed last year's Promises as superior muzak entirely failed to grasp the fact that, for Sanders, this was a summation of his life and philosophy, his final gospel.

After such ecsratic expressionism, it is almost a relief to come to Freddie Hubbard - the only musician to appear on both Free Jazz and Ascension (I don't think he was ever specifically interviewed about that strange duality) - who swings the music straight back into Blue Note-friendly modal hard bop, with Jones setting a straight 4/4 tempo and McCoy Tyner enthusiastically comping from the piano, thereby illustrating how small, yet logical, is the distance between tradition and evolution. Although he did make extensive use of free techniques, Hubbard was no doctrinaire avant-gardist, yet he sounds entirely at home here, and is perhaps even stabilising the eruptions elsewhere.

Over on side two (as the record was in those days), there is a very brief and perhaps inconclusive alto solo from John Tchicai, one of the more thoughtful of free jazz musicians, before Archie Shepp - now, at the time of writing, the sole surviving member of this band - creeps in with an authoritative growl - although Shepp's tenor aims for tomorrow, he is not really playing anything here that, say, Ben Webster or Illinois Jacquet could have imagined; yet again this gives us a hook of jazz history to which we can cling. This is new, but the tradition is not eradicated. Whereas Marion Brown's alto feature is odd, dislocated, as though a ghost for Eric Dolphy (also on Free Jazz, and who almost certainly would have been invited to participate in Ascension had he lived) - see Capricorn Moon, Afternoon Of A Georgia Faun, Sweet Earth Flying etc. for a fuller picture of Brown's approach to improvisation and group organisation.

Then it is left to the rhythm players - Tyner plays slightly askew to bass and drums, like a 16 rpm Thelonious Monk (the secret main influence here), while bassists Jimmy Garrison and Art Davis then engage in a dolorous, echoey duet for bowed basses which conjures up visions of Berg and Webern. After a brief drum fanfare by Jones - the hardest-working musician here by miles; apart from the bass feature, he hardly ever holds back - the entire ensemble returns for a final run to the pews and then settles, in resolved prayer.

A second take, with a minor change in solo order (Shepp comes after Sanders, and in turn is followed by Tchicai and Brown, while Jones actually gets a solo of his own at the climax), was recorded, and is probably more consistent, if less violently revelatory. Both takes can be found on the current standard CD edition. Reactions were mixed, and not solely with listeners; at the end of take two, an apparently less-than-enthusiastic Jones apparently hurled his snare drum at the nearest studio wall.

To adherents of A Love Supreme - even though Ascension was the absolutely logical continuation from that - the record left them confused, angry. Coltrane had carved a path and didn't care whether you followed him or not, although obviously he would have preferred you to do so. Subsequent generations,, and not necessarily jazz ones, listened with fresher ears; the Minutemen routinely played the full album as a warm-up soundtrack to their own gigs, and Glenn Branca saw 1981's The Ascension as another thread in the Coltrane tapestry. Me? I played the record while eating breakfast, getting ready to go to school. It energised me for the day. Anyone who says well no wonder he ended up like he did, I say (censored).

 

However, the term "Ascension" can also refer to people entering Heaven while still physically alive and typically indicates God's recognition of an especial and intense piety. Many thought Coltrane a god even (or especially) at this time and this Ascension perhaps confirmed that his afterlife had already been initiated, so why not worship, as those eleven musicians so clearly did?

 

(Oh, and by the way, the headline quote was from Bill Mathieu, reviewing the album for Downbeat in June 1966. Has he yet been proved wrong?)