{"id":81097,"date":"2014-12-22T16:00:45","date_gmt":"2014-12-22T21:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=81097"},"modified":"2014-12-22T10:47:38","modified_gmt":"2014-12-22T15:47:38","slug":"an-absolute-truth-on-writing-a-life-of-coltrane-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/12\/22\/an-absolute-truth-on-writing-a-life-of-coltrane-2\/","title":{"rendered":"An Absolute Truth: On Writing a Life of Coltrane"},"content":{"rendered":"

We\u2019re out until January 5, but we\u2019re re-posting some of our favorite pieces from 2014 while we\u2019re away. We hope you enjoy\u2014and have a happy New Year!<\/em><\/p>\n

\"John_Coltrane_1963\"<\/a><\/p>\n

A few years ago I found a used, first-edition hardcover of Dr. Cuthbert Ormond Simpkins\u2019s 1975 book, Coltrane: A Biography<\/em>, online for $150. I had long admired its feverish, street-pulpy story about the saxophonist John Coltrane, whose powerful music increasingly seemed capable of altering one\u2019s consciousness before he died in 1967, at age forty. Posthumously, the mythology and exaltation of Coltrane, as well as his musical influence, only grew. But by that point, Simpkins had already researched and written Coltrane\u2019s story, expressing an uncompromising, unapologetic black voice rarely found in the annals of jazz before or since.<\/p>\n

I forked up the money for the hardback. The dust jacket bears an impressionistic black-and-white painting of Coltrane playing soprano saxophone. The rounded, sans serif font resembles that of Soul Train<\/em>, the popular TV show that premiered in 1971. On the back cover is a photograph of a young, Simpkins sporting a West African dashiki shirt, a high Afro, thick sideburns, and a beard.<\/p>\n

Simpkins\u2019s idea for the book was conceived during his senior year at Amherst, in 1969; he worked on it during breaks from Harvard Medical School in the early seventies. Simpkins possessed no credentials in jazz or literature. The publisher of the original hardcover is Herndon House; quick Google and Library of Congress searches yield no other books from that publisher. There are identical typographical errors in all three editions\u2014first and second hardback, and paperback. (Sarah Vaughan\u2019s name, for instance, is spelled once as \u201cVaughn,\u201d and Nesuhi Ertegun appears as \u201cNehusi.\u201d) All indications point to the book having been self-published, the original piece preserved in two later editions. Read More >><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We\u2019re out until January 5, but we\u2019re re-posting some of our favorite pieces from 2014 while we\u2019re away. We hope you enjoy\u2014and have a happy New Year! A few years ago I found a used, first-edition hardcover of Dr. Cuthbert Ormond Simpkins\u2019s 1975 book, Coltrane: A Biography, online for $150. I had long admired its […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":101,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16464],"tags":[14031,780,14027,14025,14030,330,1750,46,14026,14028,14032,14029],"class_list":["post-81097","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-best-of-2014","tag-ben-ratliff","tag-civil-rights","tag-cuthbert-ormond-simpkins","tag-ella-baker","tag-gary-giddins","tag-jazz","tag-john-coltrane","tag-music","tag-nesuhi-ertegun","tag-sarah-vaughan","tag-sekou-sundiata","tag-stanley-crouch"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nAn Absolute Truth: On Writing a Life of Coltrane<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Sam Stephenson interviews Dr. Cuthbert Ormond Simpkins on his 1975self-published book, \u201cColtrane: A Biography.\u201d\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/12\/22\/an-absolute-truth-on-writing-a-life-of-coltrane-2\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"An Absolute Truth: On Writing a Life of Coltrane by Sam Stephenson\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"December 22, 2014 \u2013 We\u2019re out until January 5, but we\u2019re re-posting some of our favorite pieces from 2014 while we\u2019re away. 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