[Dixielandjazz] Phillip Larkin on Coltrane

[Joe Carbery]

English poet and writer on jazz Phillip larkin had this to say about John
Coltrane:
"Well, I can't imagine how anyone canlisten to a Coltrane record for
pleasure. That reedy, catarrhal tone, sawing backwards and forwards for ten
minutes nbetween a couple of chords and producing 'violent barrages of
notes not mathematically related to the underlying rhythmic pulse, and not
swinging in the traditional sense of the term' (*Encyclopaedia of Jazz in
the Sixties*); that insolent egotism, leading to forty-five-minute versions
of 'My Favourite Things' until, at any rate in Britain, the audience walked
out, no doubt wondering why they had ever walked in;that latter-day
religiosity, exemplified in turgid suites such as 'A Love Supreme' and
'Ascension' that set up pretension as a way of life; that wilful and
hideous distortion of that offered squeals, squeaks, Bronx cheers and