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at a glance...
Hometown: Hamlet, NC
First recordings: 1950
Personnel:
John Coltrane -soprano and tenor saxophones
Steve Davis -bass
Elvin Jones -drums
McCoy Tyner -piano
Notes:
After Charlie Parker, John Coltrane is the most influential
saxophonist in jazz. He rose from the ranks of journeyman musicians to be a
key sideman for Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk. While he worked for them
he straightened out a series of obstructive personal problems (addictions
to heroin and alcohol) and dedicated himself to ongoing musical evolution.
With Miles, Monk, and on his early recordings for Prestige and Blue Note,
Coltrane explored modes and chordally based improvisation. His dense
improvisations during that period were characterized as "sheets of sound."
In 1959 he signed to Atlantic records. His first album for the label,
Giant Steps, is a landmark recording because of its indelible
compositions and intense, harmonically adventurous playing. Coltrane
subsequently established his own quartet which included pianist McCoy
Tyner, drummer Elvin Jones, and a series of bassists. That band appeared
on another Atlantic classic, My Favorite Things. The saxophonist's
extended soprano saxophone solo on the theme from "The Sound of Music"
introduced to his work new heights of spiritual intensity and a
quasi-Indian sound. In 1961 he moved to the more financially supportive
Impulse! Records. From that point his music's rate of change accelerated.
He explored large group recordings, African and Indian influences, album
length suites, open-ended structures, and the outer limits of his horns'
volume and timbre. Coltrane became a patron of the avant garde, recording
with up and comers like John Tchicai, Archie Shepp, and Pharoah Sanders.
His classic quartet dissolved in 1965; his wife, pianist Alice Coltrane,
bassist Jimmy Garrison, and drummer Rashied Ali were the core of his new
group. Coltrane died of liver cancer in 1967.
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