SAX CHAMP

By Jeffrey Ressner

Archaeologists travel the earth to dig for ancient artifacts, but for music archivists a buried treasure can be as close as a widow's dusty attic or a record company's forgotten storehouse. Consider the legacy of saxophonist John Coltrane. Though he died in 1967 and his best work has been available for decades, a cache of recently uncovered tapes offers fresh insights into the unique style and recording methods of one of jazz's revolutionaries.

What made Coltrane great? For some it was his sheer lung power and gale-wind force. "'Trane was the loudest, fastest saxophonist I've ever heard...he was possessed when he put that horn in his mouth," said trumpeter Miles Davis, who made about a dozen albums with him. For others it was his highly textured "sheets of sound," a rapid-fire, rhythmic attack that conjured up aural images of runaway trains, meteor showers and volcanic eruptions. Still others point to Coltrane's importance in bringing African and Eastern influences to jazz and helping bridge the worlds of jazz and experimental avant-garde music .

Born in North Carolina, Coltrane began his career as a horn man in Philadelphia R.-and-B. bands in the 1940s. During much of the '50s, his life followed an all-too-familiar pattern-the broke and brooding jazz musician who turns to booze and drugs. Yet in 1957 he kicked drugs cold turkey at his mother's house, subsisting only on water and a new-found religious zeal.

His spiritual rebirth triggered a musical awakening as well. Though he played admirably with Davis, Dizzy Gillespie and other bebop pioneers, Coltrane's no-holds-barred style did not blossom until he recorded his own albums in the late '50s and early '60s. A new boxed set, The Heavyweight Champion: The Complete Atlantic Recordings of John Coltrane, captures this fertile period, collecting tracks from 10 previously released albums, along with a full CD of rehearsals and outtakes from his first important album, Giant Steps.

The collection documents the high ambition of Coltrane's work at the time, when he doubled on tenor and soprano sax, tested split tones, wrote his own beautifully complex compositions and experimented with long free-form solos. Also included is a detailed booklet of essays and personal reminiscences. (Maybe too detailed: 'Trane loved cooking oatmeal and hot chocolate, we learn from his cousin Mary, but "didn't like any crust on the white part" of his eggs.) For Coltrane fans the outtakes are a particular revelation--not just for the bits of studio banter (Coltrane and his sidemen are heard laughing about the wild chord changes) but also for the unusual glimpse of the evolution of such Coltrane numbers as Naima.

Joel Dorn, a longtime industry talent scout credited with discovering Bette Midler, Roberta Flack and the Neville Brothers, located the lost Coltrane tapes amid hundreds of sloppily marked reels in a storeroom in Atlantic Records' New York City office. Fortunately, the tapes were in near perfect condition. "We just blew the dust off," says Dorn. "We didn't play with the sound by boosting the bottom or putting sparkle on top." No tricks were needed; Coltrane's energy and grace come through without added studio polish.

Coltrane discoveries are continuing. The newly revived Impulse! label--which has already rereleased such late Coltrane albums as A Love Supreme--will release two more albums in October: the complete Africa/Brass sessions, in which Coltrane experiments with tribal rhythms, and Stellar Regions, mostly unreleased songs recorded with his pianist wife Alice only months before his death. The latest trove: 30 hours of raw tape found earlier this year, rescued as they were about to be trashed. Impulse! is negotiating to release these recordings starting next year. Dorn calls it "possibly one of the great musical discoveries of all time." And possibly not, but for the Coltrane revival, another giant step.