Lakecia Benjamin’s a fantastic alto player, if you haven’t heard of her. This whole album is Benjamin’s exploration of John and Alice Coltrane’s music, and it delivers the goods.
Tag Archives: John Coltrane
“The Coltrane Home in Dix Hills” in The Paris Review
Read this piece about the Long Island house where John Coltrane (who would’ve been 89 yesterday) composed A Love Supreme and lived with his family ’til his death in 1967. The house is being turned into a museum, hopefully set to open in 2017.
…Steve Fulgoni, a local business owner in Dix Hills who is also a voracious jazz fan, broke his way into the house to take a look around. Knowledge of the Coltranes having lived in the area had spread among devotees, but the address wasn’t known, in part because of a misleading mention in a biography. When Fulgoni tracked down an old delivery boy who remembered the jazz legends as neighbors, he found the house as it had been described, simple and unassuming behind a rusting iron gate. To his shock, it was abandoned—an incongruous suburban ruin.
He started petitioning the town of Dix Hills to save the historic home at once…
“Afro Blue”
My God. I first listened to this when I was 14 and it holds up and will hold up. It’s just an explosion of emotion.