During the 1960s jazz was heading in many directions simultaneously.

Some groups forged on in the

bebop tradition in the form of the generally more rhythmically driven hard bop, while others joined the
cool school, a laid back style popularized by the spacious playing of Miles Davis. Still others ventured
into the avant-garde, trying to do something, anything new or in different ways. Of this last category,
the most famous, or infamous depending on perspective, is undoubtedly Ornette Coleman who played
so called free jazz, which was simply a jazz quartet (or two simultaneously) improvising
simultaneously without the aid of chord changes to guide the improvisations.
There is yet another individual who is not so easily categorized despite an enormous impact on the jazz
scene then and now: John Coltrane. Coltrane, who is known for his intense sheets of sound technique
among other things, wasnt very interested in labels or conventions when it came to music. Not that
other musicians made effort to put themselves into labels, but quite the contrary. However Coltrane
stands out as the first jazz musician to branch out to a global scale in making his music. While players
like Dizzy Gillespie incorporated Afro-Cuban rhythms into his music, Coltrane picked and choose
elements from a broad range of world music, from Middle Eastern, to African, to Indian, and probably
much more. He would adapt for example, eastern embellishments and timbre in his famous My Favorite
Things, or have the rhythm section play a static droning accompaniment while exploring every musical
avenue in the album Impressions. Of course, Coltranes playing did not start out so worldly; he played in
the style of Charlie Parker at first and developed into a top notch hard bop player with his big debut
group, the Miles Davis Quintet. While his career was taking off though, he had many demons to
overcome; he battled a range of drug and alcohol and even over-eating addictions before finding faith
and directing all his energy to music, like some determined mystic. Coltranes relentless spiritual drive
resulted in some of the most iconic jazz recordings to this day like My Favorite Things, Impressions, and
the seminal A Love Supreme. However, in reviewing his work, there is one in-between album, quite
literally, that is overlooked.
Ol Coltrane was recorded only a few days before Africa/Brass and is situated right in the middle of his
transitionary period bridging his hard bop and avant-garde, or spiritual, free style of his later years. Not
only that, but Mile Davis recorded his take on Spanish flavored music with Sketches of Spain with the
momentum of previous Gil Evans collaborations around a year prior, further contributing to an
undeserved shadow over Coltranes work. It would be one thing if Ol Coltrane was a regular collection
of standards, but in fact its actually a three or four track album, depending on the issue of release, of
originals plus one ballad by Billy Frazier, every track greatly varying in style. In overviewing John
Coltranes broad output as a whole, it is always good to take a magnifying glass to one particular piece in
order to gain insight into the work that preceded and followed it. Not only that, but by looking at one
moment in a long career, one can compare the music of Coltranes contemporaries, so it makes all too
much sense to juxtapose two different iconic musicians take on a similar subject, that is the Spanish
flavored music in both Daviss Sketches and Coltranes Ol.
As mentioned previously, using world elements of different world musics is a common theme in
Coltranes career, but the same couldnt really be said about Davis, who, with Gil Evans, looked to
Spanish sonorities for their exoticism, where Coltrane was trying to solve a perpetually troubling
musical/spiritual problem (It should be mentioned that Coltrane failed to differentiate between
spirituality and his own music; they were one in the same).