John Coltrane

1926–1967 · 41 years Tier I

His father, aunt and both grandparents died within a few months

Portrait of John Coltrane — Gelderen, Hugo van / Anefo — 1963-10-26 — CC0 via Wikimedia Commons

Both his grandfathers preached in A.M.E. Zion churches, and his first music was theirs. Then, from December 1938, his father, his aunt and both grandparents died within a few months, leaving him with his mother and a cousin. In June 1943 the family moved to Philadelphia and he took a sugar refinery job. That September his mother bought him an alto saxophone for his 17th birthday. He heard Charlie Parker on June 5, 1945, and said it hit him right between the eyes. Two months later, on the day the first atomic bomb fell on Japan, he enlisted in the Navy to keep the Army from drafting him, and ended up at Pearl Harbor in an all-white base band that listed him as a guest so no officer would notice.

He came up as a sideman — Dizzy Gillespie, Earl Bostic, Johnny Hodges — then joined Miles Davis's first great quintet in 1955 and spent late 1957 with Thelonious Monk at the Five Spot. Blue Train came that year and Giant Steps in 1960, whose title track sets a chord cycle saxophonists still use as a proving ground. He left Davis in 1960 and built the classic quartet with McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison and Elvin Jones, which recorded A Love Supreme in December 1964, a four-part suite whose last movement he played note for syllable off a poem he had written to God. Then he kept going, past the quartet and past most of his audience, into Ascension and Om and the drum duets of Interstellar Space. In 12 years as a leader he left more than the labels have finished releasing.

He was using heroin from 1948, and it cost him his seat in the Davis quintet. In 1957 he stopped, and called what happened a spiritual awakening given by the grace of God. It came too late for his liver. His biographer Lewis Porter and the physician Frederick Spencer both trace the cancer that killed him at 40 back to the needles. The domestic cost came later. In the summer of 1963 he walked out on Naima Coltrane with his clothes and his horns and no explanation, and had two sons by Alice McLeod before the divorce came through in 1966. The music cost him his band. DownBeat called him a player of anti-jazz in 1961, French audiences booed him, and by early 1966 both Tyner and Jones had quit rather than follow him where he was going.

Almost nobody knew he was ill. Miles Davis said the death took everyone by surprise. The funeral at St. Peter's Lutheran opened with the Albert Ayler Quartet and closed with the Ornette Coleman Quartet. He was buried at Pinelawn on Long Island. In San Francisco a congregation began worshipping him outright as God, then joined the African Orthodox Church, which downgraded him to a saint and canonized him in 1982. A Japanese interviewer had asked him in 1966 what he hoped to be in five years, and he answered, a saint. Impulse! once erased a 1963 master tape to save shelf space. That session came back in 2018 off the spare copy he had handed his wife.

Lifespan

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John Coltrane's life against the full span of the corpus.

Notable works

Blue Train album
His only session as leader for Blue Note, with Lee Morgan and Curtis Fuller 1957
Giant Steps album
The first album he led that was all his own writing 1960
My Favorite Things album
The soprano saxophone record that took a show tune away from Broadway 1961
A Love Supreme album
Recorded in December 1964 and played live only three times 1965
Ascension album
Recorded June 1965 with ten other players — 38 minutes, much of it collective 1966
Interstellar Space album
Duets with the drummer Rashied Ali, cut in 1967 and issued after his death 1974

Life in brief

with age at each point

December 1938 aged 12 His father, aunt and both grandparents begin dying within a few months He was 12. His mother and a cousin raised him after that.
June 5, 1945 aged 18 Hears Charlie Parker play for the first time
August 6, 1945 aged 18 Enlists in the Navy on the day of the Hiroshima bombing He was posted to Manana Barracks at Pearl Harbor and recorded there in July 1946.
1955 aged ~29 Joins the Miles Davis quintet and marries Naima Grubbs
1957 aged ~31 Quits heroin and spends the second half of the year with Thelonious Monk at the Five Spot Contract conflicts meant the quartet made only one official studio session together.
1961 aged ~35 DownBeat calls him and Eric Dolphy players of anti-jazz He had been booed in France on his last tour with Davis.
December 1964 aged 38 Records A Love Supreme with the classic quartet The last movement follows, syllable by syllable, a poem he wrote to God.
1966 aged ~40 McCoy Tyner and Elvin Jones both leave the band Jones said only poets could understand where the music had gone.
July 17, 1967 aged 40 Dies of liver cancer on Long Island at 40