![]() He was officially discharged from the Navy on August 8, 1946. He played alto saxophone on a selection of jazz standards and bebop tunes. ![]() His first recordings, an informal session in Hawaii with Navy musicians, occurred on July 13, 1946. By the end of his service, he had assumed a leadership role in the band. He continued to perform other duties when not playing with the band, including kitchen and security details. Because the Melody Masters was an all-white band, Coltrane was treated as a guest performer to avoid alerting superior officers of his participation in the band. Coltrane's musical talent was recognized, and he became one of the few Navy men to serve as a musician without having been granted musician's rating when he joined the Melody Masters, the base swing band. By the time he got to Hawaii in late 1945, the Navy was downsizing. He was trained as an apprentice seaman at Sampson Naval Training Station in upstate New York before he was shipped to Pearl Harbor, where he was stationed at Manana Barracks, the largest posting of African American servicemen in the world. To avoid being drafted by the Army, Coltrane enlisted in the Navy on August 6, 1945, the day the first U.S. In a DownBeat magazine article in 1960 he recalled: "the first time I heard Bird play, it hit me right between the eyes." Īn 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. From early to mid-1945, he had his first professional work as a musician: a "cocktail lounge trio" with piano and guitar. From 1944 to 1945, Coltrane took saxophone lessons at the Ornstein School of Music with Mike Guerra. In September that year, his 17th birthday, his mother bought him his first saxophone, an alto. 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. 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. 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. He grew up in High Point, North Carolina, and attended William Penn High School. Biography 1926–1945: Early life Coltrane's first recordings were made when he was a sailor.Ĭoltrane was born in his parents' apartment at 200 Hamlet Avenue in Hamlet, North Carolina, on September 23, 1926. (1964–1982), a bassist Ravi (born 1965), a saxophonist and Oran (born 1967), a saxophonist, guitarist, drummer and singer. His second wife was pianist and harpist Alice Coltrane. Decades after his death, Coltrane remains influential, and he has received numerous posthumous awards, including a special Pulitzer Prize, and was canonized by the African Orthodox Church. Over the course of his career, Coltrane's music took on an increasingly spiritual dimension, as exemplified on his most acclaimed album A Love Supreme (1965) and others. He led at least fifty recording sessions and appeared on many albums by other musicians, including trumpeter Miles Davis and pianist Thelonious Monk. Working in the bebop and hard bop idioms early in his career, Coltrane helped pioneer the use of modes and was one of the players at the forefront of free jazz. He is among the most influential and acclaimed figures in the history of jazz and 20th-century music.īorn and raised in North Carolina, Coltrane moved to Philadelphia after graduating from high school, where he studied music. John William Coltrane (September 23, 1926 – July 17, 1967) was an American jazz saxophonist, bandleader and composer.
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