Robert Spencer here with tonight’s Friday night music thread, John Coltrane’s “Spiritual,” the majestic twenty-minute version from the Village Vanguard, November 5, 1961, with Eric Dolphy on bass clarinet, McCoy Tyner on piano, Reggie Workman on bass, Elvin Jones on drums, and Garvin Bushell underneath it all, providing a drone on contrabassoon.
These are difficult times — as Tom Paine would say, times that try men’s souls, with forces vying for the very soul of the nation. Accordingly, what could be more fitting than this majestic, brooding, searching, keening masterpiece, in which both Coltrane and Dolphy cry from their very souls, and make it music. This is resolve, and perseverance, and the grandeur of the human spirit that will prevail even over the Leftist authoritarian thugs with their determination to destroy and subjugate. If you don’t hear it, listen again. And again.
