John Coltrane

Abstract One of the major musicians of the twentieth century, John Coltrane reshaped the way jazz is perceived. A tenor and soprano saxophonist and a significant composer, he demonstrated how world music, classical music, and classical theory could all be incorporated into powerful blues-based jazz. He was born John William Coltrane in Hamlet, North Carolina, on September 23, 1926. Both of his parents came from literate families in North Carolina, descended from former slaves and named for the former slave owners. Coltrane’s mother was musical-she sang and also played piano-and his father, John Robert Coltrane, played violin, ukulele, and possibly clarinet. Probably beginning in the fall of 1939, Coltrane received his first instrumental training playing alto horn in a community band. He soon switched to the clarinet. When he joined the high school band the next year, young Coltrane, inspired by tenor saxophonist Lester Young, took up the alto saxophone. It appears that he also did some singing in school groups. John’s father died on January 2, 1939, of stomach cancer, a common ailment at that time (and unrelated to liver cancer).