# Coltrane killed jazz – An excerpt from Brad Mehldau’s memoir։ Video, Photos

- Link: https://jazzblues.eu/2023/03/30/coltrane-killed-jazz-an-excerpt-from-brad-mehldaus-memoir%d6%89-video-photos/
- Published: 2023-03-30T00:02:25+01:00
- Author: https://JazzBlues.EU

**In this excerpt from Brad Mehldau’s memoir, Formation: Building a Persona Canon,
Part 1, the pianist talks about the lessons he learned from jazz legends Barry Harris
and Lou Donaldson.**

Many of us were in our late teens but playing the part of elder statesmen, even 
dressing the part. Suspenders and tweed were prevalent, and some would keep that
look at all times of the day, not just on the bandstand. A lot of the guys had a
studied sourness. Everything going on around us, everything that wasn’t what we 
were doing, was “jive” – not valid, not authentic. That was a favorite word of ours,
a blanket condemnation of lots of other jazz. It’s still a good word now and then,
when used with precision.

We took lessons from Barry Harris in this regard, because, in showing how righteous
bebop melody and harmony was, he implied that much of everything else was not. Barry
Harris was the patron saint of bebop piano, one of the musicians who was still around
from the early second wave that immediately followed Bird and Bud. He had a way 
of teaching that was unparalleled. He taught masterclasses at the New School, University
of the Streets in the East Village, and other places. A group of Barry’s acolytes
would show up at every one. These were events.

Marshall Royal is in Hodges-like mode on Gordon Jenkins’ This is All I Ask and Benny
Powell makes the emotional plea, Please Send me Someone to Love.

> [The US/EU Jazz & Blues Association (US/EU JBA): Who we are 2012 – 2023! Photo](https://jazzblues.eu/2023/03/12/useujba/)

It was easy enough to learn Bird’s licks. Many of us had already been transcribing
Bird’s solos onto paper already, and there was even a shortcut available, something
called the _Charlie Parker Omnibook_, with several of his solos already transcribed.
I had done quite a bit of transcribing of Bird and Bud, and it was a great way to
dive into their melodic vocabulary and start getting it under my fingers in various
keys. Barry widened the lens for us, though, connecting those melodies to the harmony
underneath them. It was theory but also a model for praxis – he demonstrated it 
on the piano. Barry would teach, and then you’d go hear him later that night at 
Bradley’s. You dug it like you already had, but you began to understand why, and
then you dug it even more.

![Brad Mehldau Evolves in '10 Years Solo Live,' a New Boxed Set - The New York Times](
https://i0.wp.com/static01.nyt.com/images/2015/10/22/arts/MEHLDAU/MEHLDAU-superJumbo.
jpg?w=640&ssl=1)

He had built on Bud’s harmony and melodic phrasing. It informed his own playing,
and, when he taught, he would hold you to it – there were do’s and don’ts. It was
a complete aesthetic. This was a strong example: Yes, you had to learn vocabulary,
but you wanted to also learn what made it great. It was how you developed a personal
aesthetic; it was how you might become a stylist in your own right, with your own
calling card. Going forward, if you decided to drop one of those do’s or don’ts,
or supplant it with another, you could justify your reason. That justification wasn’t
necessarily for anyone else, although it might play out in one or another polemical
quarrel. It was a step towards further self-knowledge. Vladimir Horowitz expressed
the same idea in a different context, saying that, in order to move beyond mere 
virtuosic display, you have to learn how to be a virtuoso first. He meant that if
you don’t own something first, then you can’t rightfully discard it – you never 
had it to begin with.

The most refined, most elder, most withering sourpuss whom we all feared and loved,
the one we tried to imitate in vain, was the great alto saxophonist Lou Donaldson.
Lou was from the hard bop generation and had been on some of the legendary records
we prized, so the first time I was even close to him my temperature was up. This
was the guy who was in the front line with trumpeter Clifford Brown on Art Blakey’s
_A Night at Birdland (Volumes 1 and 2)_. Lou had what we wanted: not just the bebop
language, but a real romanticism in his expression, like his reading of the melody
on a ballad like “If I Had You” from _Volume 2_, with his heart right on his sleeve.

Yet Lou could have had a second career as a comedic roaster. Really, he was nothing
but kind. He would come down to our fledgling gigs and listen to us try to play 
the music he had played decades before us, and he stuck around. With Lou, as with
Barry, the sourness wasn’t truly sour, because it was coupled with a big heart. 
We felt that. It was incredibly important to have someone like Lou at your gig –
intimidating and inspiring all at once. You knew how scathing Lou’s criticism was
of most everything, apart from Bird, Bud, and a few others. Everyone has their favorite
Lou phrases; mine is when he was talking about a band he had just seen at Sweet 
Basil called The Leaders, led by tenor player Chico Freeman, son of the great Chicago
tenor stylist Von Freeman.

> [Our US/EU Jazz-Blues Association Festivals 2023 with performances by international stars: Photos](https://jazzblues.eu/2023/03/19/useu-jazz-blues-association-festivals/)

**“The Leaders? . . . I’d sure hate to see the followers!”**

These roasts were ingenious in their timing, delivered in Lou’s hipster cadence,
with his characteristic high voice, and in the deadpan way they fell out, devoid
of mercy, with just a touch of a smile. Yet I was often hesitant to laugh. Most 
of the people Lou dissed were further along in the game than I might ever get – 
they had been out there and were respected by their peers and audience alike. Their
music had touched people, myself included. But not Lou. It was Lou who introduced
the idea that a whole period of jazz could be bullshit, with no exceptions. One 
night, he came to Augie’s to see Peter Bernstein, Larry Goldings on his organ set-
up, and Bill Stewart on drums. Augie’s was a bar uptown where a lot of things happened
for all of us early on. After the set, Lou was holding court with all of us, and
without warning, made a statement of biblical weight:

**“I got news for you. Coltrane killed jazz.”**

I was shaken, but I took it in because it was Lou saying it. It was where he was
coming from, from his generation. There was this beautiful, melodic thing that Bird
had brought, full of fire but also romance. He was witness to that as it happened
and went on to draw from it in his own playing. When Coltrane came along, he seemed
to dismantle all that, willfully. From my perspective, it was simple: Coltrane had
made something new for jazz. I loved it as much as the earlier stuff; it was another
case of apples and oranges. Compared to Lou, though, I was a time-traveling tourist.
I was perusing through these different periods of jazz, digging on all of them, 
but I hadn’t ever lived through any of them. Chronology was irrelevant to me in 
the sense that it was all way before me. For Lou, chronology was everything: Coltrane
came along, and bebop was effectively over. Coltrane may not have killed jazz, but
he killed Lou’s jazz.

![Brad Mehldau Formation](https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/abf7d7c/2147483647/
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