John Coltrane

Genres:	Jazz • Music & Radio • Music Videos & Concerts
Descriptive "tags":	jazz • saxophone • free jazz • bebop • avant-garde
Decades Active:	1950s • 1960s • 1980s • 1990s • 2000s
Links online:	BBC Music • Official Homepage • Wikipedia

Biography

John William Coltrane, 23 September 1926, Hamlet, North Carolina, USA, d. 17 July 1967, New York, USA. Coltrane grew up in the house of his maternal grandfather, Rev. William Blair (who gave him his middle name), a preacher and community spokesman. While he was taking clarinet lessons at school, his school band leader suggested his mother buy him an alto saxophone. In 1939 his grandfather and then his father died, and after finishing high school he joined his mother in Philadelphia. He spent a short period at the Ornstein School of Music and the Granoff Studios, where he won scholarships for both performance and composition, but his real education began when he started gigging. Two years’ military service was spent in a navy band (1945-46), after which he toured in the King Kolax and Eddie ‘Cleanhead’ Vinson bands, playing goodtime, rhythmic big-band music. It was while playing in the Dizzy Gillespie Big Band (1949-51) that he switched to tenor...

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