Jesus Del Campo

Dr. Wesley Phelps

Hist 1302.07

8/28/18

History of John Coltrane

John Coltrane was born in Hamlet, North Carolina on September 23rd, 1926 and was a

monumental jazz saxophonist. Before his professional career unofficially launched around the

mid 1950’s, Coltrane had enlisted in the navy on August 6, 1945 and done some minor

recordings with the navy “Melody Masters” jazz band. In mid-1955, Coltrane received, and

accepted, and invitation from the legendary Miles Davis to join his new jazz quartet. After some

successful records and gigs, that first iteration of the Coltrane/Davis quartet disbanded because

of Coltrane’s heroin addiction among other things. In January of 1958, Coltrane rejoined the

Davis quartet and went on to produce the best-selling jazz album of all time, “Kind of Blue”,

which was released in 1960 and yet still sells 5000 copies a week to this day. Coltrane then left

the Davis quartet to form his own “classic quartet” around 1962, and later released that quartet’s

best-selling album, “A Love Supreme” in 1964. After an increasingly avant-garde phase from

1965-1967 where Coltrane became heavily involved with free jazz, he passed away of liver

cancer at Huntington Hospital on July 17, 1967. Coltrane left a lasting legacy that includes many

posthumous awards, recognitions, and canonization by the African Orthodox church.