All That Jazz

Regarding “This Trane Keeps A-Rollin’ ” (July 12):

Lawrence Christon’s declaration that John Coltrane “had successfully begun experimenting with collapsing whole chords into single notes” is gibberish, no less than saying that a writer had collapsed whole words into single letters.

And Zan Stewart, in his Valley/Westside piece the same day, hears in Eddie Harris’ sound “an uncanny resemblance to the bright, bubbly alto tone of Charlie Parker,” but to me it recalls the current joke making the rounds: “Did you hear about the tenor player whose tone was so bad even the other tenor players noticed?” Harris just might be that tenor player.

DAVID M. SHERR

Santa Monica