Coltrane's Soulful Pickups

A gospel connection?

Hunting for hidden words in Coltrane is something of a cottage industry. In an interview with a French reporter, Coltrane admitted to using poems as the basis of some of Crescent, although exactly what poems or words apply to which music has never been determined. There’s one word that I associate with a particular phrase of Coltrane, and, well, it’s gotten so stuck in my head that I can’t unhear it.

If you’ve done a lot of listening to Coltrane, you may have noticed a beautiful phrase he does. It’s a pickup, usually on a middle-to-high register note, with a little scoop into it, and it begins on an upbeat. Sometimes it’s a dotted quarter, sometimes longer, an entire measure or m. It begins towards the end of a 4 bar phrase and leads into a new section that begins on a 4 bar phrase. So if he’s playing a blues, this pickup may be in bar 12 leading into bar 1, or it may be on bar 4 leading into bar 5.

Usually it is a single note, but often it is a longish note followed by an eighth note pickup or two.

Your Lady from Live at Birdland (rec. 1963)

scooped pickup into the second head, and pickup going into the solo, around 1:03

Bessie’s Blues from Crescent (rec. 1964)

before the second chorus

Resolution from Love Supreme (rec. 1964)

beginning of the solo

A common feature of 1940s era gospel quartets is a pickup, usually sung by the lead, which cues the rest of the group to enter all together. It is sometimes sung as “Oh” but is more often “Well”, and precedes the lyrics which are usually drawn from scripture.

Famous Blue Jays: I’m Bound for Canaan Land 1947

“Well” pickup at 1:26

Not only does Canaan Land feature a tremendous pickup “well” from superhero lead vocalist Silas Steele, leading into the fast second section, this arrangement has a veritable feast of hocketing “wells” between Steele and the second singer.

Famous Blue Jays: Children Wade in the Water 1932

“Oh” pickup at the beginning

Golden Gate Quartet: Joshua Fit the Battle Round Jericho (originally 1946 , this version 1958)

Going back even earlier, It also appears on this 1927 recording of Arizona Dranes, which is thought to be one of the first recordings of gospel.

“well” starts at 0:11 and continues throughout

Dinwiddie Colored Quartet from 1902, “Oh” at the beginning

And of course, since Gospel birthed Rock and Roll, by the 1950s white rockers were incorporating “Well” into their hits. Both Elvis’s “Heartbreak Hotel” and Buddy Holly’s “That’ll be the Day” begin with a “Well”.

Rev Kelsey: Tell me How Long (late 40s)

The recordings of Rev Kelsey are particularly fascinating because you can hear how Gospel music was seamlessly integrated into the service. The speech of the sermon was rubato but pitched, featured call and response, and then led directly into a rhythmic song. The first phrase of the rhythmic section at 1:37 doesn’t begin with a “well”, but the second phrase does. I also love Kelsey’s recordings because they feature a single trombone player playing a gliss over and over again, kind of the prehistoric trombone shout band. A scoop up to a note is important to the style, both for the congregants’ responses, Kelsey’s singing, and for the trombone.

Is Coltrane mimicking “Well” when he does his pickups? He did use words as the basis of several compositions during this period, as meticulously documented by Lewis Porter.

There’s evidence he imitated elements of Afro American religious rituals in “Alabama”, based on a speech of Martin Luther King, and Love Supreme, with sections alternating chanted and ecstatic, as well as imitating Eastern and African religious practices on Om, Meditations, Kulu Se Mama, etc.

Of course he was well steeped in church music. In research for an upcoming Billy Hart memoir, Scott Douglass wrote: “Coltrane’s grandfathers William W. Blair and William H. Coltrane were both African Methodist Episcopal ministers in North Carolina. His mother Alice attended Livingstone College, affiliated with the AME Zion church, and played piano accompaniment for Reverend Blair’s services.”

Perhaps the pickups are merely a pet phrase that Coltrane did even before his more spiritual work. Giant Steps (rec. 1959), for example, has soaring, high register pickups that start on upbeats, like the end of the first chorus going into the second. Blue Train (rec. 1957) has a pickup leading into the 5th bar of the solo. Coltrane didn’t invent the tenor sax high register pickup. There are plenty of examples from, say, Lester Young, one of Coltrane’s early models, of mid to high register pickup notes with a little scoop. Lester Young’s tend to be more rhythmically ambiguous, and over the beat, sometimes carrying over into the 1st bar of the next phrase, Perhaps the pickups that appear in Coltrane are just echoes of their vocabulary that he tailored to his style.

To help find Lester Young examples I asked saxophonist, blogger, and prolific sax solo transcriber Kevin Sun, who led me to solos like the one below and added this, “The Bessie’s blues example reminds me that Trane loved scooping on the concert C which is the first palm key note on the tenor, and there is something natural and satisfying about bending into that note to give it a bit more width and resonance, so there is a tenor saxophone-specific dimension to it to.“

Count Basie featuring Lester Young: Exactly Like You 1938, around 2:20

It’s possible Coltrane wasn’t thinking “Well”, exactly, but subconsciously incorporated this trope, transforming what was a Lester Young-ish pickup into a more and more churchy sounding pickup as his playing got more bluesy and soulful in the late 50s and early 60s.

But listen to “The Promise” from Live at Birdland (rec 1963). After McCoy builds his solo to a tremendous peak, Coltrane enters with a long, high, scooping note. The band is already at full bore. Does it not sound as if he is exhorting them to even greater spiritual heights, like they were a congregation and he the preacher?