Chasing Trane: The John Coltrane Documentary

John Coltrane apprenticed with all the jazz greats; developed but recovered from a heroin addiction; pioneered a style all of his own; and died tragically young, aged just 40, of liver cancer. We might think of musicians as party animals but by all accounts in this film, Coltrane was a fundamentally serious person, and a genius. The film is a fairly typical documentary, reverential in tone, with lots of his music to listen to. Also there are a lot of talking heads, and while Bill Clinton is not unintelligent in his comments, I'm not sure he's really among the best qualified people to give us insight. What's missing is any sort of musical analysis: we get to hear the man in action, but if you wanted to understand how his work fitted into, and transcended, the jazz traditon, or why it sounded so revolutionary when first released, you might be disappointed. Banal comments likening what Coltrane did on the saxaphone to what Hendrix did on the electric guitar don't really explain either. But the programme does succeed in making you like the man: unlike fellow genius Miles Davis, he seems to have been a nice person, which is quite unusual for someone so talented.