HAMLET – After graduating from William Penn High School in High Point, NC, John Coltrane followed his mother who had left earlier for Philadelphia to find work.
It was there in Philadelphia he became even more serious with his training and his relentless practicing of the saxophone. Shortly after that he found himself in the US Navy for a brief stint. Then he met, performed, and recorded with Dizzy Gillespie, Johnny Hodges, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk and so many other “Jazz legends” of the era. Coltrane traveled Europe with many of these Jazz acts, became very famous, and was involved with many different bands, quartets, trios, etc. He seemed to be in demand, and he was. Coltrane, among a few others, was considered “avant-garde,” meaning ahead of the time, inventive, experimental, with unusual ideas, etc. The term may not have been too welcomed as he didn’t look at music that way, but he pushed it hard and most of the time to, if not beyond, the limits of many of his peers.
As was true with many of his fellow musicians, John fell into heroin and alcohol abuse that had various effects on him and others in the way they approached their art. However, in 1957, John Coltrane was able to overcome his addictions and his music took on more of a spiritual aspect and meaning. He said, “I experienced by the grace of God an awaking in the spiritual sense which led me to a richer, fuller, healthier, and a more productive life.” He continued to travel all over and perform with his own bands even while others were still including him in many sessions and performances as he was, after all, John Coltrane, and he was at his best.
During the last ten years or so of his life he and his music reached new and higher levels with so much emotional depth attached to it. All of his experiences in the past set him up to accomplish the heights he was able to reach with his art. Down Beat Magazine named him “Jazzman of The Year” in 1965. That was quite an honor to be tagged like that from this publication but he deserved it and more. He had reached a point in his career that he was peaking and was hitting his prime when he died from complications from liver cancer on July 17, 1967. He was only 40 years old and he accomplished so much in his short life time in his genre and left such a huge legacy and a large footprint in the world of Jazz.
