| Why is he important? In the realm of jazz | | | | tone and was very critical of his playing. Even as a |
| improvisation and the saxophone, John Coltrane's life | | | | child he practiced a lot. His cousin Mary says that he |
| and accomplishments are so monumental as to seem | | | | practiced "all the time." Alice Coltrane, his second wife, |
| to be beyond the scope and constraint of time. | | | | talked about how he would study pictures of |
| Despite a relatively brief career (he first came to | | | | cathedrals and somehow play them. "We practice", |
| notice as a musician at age 29 in 1955, formally | | | | Coltrane said, "so that when the doors of perception |
| launched a solo career at 33 in 1960, and was dead at | | | | open, we're prepared to step through." |
| 40 in 1967), saxophonist John Coltrane is among the | | | | His early musical influences, in high school, were Lester |
| most important-and most controversial-figures in jazz. | | | | Young and Johnny Hodges. In the '40's people like |
| Since Coltrane was a multifaceted player who | | | | Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster, Dexter Gordon and |
| changed his style radically over the course of his | | | | Tab Smith were doing things he didn't understand at |
| career, it has made for much confusion in | | | | the time, but that he felt emotionally. |
| appreciations of his playing. There remains a critical | | | | In his solos Coltrane strung together arpeggios so |
| divide between the adherents of his earlier, more | | | | dense that his saxophone seemed to play many notes |
| conventional (if still highly imaginative) work and his later, | | | | at once. In 1957 he joined Thelonious Monk's band and |
| more experimental work. No one, however, questions | | | | claims to have learned a lot. He developed a technique |
| Coltrane's religious commitment to jazz or doubts his | | | | that critic Ira Gitler labelled "sheets of sound," and the |
| significance in the history of music. | | | | name stuck. |
| John Coltrane was born on September 23, 1926 in | | | | A lot of soloist reach a certain intense peak during their |
| Hamlet, North Carolina. He grow up in High Point, North | | | | solos. However, Trane would play such a flurry of |
| Carolina, in a relatively comfortable small town | | | | notes and play so intensely, that you would think he |
| environment. Coltrane, unlike many musicians, did not | | | | reached his peak, and then he would play with even |
| show his amazing talents when he was young. | | | | MORE intensity, and it kept growing. The effect was |
| He started developing into a phenomenal player in his | | | | like waves of intensity, or "sheets of sound", coming at |
| late 20s and early 30s. Coltrane obsessed over his | | | | you. |