House of Blues
LET me take you where classic jazz was made back in the day. We’ll meet not in some dark smoky Greenwich Village bar but on a quiet lane in Dix Hills. Indeed, important jazz landmarks lie well beyond the five boroughs and past big-city limits. The roots of a musical genre and a culture identified as a quintessentially urban American experience are nonetheless planted in suburban soil.
The recent decision by federal and state officials to add the former home of saxophonist and composer John Coltrane in Dix Hills to both the National and New York State Register of Historic Places reinforces this idea as it honors one of jazz’s great legacies.
Coltrane lived in the 3,000-square-foot brick and wood-frame ranch house on Candlewood Path, just south of the Long Island Expressway, for three years, until his death in 1967. In 1964, in a dormered upstairs room, he composed the best-selling album “A Love Supreme,” a suite of music as famous for its spiritual heft as for its enduring appeal.
Coltrane was a family man as well as a jazzman. He drove a station wagon — that is, in addition to his white Jaguar XKE. Dix Hills was a haven for him, a place where he found time and inspiration to compose deeply spiritual music. And it was a quiet, peaceful spot for him and his wife, Alice, who was also a formidable composer and musician, to raise their three sons — John Jr., Ravi and Oran — and Alice’s daughter from a previous marriage, Michelle.
Once Coltrane had his landmark suite carefully outlined on manuscript paper, he headed off to another suburban spot to record it — Van Gelder Studios in Englewood Cliffs, N.J. For jazz fans, Rudy Van Gelder’s recording studio is yet another shrine. Still active, it’s where the tracks for thousands of jazz recordings, dozens of them classics, were laid down.
The current studio, set off from surrounding office parks by a wooded drive, has been in operation since 1959; before that, Mr. Van Gelder had recorded the likes of pianist Thelonious Monk in his parents’ house in Hackensack, N.J., while working days as an optometrist. (Monk named one composition “Hackensack” in honor of that place and Mr. Van Gelder.)
The Coltrane house in Dix Hills might easily have disappeared from Long Island’s — and jazz’s — landscape. In 2004, a developer had planned to raze the house and subdivide the property. Fortunately, Steve Fulgoni, a Dix Hills resident and an avid jazz fan, set up a Web site and put the word out about the pending demise of the Coltrane house. A Town Hall hearing was held, and the Town Council declared the house a local landmark, protecting it from demolition.
Two years ago, the Town of Huntington, which includes Dix Hills, purchased the house and the estate’s mostly wooded 3.4 acres. Mr. Fulgoni formed a nonprofit organization and is raising money and organizing plans for a museum that will be dedicated to John Coltrane’s far-reaching legacy while retaining the intimacy and personality of the original house.
One natural model for the project is the Louis Armstrong House and Museum in Corona, Queens. The Armstrong house is a casual center of jazz discovery that invigorates its local community and invites fans and students to study Armstrong’s music by observing and learning about his personal history. The modest red-brick house where Armstrong and his wife, Lucille, moved in 1943 draws visitors not just for its rare home recordings and interactive displays but for the stunning turquoise kitchen and mirrored bathroom adorned with gold fixtures.
The Coltrane house in Dix Hills is decidedly more modest inside but every bit as grand in potential. In 2004, preservation advocates spoke before the Huntington Town Council of the saxophonist as “jazz’s van Gogh,” and of the house as “a sacred space” with “priceless educational value.” Of course, there were naysayers — neighborhood association members worried that a museum would disturb their “sleepy residential community.” But luckily, their concerns were dismissed.
Mr. Fulgoni says that the Historic Register designation is the ultimate endorsement and an immeasurable aid to fund-raising efforts. Coltrane’s son Ravi, an accomplished saxophonist who serves on the new project’s board, wasn’t yet born when his father composed “A Love Supreme.” When his turn came to speak before the Town Council, he recalled learning to ride a bicycle in the driveway, long before he would pick up a saxophone. “I thought this house would always be there,” he said, “and I believe that it needs to stand.”
It will. Jazz lives, quietly yet forcefully, in unexpected places, protecting these spots keeps the spirit of great musical inspiration alive in far-flung locations, where it might otherwise be paved over. And it reinforces jazz as a culture marked by individuals, each with his own distinct story.
September 18, 2007
Coltrane's Historic Home
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
The home of the jazz great John Coltrane in Dix Hills, N.Y., has been added to the New York State and National Registers of Historic Places. Coltrane, the saxophonist and composer, who was born in 1926 and died in 1967, would have observed his 81st birthday on Sunday. In the home in Dix Hills, on Long Island, where he and his family lived from 1964 to 1973, he composed the best-selling album “A Love Supreme.” Members of the family and participants in the Coltrane Home, a non-profit organization devoted to preserving the house, said they hoped to convert it to a museum and music archive.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/18/arts/music/18arts-COLTRANESHIS_BRF.html
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