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Of all the musicians forged by the golden age of jazz in Detroit in the mid-20th century, Alice Coltrane, who died Friday in a suburban Los Angeles hospital of respiratory failure at age 69, traveled the farthest from her roots. It was a remarkable journey.
She started as a nimble, Detroit-born bebop pianist in the `50s named Alice McLeod, but under the sway of her husband, revolutionary saxophonist John Coltrane, she adopted an expressionistic style on piano, harp and organ and became an icon of the avant-garde in the decade following his death in 1967.
On piano she favored rhapsodic arpeggios that fused with celestial modal harmonies and dark bass notes that seemed to grow from Middle Earth. On Wurlitzer organ she created a signature ululating wail. The music was redolent of meditation, Eastern tonality, the church, John Coltrane and the great beyond. Her records, such as "Universal Consciousness" and "Ptah, the El Daoud," helped define an era in which non-Western modes of consciousness were gaining currency.
The music was a bridge into a new life for Coltrane as a Hindu mystic and religious teacher. She stopped public performing and recording in 1978 to minister to a small ashram, a commune that she eventually settled on 48 pristine acres in Agoura Hills, Calif.
Son Ravi Coltrane, a saxophonist, coaxed her out of retirement in 2004. She released a well-received CD, "Translinear Light" (Impulse), and gave a few concerts, including one in Ann Arbor. Mich., last fall on Sept. 23, the 80th anniversary of her late husband's birth.
The timing was a reminder that it was their partnership between 1963-67 that had transformed her musical style, her spirituality and her destiny.
"Once I heard his sound, it just stayed in my mind and consciousness," she told the Detroit Free Press last August near her home in Woodland Hills, Calif. "It was so strong I felt I knew him. There was more than music; there was something greater, something beyond. It was transcendental."
Born Aug. 27, 1937, she studied classical piano from age 7 and was introduced to jazz by her half brother, bassist Ernie Farrow. She developed a scampering style strongly influenced by Bud Powell. Her break came in 1962, when she replaced Terry Pollard, one of her mentors, in vibist Terry Gibbs' Quartet.
Gibbs introduced her to John Coltrane in 1963, and they became inseparable, marrying in 1966. She joined his band in late 1965, as his music was morphing into a turbulent free jazz and he was delving deeper into Eastern philosophy.
She assumed control of John Coltrane's estate at his death.
She is survived by sons Ravi and Oran; a daughter, Michelle, whom she had through a previous marriage to singer Kenny Hagood; and five grandkids. A son, John Jr., died in 1982. Services are pending.
In Ann Arbor, Coltrane, rail thin with a mane of straight black hair and resplendently dressed in orange, played with surprising energy considering her long absence from the scene. She smiled brightly at her colleagues - Ravi, bassist Charlie Haden, drummer Roy Haynes - and accepted the thunderous applause at Hill Auditorium with soft words and grace. She hadn't been on stage much in the last 30 years, but she was right at home.
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Mark Stryker: stryker@freepress.com
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(c) 2007, Detroit Free Press. Distributed by Mclatchy-Tribune News Service.
