1926–1945: Early life Coltrane was born in his parents' apartment at 200 Hamlet Avenue in
Hamlet, North Carolina, on September 23, 1926. His father was John R. Coltrane and his mother was Alice Blair. He grew up in
High Point, North Carolina, and attended
William Penn High School. While in high school, Coltrane played
clarinet and
alto horn in a community band before switching to the saxophone, after being influenced by the likes of
Lester Young and
Johnny Hodges. Beginning in December 1938, his father, aunt, and grandparents died within a few months of one another, leaving him to be raised by his mother and a close cousin. In June 1943, shortly after graduating from high school, Coltrane and his family moved to Philadelphia, where he got a job at a
sugar refinery. In September that year, for his 17th birthday, his mother bought him his first saxophone, an alto. Between early to mid-1945, he had his first professional work as a musician: a "cocktail lounge trio" with
piano and
guitar. An important moment in the progression of Coltrane's musical development occurred on June 5, 1945, when he saw
Charlie Parker perform for the first time. In a 1960
DownBeat magazine article, he recalled: "the first time I heard Bird play, it hit me right between the eyes."
1945–1946: Military service To avoid being drafted by the Army, Coltrane enlisted in the Navy on August 6, 1945, the day the first U.S. atomic bomb was dropped on Japan. He was trained as an apprentice seaman at
Sampson Naval Training Station in upstate New York before he was shipped to
Pearl Harbor, the largest posting of African American servicemen in the world. By the time he got to Hawaii in late 1945, the Navy was downsizing. Coltrane's musical talent was recognized and, when he joined the Melody Masters, the base swing band, he became one of the few Navy men to serve as a musician without having been granted musician's rating. He continued to perform other duties when not playing with the band, including kitchen and security details. By the end of his service, he had assumed a leadership role in the band. His first recordings, an informal session in Hawaii with Navy musicians, occurred on July 13, 1946. He played alto saxophone on a selection of jazz standards and bebop tunes. He was officially discharged from the Navy on August 8, 1946. He was awarded the
American Campaign Medal,
Asiatic–Pacific Campaign Medal, and the
World War II Victory Medal.
1946–1954: Immediate post-war career After being discharged from the Navy as a seaman first class in August 1946, Coltrane returned to Philadelphia, where the city's bustling
jazz scene offered him many opportunities for both learning and playing. Coltrane used the
G.I. Bill to enroll at the
Granoff School of Music, where he studied
music theory with jazz guitarist and composer
Dennis Sandole. He would continue to work under Sandole's tutelage from 1946 into the early 1950s. Coltrane also took saxophone lessons with Matthew Rastelli, a saxophone teacher at Granoff, once a week for about two or three years. However, the lessons stopped when Coltrane's G.I. Bill funds ran out. After touring with
King Kolax, he joined a band led by
Jimmy Heath, who was introduced to Coltrane's playing by his former Navy buddy, trumpeter William Massey, who had played with Coltrane in the Melody Masters. Although he started on alto saxophone, he switched to playing tenor saxophone in 1947 with
Eddie Vinson. Coltrane called this a time when "a wider area of listening opened up for me. There were many things that people like Hawk
[Coleman Hawkins] and
Ben [Webster] and
Tab Smith were doing in the '40s that I didn't understand, but that I felt emotionally." A significant influence, according to tenor saxophonist
Odean Pope, was the Philadelphia pianist, composer, and theorist
Hasaan Ibn Ali: "Hasaan was the clue to ... the system that Trane uses. Hasaan was the great influence on Trane's melodic concept." Coltrane became fanatical about practicing and developing his craft, practicing "25 hours a day" according to
Jimmy Heath. Heath recalls an incident in a hotel in San Francisco when after a complaint was issued, Coltrane took the horn out of his mouth and practiced fingering for a full hour. Such was his dedication; it was common for him to fall asleep with the horn still in his mouth or practice a single note for hours on end. Charlie Parker, whom Coltrane had first heard perform before his time in the Navy, became an idol, and the two would occasionally play together in the late 1940s. Trane was also a member of groups led by
Dizzy Gillespie,
Earl Bostic, and
Johnny Hodges in the early to mid-1950s.
1955–1957: Miles and Monk period In 1955, Coltrane was freelancing in Philadelphia while studying with Sandole when he received a call from trumpeter
Miles Davis. Davis had been successful in the 1940s, but his reputation and work had been damaged in part by heroin addiction; he was again musically active and about to form a quintet. Coltrane was with this edition of the Davis band (known as the "
First Great Quintet"—along with
Red Garland on piano,
Paul Chambers on bass, and
Philly Joe Jones on drums) from October 1955 to April 1957 (with a few absences). During this period Davis released several influential recordings that revealed the first signs of Coltrane's growing ability. This quintet, represented by two marathon recording sessions for
Prestige in 1956, resulted in the albums ''
Cookin', Relaxin', Workin', and Steamin'''. The "First Great Quintet" disbanded due in part to Coltrane's heroin addiction. During the later part of 1957, Coltrane worked with
Thelonious Monk at New York's
Five Spot Café, and played in Monk's quartet (July through December 1957), but, owing to contractual conflicts, took part in only one official studio recording session with this group. Coltrane recorded many sessions for Prestige under his own name at this time, but Monk refused to record for his old label. A private recording made by Juanita Naima Coltrane of a late summer 1957 reunion of the group was issued by
Blue Note Records as
Live at the Five Spot—Discovery! in 1993. A high quality tape of a concert given by this quartet in November 1957 was found later, and was released by Blue Note in 2005. Recorded by
Voice of America, the performances confirm the group's reputation, and the resulting album,
Thelonious Monk Quartet with John Coltrane at Carnegie Hall, is very highly rated.
Blue Train, Coltrane's sole date as leader for Blue Note, featuring trumpeter
Lee Morgan, bassist
Paul Chambers, and trombonist
Curtis Fuller, is often considered his best album from this period. Four of its five tracks are original Coltrane compositions, and the title track, "
Moment's Notice", and "
Lazy Bird", have become standards.
1958: Davis and Coltrane Coltrane rejoined Davis in December 1957 after Trane recovered from his addiction. In October of that year, jazz critic
Ira Gitler coined the term "
sheets of sound" to describe the style Coltrane developed with Monk and was perfecting in Davis's group, now a sextet. His playing was compressed, with rapid runs cascading in very many notes per minute. Coltrane recalled, "I found that there were a certain number of chord progressions to play in a given time, and sometimes what I played didn't work out in eighth notes, sixteenth notes, or triplets. I had to put the notes in uneven groups like fives and sevens in order to get them all in." Coltrane stayed with Davis until April 1960, working with alto saxophonist
Cannonball Adderley; pianists
Red Garland,
Bill Evans, and
Wynton Kelly; bassist
Paul Chambers; and drummers
Philly Joe Jones and
Jimmy Cobb. During this time he participated in the Davis sessions
Milestones and
Kind of Blue, and the concert recordings
Miles & Monk at Newport (1963) and
Jazz at the Plaza (1958).
1959–1961: Period with Atlantic Records At the end of this period, Coltrane recorded
Giant Steps (1960), his first released album as leader for
Atlantic that contained only his compositions. The album's title track is generally considered to have one of the most difficult chord progressions of any widely played jazz composition, eventually referred to as
Coltrane changes. His development of these cycles led to further experimentation with improvised melody and harmony that he continued throughout his career. Coltrane formed his first quartet for live performances in 1960 for an appearance at the Jazz Gallery in New York City. After moving through different personnel, including
Steve Kuhn,
Pete La Roca, and
Billy Higgins, he kept pianist
McCoy Tyner, bassist
Steve Davis, and drummer
Elvin Jones. Tyner, a native of Philadelphia, had been a friend of Coltrane for some years, and the two men had an understanding that Tyner would join the band when he felt ready.
My Favorite Things (1961) was the first album recorded by this band. It was Coltrane's first album on
soprano saxophone, which he began practicing while with Miles Davis. It was considered an unconventional move because the instrument was more associated with earlier jazz.
1961–1962: First years with Impulse! Records for
Giant Steps in Amsterdam.|267x267px In May 1961, Coltrane's contract with Atlantic was bought by
Impulse!. The move to Impulse! meant that Coltrane resumed his recording relationship with engineer
Rudy Van Gelder, who had recorded his and Davis's sessions for Prestige. He recorded most of his albums for Impulse! at
Van Gelder's studio in
Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. By early 1961, bassist Davis had been replaced by
Reggie Workman, while
Eric Dolphy joined the group as a second horn. The quintet had a celebrated and extensively recorded residency at the
Village Vanguard, which demonstrated Coltrane's new direction. It included the most experimental music he had played, influenced by Indian
ragas,
modal jazz, and
free jazz.
John Gilmore, a longtime saxophonist with musician
Sun Ra, was particularly influential; after hearing a Gilmore performance, Coltrane is reported to have said, "He's got it! Gilmore's got the concept!" The most celebrated of the Vanguard tunes, the 15-minute blues "Chasin' the Trane", was strongly inspired by Gilmore's music. In 1961, Coltrane began pairing Workman with a second bassist, usually
Art Davis or
Donald Garrett. Garrett recalled playing a tape for Coltrane where "I was playing with another bass player. We were doing some things rhythmically, and Coltrane became excited about the sound. We got the same kind of sound you get from the East Indian water drum. One bass remains in the lower register and is the stabilizing, pulsating thing, while the other bass is free to improvise, like the right hand would be on the drum. So Coltrane liked the idea." Coltrane also recalled, "I thought another bass would add that certain rhythmic sound. We were playing a lot of stuff with a sort of suspended rhythm, with one bass playing a series of notes around one point, and it seemed that another bass could fill in the spaces." According to Dolphy, one night "
Wilbur Ware came in and up on the stand so they had three basses going. John and I got off the stand and listened." During this period, critics were divided in their estimation of Coltrane, who had radically altered his style. Audiences, too, were perplexed; in France he was booed during his final tour with Davis. In 1961,
DownBeat magazine called Coltrane and Dolphy players of "anti-jazz" in an article that bewildered and upset the musicians.
1962–1965: Classic Quartet period In 1962, Dolphy departed and
Jimmy Garrison replaced Workman as bassist. From then on, the "Classic Quartet", as it came to be known, with Tyner, Garrison, and Jones, produced searching, spiritually driven work. Coltrane was moving toward a more harmonically static style that allowed him to expand his improvisations rhythmically, melodically, and motivically. Harmonically complex music was still present, but on stage Coltrane heavily favored continually reworking his standard repertoire: "
Impressions", "
My Favorite Things", and "I Want to Talk About You". The criticism of the quintet with Dolphy may have affected Coltrane. In contrast to the radicalism of his 1961 recordings at the Village Vanguard, his studio albums in the following two years (with the exception of 1962's
Coltrane, which featured a blistering version of
Harold Arlen's "Out of This World") were much more conservative. He recorded an album of ballads and participated in album collaborations
with Duke Ellington and
with singer Johnny Hartman, a baritone who specialized in ballads. The album
Ballads (recorded 1961–62) is emblematic of Coltrane's versatility, as the quartet shed new light on standards such as "
It's Easy to Remember". Despite a more polished approach in the studio, in concert, the quartet continued to balance their standard repertoire with more exploratory and challenging music, as can be heard on the albums
Impressions (recorded 1961–63),
Live at Birdland, and ''
Newport '63 (both recorded 1963). Impressions'' consists of two extended jams including the title track along with "
Dear Old Stockholm", "After the Rain", and a blues. Coltrane later said he enjoyed having a "balanced catalogue". On March 6, 1963, the group entered
Van Gelder Studio in New Jersey and recorded a session that was lost for decades after its master tape was destroyed by Impulse! Records to cut down on storage space. On June 29, 2018, Impulse! released
Both Directions at Once: The Lost Album, made up of seven tracks made from a spare copy Coltrane had given to his wife. On March 7, 1963, they were joined in the studio by Hartman for the recording of six tracks for the
John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman album, released that July. Impulse! followed the successful "lost album" release with 2019's
Blue World, made up of a 1964 soundtrack to the film
The Cat in the Bag, recorded in June 1964. The Classic Quartet produced its best-selling album,
A Love Supreme, in December 1964. A culmination of much of Coltrane's work up to this point, this four-part suite is an ode to his faith in and love for God. These spiritual concerns characterized much of Coltrane's composing and playing from this point onward — as can be seen from album titles such as
Ascension,
Om, and
Meditations. The fourth movement of
A Love Supreme, "Psalm", is a musical setting for an original poem to God written by Coltrane, printed in the album's
liner notes. Coltrane plays almost exactly one note for each syllable of the poem, and bases his phrasing on the words. The album was composed at
Coltrane's home in
Dix Hills on Long Island. The quartet played
A Love Supreme live only three times, recorded twice – in July 1965 at a concert in
Antibes, France, and in October 1965 in
Seattle, Washington. A recording of the Antibes concert was released by Impulse! in 2002 on the remastered Deluxe Edition of
A Love Supreme, and again in 2015 on the "Super Deluxe Edition" of The Complete Masters. A recently discovered second amateur recording titled
A Love Supreme: Live in Seattle was released in 2021.
A Love Supreme was reinterpreted, arranged, and performed by Danish harmonica player and arranger Mathias Heise with the Danish Radio Big Band for the album
A Love Supreme Revisited in 2026, marking the hundredth anniversary for the birth of Coltrane.
1965: Adding to the quartet and avant-garde jazz (center; 1978) to his ensemble. In his late period, Coltrane showed an interest in the
avant-garde jazz of
Ornette Coleman,
Albert Ayler, and
Sun Ra. He was especially influenced by the dissonance of Ayler's trio with bassist
Gary Peacock, who had worked with
Paul Bley, and drummer
Sunny Murray, whose playing was honed with
Cecil Taylor as leader. Coltrane championed many young free jazz musicians such as
Archie Shepp, and, under his influence, Impulse! became a leading free jazz label. After
A Love Supreme was recorded, Ayler's style became more prominent in Coltrane's music. A series of recordings with the Classic Quartet in the first half of 1965 show Coltrane's playing becoming abstract, with greater incorporation of devices like
multiphonics, use of
overtones, and playing in the
altissimo register, as well as a mutated return of Coltrane's sheets of sound. In the studio, he all but abandoned soprano saxophone to concentrate on tenor. The quartet responded by playing with increasing freedom. The group's evolution can be traced through the albums
The John Coltrane Quartet Plays,
Living Space,
Transition,
New Thing at Newport,
Sun Ship, and
First Meditations. In June 1965, he went into Van Gelder's studio with ten other musicians (including Shepp,
Pharoah Sanders, and drastically expanding the vocabulary of his horn by employing multiphonics,
growling, and "high register squeals [that] could imitate not only the human song but the human cry and shriek as well". Regarding Coltrane's decision to add Sanders to the band, critic
Gary Giddins wrote, "Those who had followed Coltrane to the edge of the galaxy now had the added challenge of a player who appeared to have little contact with earth."
1965–1967: The second quartet (pictured in 2007) augmented Coltrane's sound. By late 1965, Coltrane was regularly augmenting his group with Sanders and other free jazz musicians.
Rashied Ali joined the group as a second drummer. This marked the end of the quartet. Claiming he was unable to hear himself over the two drummers, Tyner left the band shortly after the recording of
Meditations. Jones left in early 1966, dissatisfied by sharing drumming duties with Ali and stating that, concerning Coltrane's latest music, "only poets can understand it". In interviews, Tyner and Jones both voiced their displeasure with the music's direction; however, they would incorporate some of the intensity of free jazz in their solo work. Later, both musicians expressed tremendous respect for Coltrane: regarding his late music, Jones stated, "Well, of course it's far out, because this is a tremendous mind that's involved, you know. You wouldn't expect Einstein to be playing jacks, would you?" Tyner recalled, "He was constantly pushing forward. He never rested on his laurels, he was always looking for what's next ... he was always searching, like a scientist in a lab, looking for something new, a different direction ... He kept hearing these sounds in his head". Jones and Tyner both recorded tributes to Coltrane, Tyner with
Echoes of a Friend (1972) and
Blues for Coltrane: A Tribute to John Coltrane (1987), and Jones with
Live in Japan 1978: Dear John C. (1978) and
Tribute to John Coltrane "A Love Supreme" (1994). There is speculation that in 1965 Coltrane began using
LSD, informing the "cosmic" transcendence of his late period.
Nat Hentoff wrote, "it is as if he and Sanders were speaking with 'the gift of tongues' – as if their insights were of such compelling force that they have to transcend ordinary ways of musical speech and ordinary textures to be able to convey that part of the essence of being they have touched." After the departure of Tyner and Jones, Coltrane led a quintet with Sanders on tenor saxophone, his second wife
Alice Coltrane on piano, Garrison on bass, and Ali on drums. When touring, the group was known for playing long versions of their repertoire, many stretching beyond 30 minutes to an hour. In concert, solos by band members often extended beyond fifteen minutes. The group can be heard on several concert recordings from 1966, including
Live at the Village Vanguard Again! and
Live in Japan. (On the latter, Coltrane and Sanders played, for the rare occasion, alto saxophones, which were presented to them by
Yamaha.) In 1967, Coltrane entered the studio several times. Although pieces with Sanders have surfaced (the unusual "To Be" has both men on flute), most of the recordings were either with the quartet minus Sanders (
Expression and
Stellar Regions) or as a duo with Ali. The latter duo produced six performances that appear on the album
Interstellar Space. Coltrane also continued to tour with the second quartet up until two months before his death; his penultimate live performance and final recorded one, a radio broadcast for the Olatunji Center of African Culture in New York City, was eventually released as
an album in 2001.
1967: Illness and death Coltrane died of
liver cancer at the age of 40 on July 17, 1967, at
Huntington Hospital on Long Island. His funeral was held four days later at St. Peter's Lutheran Church in New York City. The service was started by the
Albert Ayler Quartet and finished by the
Ornette Coleman Quartet. Coltrane is buried at Pinelawn Memorial Park in
Farmingdale, New York. Biographer
Lewis Porter speculated that the cause of Coltrane's illness was
hepatitis, although he also attributed the disease to Coltrane's heroin use at a previous period in his life. Frederick J. Spencer wrote that Coltrane's death could be attributed to his needle use "or the bottle, or both". He stated that "[t]he needles he used to inject the drugs may have had everything to do with" Coltrane's liver disease: "If any needle was contaminated with the appropriate hepatitis virus, it may have caused a chronic infection leading to cirrhosis or cancer." Coltrane's death surprised many in the music community who were unaware of his condition.
Miles Davis said, "Coltrane's death shocked everyone, took everyone by surprise. I knew he hadn't looked too good... But I didn't know he was that sick – or even sick at all." ==Artistry==