IT IS TIME:

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When it's said that you can hear the history of freedom movements in John Coltrane's 1963 "Alabama," it's more than metaphor: Coltrane patterned his horn lines after Martin Luther King Jr.'s vocal inflections. He reworked King's speech after the church bombing by the Ku Klux Klan, which killed four Black girls, into the song. King's cadence is remade in Coltrane's rising saxophone solo, Elvin Jones' crashing cymbals and percussive shots, McCoy Tyner's rolling block chords, and Jimmy Garrison's low-register groundswell. This is music that's purposeful, principled, and timeless.

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