 | ||||||
| ||||||
John Coltrane
| ||||||
John William Coltrane
(September 23, 1926 in Hamlet, North Carolina — July 17, 1967)
Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.
~Berthold Auerbach
A piano covers the full spectrum of all orchestra instruments, from below the lowest note of the double bassoon to above the top note of the piccolo.
| ||||||
|
|
Coltrane was born in the town of Hamlet, North Carolina in 1926. He was raised in High Point, North Carolina, a town now known for its furniture industry. He had a maternal grandfather, one William Blair, who was a widely known and charismatic preacher. John's father owned and ran a tailor shop, and the entire clan did fairly well economically by the standards of their community and the period of time. His mother and father were apparently both musical, and his early home life is generally considered to have been a fairly happy one. Though he performed well enough in school, John was considered to be a quiet boy, and something of a loner.
During his twelfth year, however, both John's father and grandfather passed away, causing his mother to move alone to Philadelphia in 1941, where the war provided relatively high-paying work. She sent money home to keep the family together. John remained in High Point until 1943 when he moved to Philadelphia with a couple of friends. His mother was at this time working in Atlantic City, and he frequently visited her. Late in 1943 he studied alto saxophone at the Ornstein School of Music, during which time he took work in a sugar refinery to support himself. In 1945 he was drafted and stationed in Hawaii, playing clarinet in a military band.
He returned to Philadelphia after his military time, studying again at Ornstein while palying in a variety of R&B bands, including those led by King Kolax and Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson, who required Trane to switch to the tenor sax, which Coltrane didn't want to do. Over time, though, he began to play mainly the tenor, his style influenced by Dexter Gordon and, of course, Lester Young. By the end of 1949 he had acquired work with the big band of Dizzy Gillespie, and Gillespie kept him on when economic conditions forced him to cut the group to a small combo. Coltrane stayed with Gillespie until around 1951, moving back to Philadelphia and again embarking on a course of formal study, this time in music theory at the Granoff School of Music. The next year he was working for dance bandleader Earl Bostic, then worked with Johnny Hodges in Hodges' own band, put together shortly after Hodges left the employ of Duke Ellington.
At the same time, Coltrane was becoming a heroin addict, and by 1954 Hodges was forced to fire him for nodding off during gigs. He again returned "home" to Philly, where he took what gigs he could get. Now twenty-six, he was using heroin, smoking cigarettes, and drinking fairly heavily, gaining weight, and generally not in good spirits. In addition, his teeth hurt him constantly as a result of his inability to control his love of sweets. He consumed candy bars, other sweets, and Coca-Cola so rabidly that his teeth began to deteriorate. For whatever reason, he was loath to see a dentist, despite the fact that dentistry was not particularly painful at the time. Despite these problems, Coltrane continued on, marrying Juanita Grubbs, the sister of a friend, in late 1955. Juanita was known as Naima, and later Trane would write one of his most lovely, haunting ballads and name it after her. Before the year was out, Miles Davis called Trane in to play in his newest group, a quintet. This is the time that he picked up the nickname "Trane", which stuck with him for good. There seems to be no record of who originated it, but by the time he was playing with Davis, everyone called him "Trane".
