It was announced this week that legendary jazz saxophonist John Coltrane’s seminal 1965 album A Love Supreme has finally achieved platinum status 56 years after being released. In the United States, platinum status denotes album sales of one million copies, with subsequent platinum plaques being awarded if and when the milestone is reached again.
In the realm of commercially recorded music, one album moving a million copies is not an uncommon occurrence. Dozens of albums in rock, hip-hop, and country have achieved platinum status over the years. In fact, nearly one hundred albums have achieved diamond status, indicating sales of ten million copies. Perplexingly enough, jazz, one of America’s most beloved and celebrated art forms, boasted a mere eight platinum selling albums in its hundred-plus year history prior to Coltrane’s recent achievement.
The genre itself dates back to at least 1900, with the Original Dixieland Jass Band’s 1917 recording of ‘Livery Stable Blues’ considered the first instance of the music’s sonic documentation. It was also around this time that the spelling of “jass” was altered to “jazz” as we know it today.
The influence of jazz can be seen and felt all over in popular music. The artists who shaped rock and roll in the 50s and 60s were heavily influenced by artists like Miles Davis and John Coltrane who at the time were pushing the boundaries of what was harmonically possible in commercial music. David Crosby, founding member of The Byrds and Crosby, Stills, and Nash, has noted the considerable influence of the genre’s primary figures on his own music. Davis would give the folk legend a nod back in 1970 when he recorded a cover of Crosby’s ‘Guinnevere’ just a year after it was released.
Jazz has also been highly influential to hip-hop music. The prevalence of sampling within the genre, particularly in its infancy, relied heavily on the use of jazz chord voicings. This influence has extended into lo-fi and electronic genres as well.
The 1970s saw the rise of jazz fusion which blended elements of jazz and rock music, eventually birthing the subgenre progressive rock. Popular artists to emerge from this format include Genesis, Pink Floyd, Yes, and Jethro Tull among others.
Given its irrefutable and widespread influence, it is clear that this music was being consumed at a considerable level at various points throughout history. So why the distinct incongruity in terms of record sales by comparison to albums directly inspired by the genre? Since the first recording of rock music (Ike Turner’s ‘Rocket 88’ in 1951 is widely considered to be the first rock song) there have been hundreds of albums which have moved enough units to warrant a platinum plaque. Jazz, which got its start decades prior to the advent of rock music, has struggled significantly by comparison from a commercial standpoint.
The nine jazz albums which have achieved platinum status are as follows
1. Miles Davis – Kind of Blue (1959) 4x Platinum
2. Vince Guaraldi – A Charlie Brown Christmas Soundtrack (1965) 4x Platinum
3. Herbie Hancock – Head Hunters (1973)
4. Weather Report – Heavy Weather (1977)
5. The Dave Brubeck Quartet – Time Out (1959)
6. Various Artists – Ken Burns Jazz: The Story of America’s Music (2000)
7. Louis Armstrong – What a Wonderful World (1988)
8. Miles Davis – Bitches Brew (1970)
9. John Coltrane – A Love Supreme (1965))
Note: Some lists of this nature include Herbie Hancock’s 1983 album Future Shock, though the album’s sound features little in the way of hallmarks of the genre.
Of the nine listed, one is a holiday television special soundtrack, two are compilation albums, and two – Head Hunters and Heavy Weather – are fusion albums which almost certainly attained the success they did due to their rock influenced elements. This leaves four straight-ahead jazz records: Dave Brubeck’s Time Out, John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme, and Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue and Bitches Brew, the latter of which implemented elements of rock music and is widely considered the primary forebearer of the fusion genre.
Miles Davis in particular is universally regarded as one of the most influential musical figures of all time. While The Beatles generally receive substantial recognition for revolutionizing the concept of the recorded album as a complete work of artist expression rather than a vehicle for a handful of hit singles, Davis was making these types of artistic statements throughout most of his career. Through focusing his projects in new and exciting directions, Davis pioneered various musical subgenres including cool jazz, jazz fusion, and modal jazz among others. Some argue that Frank Sinatra’s 1955 vocal jazz classic In the Wee Small Hours is the first proper album, as well as the first concept album. It predates two of Davis’ seminal early works, ‘Round About Midnight and Cookin’ with the Miles Davis Quintet by two years.
Given his significant contributions to the genre and to music as a whole, Davis’ multiple appearances on the aforementioned list checks out. But what of those who influenced the iconic trumpeter? What of Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, and Charlie Parker? What of Dizzy Gillespie and Sidney Bechet? And indeed, what of Jelly Roll Morton? How are these musicians to be burdened with the sowing of the seeds but denied a share of the harvest?
Musician, producer, and professor of jazz studies at Ithaca College, Rick Beato, points to the emergence of rock and roll in the 1950s as a potential catalyst for jazz’s commercial decline. Beato asserts that the prevalence of jazz in the early 20th century had much to do with the grooves and danceable nature of the music. Artists like Little Richard and Chuck Berry came along and essentially stripped blues music to its bare essentials, put it over a strong beat, and gave birth to a phenomenon that would take the world by storm. Absent were the sophisticated harmonic qualities and complex rhythms of jazz, leaving only simple melodies and driving grooves. The Beatles and The Rolling Stones soon followed, and while these groups would draw influence from jazz, they would also usurp much of any remaining audience the genre had managed to retain.
The American art form known as jazz will likely never again reach the level of commercial viability it enjoyed during its peak years. Despite its pervasive influence in much of today’s most popular music, a lack of understanding of the genre is likely to prevent the emergence of any kind of widespread revival. Jazz is an acquired taste, and it takes relative effort to reach a point of understanding that constitutes true enjoyment of the music. But if one could travel through time back to Birdland and speak to John Coltrane before or after one of his late-night performances at the club, commercial success of any type would likely be the last thing on his mind. When considering the trajectory of jazz, the most faithful perception could potentially be summed up with a quote from Coltrane himself,
“I am growing to become whatever I become. Whatever that’s going to be, it will be. I am not so much interested in trying to say what it’s going to be. I don’t know. I just know that good can only bring good.”