I Never Met John Coltrane

I never met John Coltrane; the closest I ever came to meeting him was at a performance he was giving on 125st in Harlem, at the Olatunji Cultural center. I think the year was 1967 because he died not long after the concert leaving me no other chance to see him perform. I don’t remember why I did not go to the show, my girl friend and many of our friends went; we were all in an African Dance company and the idea of John Coltrane at the Olatunji cultural center was a must see, so it must have been something fairly distracting to have prevented me from attending. I really regretted this omission on my part after he died when the unalterable significance of missing the show settled in on me.

I was not much of a jazz music fan at that time but thanks to my odd ball cousin Eric I was a Coltrane fan. He had inadvertently introduced me to many things which later proved to be significant in my life, I say inadvertently because he was a crippled spirit, a drug addict, so his actions were always suspect. But the two things he loved in life (outside of heron) were basketball and Jazz. He made me listen to Train and he made me understand him and for that I am thankful.

In the odd way that life plays itself out, many years later I fell backwards into a Coltrane reality. In 1972 I lived in a sea captains mansion on Staten Island in New York City and in the red brick mansion next to me lived Gorge Braithwaite the jazz musician who invented the two bell saxophone. We met and became friends crossing on the Staten Island Ferry.

One day helping him out at his Soho music club” Musart” he introduced me to Ray Draper who was to become a lifelong friend; both because I was drawn to him and because he loved me as only a friend can, especially a friend constantly fighting demons.

I never really understood that Ray was a famous jazz musician, I knew he was of all things a tuba player but not being in the music scene, even as I was in it, I did not see him or know him as a genius, a towering figure in music. I just knew him as Ray, a sweet man who would do anything for his friends and who never asked me for anything other than my friendship.

I remember when in simple passing Ray mentioned to me one day that he had played with John Coltrane and I was not so musically detached as to not be blown away when he told me that John Coltrane had played with him on one of his albums! As I said my cousin Eric had taught me at an early age that Coltrane was a musical God so what did that make Ray? It was only then that I realized who Ray was.

Ray never touted himself, he was just Ray, he liked drugs, young women and of course music. He was a modest guy and one who never brought his dark side with him in my presence; in all the years I knew him I never once saw him high on heron. I knew he had done it, was more than likely doing it, but he cared for me in a way which never allowed him do it around me. Why, I can’t really say other than to say that sometimes we met people who bring out the best in us.

Ray saw how thunder struck I was to discover that John Coltrane had been in “his” band that he didn’t think I believed him; so the next time he came to my house he brought me a copy of the album (The Ray Draper Quintet featuring John Coltrane) and gave it to me. I am sorry to say that somewhere through the years I lost track of it, it was not that I could not or sill could not get another copy of it but as fate has taken Ray away I can never get another copy from him.

I knew Ray from 1972 to 1982 when a young punk who did not know who he was shot him dead just for meanness. His girlfriend came to my house crying just days after it happened and told me the story. They were together and Ray was clean, he had gotten a check, I think an advance from a record company and they were on his home turf, 110st and 8th Avenue at a check cashing joint. When they came out a young punk came up to him and told Ray to give him his money.

According to her Ray smiled and told the kid “Hey man you don’t know who you talking too, man this is my neighborhood dude”.

She interrupted Ray and told him “Ray just give him the money”.

Ray smiled again and did as she said “Here young brother, you can have it you need it more than me”.

The kid took it and then shot him dead anyway for reasons no sane person will ever know and in those few moments a legend died and Music lost a hero.

I went to his funeral, I spoke at his funeral and I comforted his family and daughter whom Ray had introduced me to not long before and with whom I had become a friend. At the funeral I remembered that long ago when I lived in the sea captains mansion on Staten Island Ray had trusted me with the only copy of a book he was writing. He wanted me to read it and tell him what I thought. It also had an original photograph of him when he was 18 with his mother and family. It came back to me then because I thought I should give it to his daughter but when I told her about it she told me he would want me to keep it.

I did keep it but could never bring myself to read it until just recently in March 2010 when John Coltrane came up in conversation reminding me of him and it. Perhaps one reason I never read it was because it was called “The Junk syndrome”, it was about his life long fight with heron.

But reading it I was so moved to find he could write, he had a natural gift for prose as he did for music. Its only two chapters totaling 11 pages but in those pages I learned more about him than I had known in his life time and I felt as if he were there telling the story to me. When I finished I was so sorry there was not more to read, it was very good and moving, it was about life and music, let me give you this small quote:

“For although my talent may have come from that which makes all life possible, my step-father was the one to make me realize that music was inside my head, at my finger tips. Everything I’d touch would be some kind of a sound thing to make music. It was, no doubt, my initial discovery that music was in the air, everywhere, and if one were lucky and found out enough about it, they could even make music, or snatch a little piece out of the air……”

That was Ray, a body trapped by drugs, a soul soaring into the air, pure poetry, music and light.

I have one jazz CD in my car, “A Love Supreme”, John Coltrane talks to me about Ray Draper, I never met John Coltrane but I knew his good friend Ray Draper and the two are ever intertwined in my heart.