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 signed to Impulse! records, a more financially supportive label, and the 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 by 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.