SOULTRANE

Coltrane has a much richer, much warmer sound and feel. Just the opening bars of a tune like "Good Bait" are a clear indication that you are in the presence of a master musician and you experience a feeling of giddiness. The sound of Coltrane's instrument becomes the center of the experience in a way that only truly great musicians allow. Chet Baker may have started with this goal, too. But the really amazing thing about his career is that at some point he abandons this goal and becomes committed to the music in a way that brings out the sensualitry in the playing and the quality of the instrumentation in a way that Miles and Trane abandoned, choosing instead projects that were focused on changing the listener's experience of music. Perhaps that was a political statement on the need for change in black consciousness in the political environment of the 1960s. Chet was not so ambitious as to believe this was possible, and instead set forth on a course that he chose as likely from limitations as from desires.