John Coltrane is Sendin’ Out Good Vibrato

People say that modern jazz horn playing left vibrato behind, left it in the fusty old pre-modern eons of ragtime and swing. That’s what they say. But it’s not true.

John Coltrane is as progressive as you can get. He uses vibrato. Why do they say that vibrato ended with the swing era? Charlie Parker, bebop avatar, used a marked vibrato. Coltrane used it too—and he used it to striking effect even when he was at his edgiest, during his brilliantly scorching last years.

So let me say it again: Coltrane used vibrato. Coltrane used a very distinct vibrato on his slower songs. He also used it when he played fast, at times when he played a note long enough to hear vibrato.

You can hear it on “Nature Boy” from the LP released as The John Coltrane Quartet Plays Chim Chim Cheree etc.

You can hear it—on longer held notes—on “Transition,” from the album Transition. Late ‘Trane at his most cutting edge.

You can hear it in his early years, of course, with Johnny Hodges and with Tadd Dameron. (I'm saying this just in case you thought Coltrane adopted vibrato later on in his career.)

Read my lips: Coltrane used vibrato.

Ahhh, but what kind of vibrato did he use?

Actually, tremolo may be closer to what Coltrane, in particular, is using on the “Nature Boy” version linked above. Yes, it’s a consistent, rapid wave or oscillation in tone quality, but it’s more of a change of timbre than of pitch (or pitch and timbre). Tremolo.

That kind of vibrato has to come more from the larynx and the diaphragm than from the jaw or the lip itself. The latter is more mechanical, easier, and has a correspondingly more obvious and crude effect.(It's often used to cover up intonation problems, so is frowned on.) The former has a profoundly soulful, passionate effect because it comes from inside. The rapid pitch-variant vibrato is, in fact, more characteristic of some early jazz, and that approach is truly out of fashion.

I've heard that the rapid shivering of pitch, to the point where the tone seems to detach into separate repeated notes, was called the “quiver” school. That’s according to reedman Haywood Henry, who told me in the early 1990s. You might hear it on early Fletcher Henderson records or those of other Northern bands of the 20s. Here's one by Clarence Williams featuring the otherwise excellent Buster Bailey.

Soloists in the New Orleans tradition, forerunners though they may be, are not really playing in the “quiver” mode. They had vibrato aplenty—but not in the rapid, constant mode of the quiver school, a more Northern trend of that day. Louis Armstrong used a terminal vibrato: a strong attack, then a widening of the note with a corresponding widening and strengthening of the vibrato toward its end. It’s more blues oriented, I would say. Coleman Hawkins followed Louis in this.

It’s good to bear in mind that opera had enormous prestige in those days, and all of these jazz players in New Orleans and in New York listened to and respected it. It's interesting that even opera at that time had adopted vibrato fairly recently, toward the end of the 19^th century, as halls grew larger, and singers and soloists used it to project. So, yes, vibrato--or a certain kind of vibrato--is rooted in its time and an article of fashion rather than necessity.

Lester Young had a more subtle approach, closer to Coltrane’s tremolo. Milt Jackson thought this was the really soulful way to play vibrato—the slow way—and he certainly put that in practice with the vibraphone rotors he called his “soul” and which were essential not only to his sound quality but his subtle rhythmic approach. 

Coltrane, meanwhile, respected Lester Young and held that respect throughout his career. Today, only Pharaoh Sanders has any element of Coltrane’s transcendent, spiritual vibrato feeling.

But those who say we are wholly past vibrato are right about one thing: vibrato has a history, and its history parallels that of jazz’s expressive, coloristic horn techniques.