A Black History Month KV Special Edition: John Coltrane and Edward Strickland on Coltrane

Edward Strickland is famous in Knickerbocker Village history. He lived at 10 Monroe Street. Here's another posting about Strickland
below is an excerpt from an article Strickland wrote about Coltrane in the Atlantic in 1987

What Coltrane Wanted
The legendary saxophonist forsook lyricism for the quest for ecstasy
by Edward Strickland
JOHN COLTRANE died twenty years ago, on July 17, 1967, at the age of forty. In the years since, his influence has only grown, and the stellar avant-garde saxophonist has become a jazz legend of a stature shared only by Louis Armstrong and Charlie Parker. As an instrumentalist Coltrane was technically and imaginatively equal to both; as a composer he was superior, although he has not received the recognition he deserves for this aspect of his work. In composition he excelled in an astonishing number of forms--blues, ballads, spirituals, rhapsodies, elegies, suites, and free-form and cross-cultural works.
The closest contemporary analogy to Coltrane's relentless search for possibilities was the Beatles' redefinition of rock from one album to the next. Yet the distance they traveled from conventional hard rock through sitars and Baroque obligatos to Sergeant Pepper psychedelia and the musical shards of Abbey Road seems short by comparison with Coltrane's journey from hard-bop saxist to daring harmonic and modal improviser to dying prophet speaking in tongues.

from Strickland's 1998 obituary

Bay State Banner
09-24-1998
Edward Strickland, 68, educator, artist, writer
Edward Strickland, professor of the psychology of visual arts, a friend to artists, and himself an artist and writer, died in the early morning of Sept. 16 at Deaconess Hospital. He succumbed to respiratory failure due to lung cancer. He was 68.
Throughout his life, in his painting, as an arts administrator and critic, and as a individual, Dr. Strickland sided with those who were struggling to achieve equity in society. He was generous with his time on behalf of such efforts, even though it took him away from his studio where he took an intense pleasure in immersing himself in the …
A woman stands among a smother of foliage, and the leaves around her stir, responsive to her voice. "It's as though she's singing a linden tree into existence," says Edward Strickland, the painter of the scene.
Strickland, through December, is presenting a 40-year retrospective of paintings and drawings in the handsome AAMARP Galleries on the fourth floor of the Ruggles Building of Northeastern University, at 11 Leon St. The retrospective represents the broad scope of his interests built on the dual foundations of psychology and the visual arts. An associate professor of psychology at the University of Massachusetts at Boston and former chair of the black studies department, …

What Is This Thing Called Love: Stan Getz

Stan Getz - What Is This Thing Called Love
Uploaded by savelonp

from a previous post

Stan Getz (Stanley Gayetzky) was born on February 2, 1927 in Philadelphia. He died in 1991. Stan's younger brother Robert was born in 1932. His parents were Ukrainian-Jews who immigrated from the Kiev area in the Ukraine in 1903. The family later moved to New York City's lower east side and then later the Bronx for better jobs. Stan worked hard in school receiving straight "A's" on average and finished 6th grade close to the top of his class. Stan's major interest was in musical instruments, and he felt a need to play every instrument in his sight. He played a number of instruments before his father bought him his first saxophone at the age of 13. Even though his father also got him a clarinet, Stan instantly fell in love with the saxophone and began practicing 8 hours a day. In 1941, he was accepted into the All City High School Orchestra of New York City.

I later discovered on the Stan Getz site that his mother's name was Goldie. With this clue, (since there were several Getz's in the 1930 census), I was able to find Stan (age 3) living with his parents Albert and Goldie at 288 Monroe Street! That address is now part of the Vladeck Houses (around Jackson Street).

Stan Getz: Desafinado

Getz's version which he made poplar in 1962, here recorded probably some time in the 1980's. Remember, at one time Stan lived on Monroe Street where the Vladeck Projects are in the 1930's.

Stan Getz: Seven Steps To Heaven

Stan Getz plays "Seven Steps To Heaven" for Ollie Shannon and for all those other KV related departed. According to the youtube post this was his last video recording and Stan knew he was living on borrowed time since he had liver cancer (which for a while he had put into a miraculous remission through diet and supplements). People forget how good Stan was. A comment from the posting:

Stan possessed the gift of perfect pitch, sometimes called absolute pitch and it occurs in about one in 10,000 people,and he was one of the best sight readers in the business, also he had an unbelievable photographic memory. I also mentioned before in other comment that the sound he gets is from blowing whole tones for 30min before his lesson when he was young. But most of that beautiful tone that he had also came from his cheeks, as if he had 2 large apples stuck in there.