Coltrane, John
[key], 1926–67, American jazz musician, b. Hamlet, N.C. He began
playing tenor saxophone as an adolescent. Coltrane worked with numerous big
bands before emerging in the mid-1950s as a major stylist while playing as a
sideman with Miles Davis. Originally
influenced by Lester Young, Coltrane
displayed in his playing a dazzling technical brilliance combined with
ardent emotion and eventually a kind of mysticism. His style, which was at
once sonorous and spare, was influenced by the rhythms and tonal structure
of African and Asian music. Coltrane made a number of influential
recordings, among them the modal-jazz classics My Favorite
Things (1961) and A Love Supreme (1964), and
the later exemplars of free jazz, Ascension and
Interstellar Space, his final album. From the late
1950s until his death he was considered the outstanding tenor and soprano
saxophonist of the jazz avant-garde, and his music continues to be a strong
source of inspiration to jazz and pop musicians.
His wife, Alice Coltrane McLeod (1937-2007), b. Detroit, Mi.,
was a jazz keyboard and harp player and composer; in later life, she became
a swamini, retiring briefly from music making, then returning to record and
perform several spiritual-infused works in the 1990s through her death.
Their son, Ravi Coltrane (1965- ), b. Long Island, N.Y., is a
saxophonist and composer.
See biographies by E. Nisenson (1994) and L. Porter (1998); A. Kahn, A Love Supreme: The
Story of John Coltrane's Signature Album (2003), B. Ratliff,
Coltrane: The Story of a Sound (2007); , C. Devito, Y.
Fujioka, et al., The John Coltrane Reference (2007), L. Brown, John
Coltrane and Black America's Quest for Freedom (2010), C.
Devito, Coltrane on Coltrane (2012); discography by Y.
Fujioka et al. (1995).
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2024, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.
See more Encyclopedia articles on: Music: Popular and Jazz: Biographies
