Jazz Legend John Coltrane

John William Coltrane (sometimes abbreviated "Trane"; September 23, 1926 - July 17, 1967was an American jazz saxophonist and composer. Working in the bebop and hard bop idioms early in his career, Coltrane helped initiate the use of modes in love and afterwards was at the forefront of free jazz. He was prolific, organizing at least fifty recording sessions as a leader during his recording career, and appeared as a sideman on many other albums, notably with trumpeter Miles Davis and pianist Thelonious Monk.

As his career progressed, Coltrane and his music took on an increasingly spiritual dimension. His second wife was pianist Alice Coltrane, and their son Ravi Coltrane is besides a saxophonist. Coltrane influenced innumerable musicians, and remains one of the most significant tenor saxophonists in jazz history. He received many posthumous awards and recognition, including a beatification by theAfrican Orthodox Church as Saint John William Coltrane. In 2007, Coltrane was awarded the Pulitzer Prize Special Citation for his "masterful improvisation, supreme musicianship and iconic centrality to the history of jazz John Coltrane was natural in Hamlet, North Carolina on September 23, 1926, and grew up in High Point, NC, attending William Penn High School (now Penn-Griffin School for the Arts). Beginning in December 1938 Coltrane's aunt, grandparents, and get all died within a few months of each other, leaving John to be elevated by his father and a close cousin.In June 1943 he affected to Philadelphia,Pennsylvania. He enlisted in the Navy in 1945, and played in the Navy jazz band once he was stationed in Hawaii. Coltrane returned to civilian life in 1946 and began jazz theory studies with Philadelphia guitarist and composer Dennis Sandole. Coltrane continued under Sandole's tutelage until the early 1950s. Originally an altoist,during this time Coltrane also began playing tenor sax with theEddie Vinson Band. Coltrane later referred to this point in his life as a sentence when "a wider area of listening opened up for me. There were many things that people like Hawk, and Ben, and Tab Smith were doing in the '40s that I didn't understand, but that I felt emotionally." An important consequence in the advancement of Coltrane's musical development occurred on June 5, 1945, when he saw Charlie Parkerperform for the start time. In a DownBeat article in 1960 he recalled: "the start time I heard Bird play, it hit me right betwixt the eyes."Parker became an early idol, and they played together on occasion in the later 1940s. Contemporary correspondence shows that Coltrane was already known as "Trane" by this point, and that the medicine from some 1946 recording sessions had been played for Miles Davis-possibly impressing the latter. There are recordings of Coltrane from as early as 1945. He was a member of groups led by Dizzy Gillespie, Earl Bostic and Johnny Hodges in the early- to mid-1950s. Miles and Monk period (1955-1957) Coltrane was freelancing in Philadelphia in the summer of 1955 while studying with guitarist Dennis Sandole when he received a call fromtrumpeter Miles Davis. Davis, whose success during the late forties had been followed by several days of refuse in action and reputation, due in office to his struggles with heroin, was again active, and was near to make a quintet. Coltrane was with this edition of the Davis band (known as the "First Great Quintet" to tell it from Davis's later group with Wayne Shorter) from October 1955 through April 1957 (with a few absences), a point during which Davis released several influential recordings which revealed the beginning signs of Coltrane's growing ability. This First Quintet, represented by two marathon recording sessions for Prestige in 1956 that resulted in the albums Cookin', Relaxin', Workin', and Steamin', disbanded in mid April due part to Coltrane's heroin addiction. During the after portion of 1957 Coltrane worked with Thelonious Monk at New York`s Five Spot, a legendary jazz club, and played in Monk's quartet (July-December 1957), but owing to contractual conflicts took office in just one official studio recording session with this group. A private recording made by Juanita Naima Coltrane of a 1958 reunion of the grouping was issued by Blue Note Records in 1993 as Live at the Five Spot-Discovery!. More significantly, a high-quality tape of a concert given by this quartet in November 1957 surfaced, and in 2005 Blue Line made it available on CD. Recorded by Voice of America, the performances confirm the group's reputation, and the resulting album, Thelonious Monk Quartet with John Coltrane at Carnegie Hall, is widely acclaimed. Blue Train, Coltrane's sole date as leader for Blue Note, featuring trumpeter Lee Morgan, bassist Paul Chambers, and trombonist Curtis Fuller, is frequently considered his best album from this period. Four of its five tracks are original Coltrane compositions, and the title track, "Moment's Notice," and "Lazy Bird", have become standards. Both tunes employed the foremost examples of his chord substitution cycles known as Coltrane changes Coltrane rejoined Davis in January 1958. In October of that year, jazz critic Ira Gitler coined the term "sheets of good" to draw the style Coltrane developed during his stint with Monk and was perfecting in Davis' group, now a sextet. His playing was compressed, with rapid runs cascading in hundreds of notes per minute. He stayed with Davis until April 1960, working with alto saxophonist Cannonball Adderley; pianists Red Garland, Bill Evans, and Wynton Kelly; bassist Paul Chambers; and drummers Philly Joe Jones and Jimmy Cobb. During this sentence he participated in the Davis sessions Milestones and Kind of Blue, and the live recordings Miles & Monk at Newport and Know at the Plaza. At the end of this period Coltrane recorded his first album for Atlantic Records,Giant Steps, comprised solely of his own compositions. The album's title tag is mostly considered to take the most complex and difficult chord progression of any widely-played jazz composition. Giant Steps utilizes Coltrane changes. His development of these altered chord progression cycles led to further experimentation with improvised melody and harmony that he would remain throughout his career. Coltrane formed his first group, a quartet, in 1960 for an appearance at the Jazz Gallery in New York City. After moving through different personnel including Steve Kuhn, Pete La Roca, and Billy Higgins, the lineup stabilized in the pin with pianist McCoy Tyner, bassist Steve Davis, and drummer Elvin Jones. Tyner, from Philadelphia, had been a champion of Coltrane's for some days and the two men long had an understanding that the pianist would join Coltrane when Tyner felt ready for the exposure of regularly working with him. Also recorded in the same sessions were the subsequently released albums Coltrane's Sound and Coltrane Plays the Blues. Still with Atlantic Records, for whom he had recorded Giant Steps, his first show with his new group was also his debut playing the soprano saxophone, the hugely successful My Favorite Things. Around the end of his tenure with Davis, Coltrane had begun playing soprano saxophone, an unconventional move considering the instrument's near obsolescence in jazz at the time. His involvement in the straight saxophone most likely arose from his appreciation for Sidney Bechet and the study of his contemporary, Steve Lacy, even though Miles Davis claimed to have given Coltrane his first soprano saxophone. The new soprano voice was joined with further exploration. For example, on the Gershwin tune "But Not for Me", Coltrane employs the kinds of restless harmonic movement (Coltrane changes) used on Giant Steps (movement in major thirds rather than conventional perfect fourths) over the A sections instead of a conventional turnaround progression. Several other tracks recorded in the session utilized this harmonic device, including "26-2," "Satellite," "Body and Soul", and "The Night Has a Thousand Eyes". In May 1961, Coltrane's contract with Atlantic was bought out by the new formed Impulse! Records label.An advantage to Coltrane recording with Impulse! was that it would enable him to go again with engineer Rudy Van Gelder, who had taped both his and Davis's Prestige sessions, as good as Blue Train. It was at Van Gelder's new studio in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey that Coltrane would show most of his records for the label. By early 1961, bassist Davis had been replaced by Reggie Workman while Eric Dolphy joined the grouping as a second horn around the same time. The v had a celebrated (and extensively recorded) residency in November 1961 at the Village Vanguard, which demonstrated Coltrane's new direction. It featured the most experimental music he'd played up to this point, influenced by Indian ragas, the recent developments in modal jazz, and the burgeoning free jazz movement. John Gilmore, a longtime saxophonist with musician Sun Ra, was particularly influential; after listening a Gilmore performance, Coltrane is reported to make said "He's got it! Gilmore's got the concept!"The most celebrated of the Vanguard tunes, the 15-minute blues, "Chasin' the 'Trane", was strongly inspired by Gilmore's music. During this period, critics were fiercely divided in their idea of Coltrane, who had radically altered his style. Audiences, too, were perplexed; in France he was famously booed during his final turn with Davis. In 1961, Down Beat magazine indicted Coltrane, along with Eric Dolphy, as players of "Anti-Jazz" in an article that bewildered and upset the musicians.Coltrane admitted some of his early solos were based largely on technical ideas. Furthermore, Dolphy's angular, voice-like playing earned him a reputation as a figurehead of the "New Thing" (also known as "Free Jazz" and "Avant-Garde") movement led by Ornette Coleman, which was also denigrated by some jazz musicians (including Trane's old boss, Miles Davis) and critics. But as Coltrane's style further developed, he was set to realize each performance "a whole face of one's being". In 1962, Dolphy departed and Jimmy Garrison replaced Workman as bassist. From then on, the "Classic Quartet", as it came to be known, with Tyner, Garrison, and Jones, produced searching, spiritually driven work. Coltrane was moving toward a more harmonically static style that allowed him to expand his improvisations rhythmically, melodically, and motivically. Harmonically complex music was even present, but on stage Coltrane heavily favored continually reworking his "standards": "Impressions", "My Favorite Things", and "I Want to Talk about You." The critique of the five with Dolphy may have had an affect on Coltrane. In line to the radicalism of Trane's 1961 recordings at the Village Vanguard, his studio albums in 1962 and 1963 (with the exclusion of Coltrane, which featured a blistering version of Harold Arlen's "Out of This World") were often more conservative and accessible. He recorded an album of ballads and participated in collaborations with Duke Ellington on the album Duke Ellington and John Coltrane and with deep-voiced ballad singer Johnny Hartman on an eponymous co-credited album. The Impulse compilation Coltrane for Lovers is largely drawn from these three albums. The album Ballads is symbolical of Coltrane's versatility, as the quartet shed new light on old-fashioned standards such as "It's Easy to Remember". Despite a more refined approach in the studio, in concert the quartet continued to balance "standard" and its own more exploratory and challenging music, as can be seen on the Impressions album (two extended jams including the title track along with "Good Old Stockholm", "After the Rain" and a blues), Coltrane at Newport (where he plays "My Favorite Things") and Live at Birdland both from 1963. Coltrane later said he enjoyed having a "balanced catalogue." The Classic Quartet produced their most famous record, A Love Supreme, in December 1964. A climax of lots of Coltrane's work up to this point, this four-part suite is an ode to his trust in and passion for God. These spiritual concerns would characterize much of Coltrane's composing and acting from this period onwards, as can be seen from album titles such as Ascension, Om and Meditations. The 4th movement of A Love Supreme, "Psalm", is, in fact, a musical setting for an original poem to God written by Coltrane, and printed in the album's liner notes. Coltrane plays almost exactly one note for each syllable of the poem, and bases his phrasing on the words. Despite its challenging musical content, the album was a commercial success by jazz standards, encapsulating both the internal and external energy of the quartet of Coltrane, Tyner, Jones and Garrison. Indeed the previous albumCrescent recorded only a few months before already shows the adventurousness and rapport between these musicians. The album was composed at Coltrane's home in Dix Hills on Long Island. The quartet only played A Love Supreme live once-in July 1965 at a concert in Antibes, France. By then, Coltrane's music had grown even more adventurous, and the performance provides an interesting counterpoint to the original.