178 Culture, Identity, and Community: From Slavery to the PresentIn 1947, Coltrane began playing tenor saxophone in
the band of alto saxophonist Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson,
a musician he greatly admired. During his tour with Vin-
son, Coltrane had the opportunity to connect with another
idol, Charlie Parker. While meeting with Parker, he heard
new melodic jazz forms that challenged him to play with
the rapidity that would later inform his sound. Aft er leav-
ing Vinson’s band, Coltrane played with trumpeter Mel
Melvin’s band and then in 1948 joined a group formed by
the Heath brothers: saxophonist Jimmy, drummer Al, and
bassist Percy. Later in the year, trumpeter Howard McGhee
recruited Coltrane and Jimmy Heath to play in his band.
However, Coltrane was dropped from the band aft er the
fi rst tour.
Coltrane joined Gillespie’s band in 1949, an experience
that included his introduction to Eastern music and phi-
losophy through the guidance of tenor saxophonist Yusef
Lateef. Additionally, his playing on the Afro-Cuban song
“Manteca” and the Caribbean-inspired “Cubana Be Cubana
Bop” presented Coltrane with insight into new ways of
bringing jazz music into the realm of what is contemporar-
ily considered “world music.”of composition and sound. Coltrane primarily employed
the alto, tenor, and soprano saxophones to play a range of
music throughout his career, including rhythm and blues,
bebop, and hard bop. He also incorporated Middle East-
ern instruments, Indian melodies, and African percussive
rhythms into his arrangements, which fi rmly placed him as
a major fi gure in the mid- to late 1960s experimental im-
provisational jazz movement known as “Th e New Th ing.”
Coltrane was born on September 23, 1926, in Hamlet,
North Carolina, to John Robert Coltrane, a tailor, and Alice
Blair Coltrane, a homemaker. He grew up with his parents,
uncle, aunt, and fi rst cousin in the home of his maternal
grandparents, Reverend Walter Blair, an African Method-
ist Episcopal minister, and Alice Leary Blair, a homemaker.
Th e family lived in a middle-class African American neigh-
borhood in High Point, North Carolina. Although music
was a part of his early life, with his father playing violin and
ukulele recreationally and his mother playing piano and
singing in the church choir, Coltrane did not begin formal
musical training until playing the alto horn and clarinet in
a community band that he joined at the age of 13.
Between the ages of 12 and 14, Coltrane experienced
the deaths of his grandparents, father, and uncle, and by the
time he reached his senior year in high school, his mother
had moved to the Philadelphia area to pursue employ-
ment opportunities. However, Coltrane remained in High
Point, where he joined the William Penn High School band
in the fi rst clarinetist chair. Th ough his band experience
mostly involved the performance of marching composi-
tions, Coltrane began exposing himself to the jazz music
of alto saxophonist Johnny Hodges, who was playing with
Duke Ellington’s Orchestra at the time. He borrowed an alto
saxophone and became remarkably adept at replicating the
music of the saxophonists he admired.
In 1943, at the age of 16, Coltrane graduated from high
school and moved to Philadelphia. He began working at
a sugar refi nery and studying saxophone at the Ornstein
School of Music. Two years later, Coltrane was draft ed into
the U.S. Navy and stationed in Hawaii during World War
II, where he played clarinet in the navy band and applied
his musical skills to marching and dance music. Aft er being
released from the navy in 1946, Coltrane returned to Phila-
delphia, where he accepted bookings with rhythm and blues
bands. However, his musical interests were focused on the
jazz styles of Hodges, tenor saxophonist Lester “Pres” Young,
clarinetist Artie Shaw, and trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie.
John Coltrane (photographed in 19 60) possessed astonishing tech-
nical mastery, spiritual tone, and multicultural infl uences that
stretched the boundaries of jazz and enriched its vocabulary.
(Library of Congress)