Two months. That’s how long it took to get through Ben Ratliff‘s Coltrane: The Story of a Sound, and not because of length or density. It’s a read-two-pages, think-two-hours kind of book.
The subject is the post-A Love Supreme Coltrane, the years most biographies rush past on their way to the mythology. Ratliff doesn’t rush. He treats sound as the primary evidence: what changed in the playing, when, and why, with the biography (addiction, divorce, spirituality) present only to the degree it actually shaped what came out of the horn. That’s a rarer choice in music writing than it should be.
I hadn’t read Ratliff before this. That changed fast. His site turned into a rabbit hole: a review of ZZ Top’s first album for Tidal, an appreciation of Stereolab for 4Columns, a piece on Coltrane’s Both Directions at Once for Pitchfork, and liner notes for Vinyl Me Please’s repress of Miles Davis’s Sorcerer. All four are worth the detour on their own.
The direct result on my end: a deep dive into late-era Coltrane, including the wave of recently unearthed recordings that keep turning into official releases and landing on my turntable. More on that soon. I’ve got thoughts.