50 Fun Facts About John Coltrane

In which North Carolina town was John Coltrane born in 1926?

Hamlet. It was home for only a few months: Coltrane said his family moved to a larger town in the state while he was a baby, and he spent the next 17 years there.

Which elder statesman of jazz recorded an album with Coltrane in 1962, each man bringing his own bassist and drummer?

Duke Ellington. Coltrane, 27 years younger, called the date an honour and wished he could redo every number, then conceded that second tries would have cost the spontaneity.

Coltrane said that hearing which saxophonist for the first time 'hit me right between the eyes'?

Charlie Parker. Coltrane said that on alto his playing had been 'strictly a Bird thing', and that only taking up the tenor freed him from that one overwhelming influence.

Coltrane joined the US Navy on 6 August 1945, the day of which wartime event?

The atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Japan surrendered within days, so Coltrane never saw combat: he was shipped to Hawaii anyway and spent his year of service playing in a Navy band.

Coltrane got his big break in 1955 by replacing which tenor saxophonist in a trumpeter's new quintet?

Sonny Rollins. The swap later ran the other way: when Coltrane was dropped from the band in 1957, Rollins took the tenor chair back, and the two men recorded together only once.

Which trumpeter's big band did Coltrane join in 1949, going on to solo on the leader's 1951 record 'We Love to Boogie'?

Dizzy Gillespie. Coltrane stayed on when the big band shrank to a sextet, and that brief solo was the only one the record-buying public could hear from him until 1955.

Which trumpeter hired Coltrane in 1955 for the band later called the 'First Great Quintet'?

Miles Davis. To finish his Prestige contract before moving to Columbia, he had the quintet tape four albums in two marathon sessions in 1956: Cookin', Relaxin', Workin' and Steamin'.

Why did Coltrane lose his place in the 'First Great Quintet' in spring 1957?

His heroin addiction. The bandleader ran out of patience and fired him that April; Coltrane quit cold turkey and was back in the band within a year.

At which New York club did Coltrane play in Thelonious Monk's quartet in 1957?

The Five Spot Café. Monk opened there with his cabaret card just restored, after years without the permit he needed to work in New York clubs, and Coltrane said he learned from him 'in every way'.

The 1958 album with 'Moment's Notice' and 'Lazy Bird' was Coltrane's only date as leader for which label?

Blue Note. Asked in 1960 which of his own records he liked best, Coltrane picked this one, Blue Train, saying it had 'such a good band'.

Critic Ira Gitler coined which phrase in 1958 for Coltrane's dense, rapid-fire runs of notes?

Sheets of sound. Coltrane told Gitler that year that the style was 'not a thing of beauty' yet, and that he would drop it if he could not make it one.

Coltrane played on which landmark 1959 album by his trumpeter boss?

Kind of Blue. The leader called almost no rehearsal and brought only sketches of scales and melodies to the studio, so the sextet was improvising on music it had barely seen.

Giant Steps (1960) was Coltrane's first album for which label?

Atlantic. His bandleader's business manager negotiated the contract, which guaranteed Coltrane $7,000 a year, and he opened his account with an album made up entirely of his own tunes.

The 'Coltrane changes' are noted for root movement by which unusual interval?

Major thirds. The pattern hops between three keys a major third apart, splitting the octave into equal parts, where most jazz tunes of the day moved by fifths.

The Giant Steps ballad 'Naima' is named after whom?

His wife at the time, Juanita Naima Grubbs, a Muslim convert who shaped his spiritual outlook. He kept the ballad in his repertoire for the rest of his life, long after they had separated.

Roger McGuinn borrowed a phrase from Coltrane's 'India' on twelve-string guitar for which 1966 Byrds single?

Eight Miles High. McGuinn has called the song a tribute to Coltrane: a tape of two of his albums was almost the only music on the Byrds' tour bus, and its sound soaked in.

On the 1961 album My Favorite Things, record buyers first heard Coltrane on which instrument?

Soprano saxophone, a horn that had become a rarity in jazz by the 1950s. Coltrane wrote that he bought one in February 1960 and found its high notes 'sort of puny' at first.

The title track of Coltrane's My Favorite Things comes from which Broadway show?

The Sound of Music. Coltrane turned the cheerful show tune into a hypnotic modal waltz, and the unlikely makeover became a radio hit and a commercial success.

Who played piano in Coltrane's Classic Quartet?

McCoy Tyner. When he joined Benny Golson's Jazztet he warned them he would leave as soon as Coltrane had a band of his own, and within months he did.

Who was the drummer in the Classic Quartet?

Elvin Jones. On stage the pianist and bassist would often drop out and leave him and Coltrane to go at it as a duo, sometimes at great length.

Which bassist replaced Reggie Workman in 1962 to complete the Classic Quartet?

Jimmy Garrison. He was the last of the classic quartet to leave: he stayed on when the pianist and drummer quit in 1965 and 1966, and he was back on bass for Coltrane's final recordings in 1967.

Which label did Coltrane join in 1961, staying until his death?

Impulse! Records, where Coltrane was one of the earliest signings and soon the biggest star: the young label came to be called 'the house that Trane built'.

Which multi-instrumentalist joined Coltrane in 1961 and drew a DownBeat charge of 'anti-jazz'?

Eric Dolphy. A DownBeat critic coined the charge in November 1961 after hearing the two in Hollywood; months later the magazine let them answer, and they asked what 'anti-jazz' even meant.

Coltrane said he had listened closely to John Gilmore, longtime tenor saxophonist with which bandleader, before his 1961 Village Vanguard recordings?

Sun Ra. Gilmore spent four decades in his Arkestra and never became a star, yet Coltrane credited him as a direct influence on the fierce 15-minute blues he cut at the Vanguard.

With which baritone singer did Coltrane record a celebrated 1963 album of ballads?

Johnny Hartman. He doubted he was a jazz singer and had to be coaxed into the date; Coltrane said he picked him because he was 'a fine singer, and I wanted him to make a comeback'.

Late in 'Acknowledgement', Coltrane stops playing to do what?

Chant: after working the four-note bass motif through key after key on tenor, he sings the words 'a love supreme' to it, his voice overdubbed in layers.

How did Coltrane's quartet record the album A Love Supreme?

In one session, on 9 December 1964. Coltrane came back the next day with a second saxophonist and bassist to try the opening again, but the album used only the quartet takes.

In 'Psalm', the final part of A Love Supreme, what is Coltrane's saxophone doing?

Reciting a poem, note by syllable: the tenor line follows, almost exactly, the words of the prayer Coltrane printed in the liner notes, though he never speaks a line of it.

For decades the only known live A Love Supreme came from a 1965 festival in which country?

France. The quartet played the suite at the Antibes festival in July 1965; a second tape, made by a local saxophonist at a Seattle club that October, stayed in private hands until 2021.

Which rock guitarist joined John McLaughlin to record Coltrane's 'A Love Supreme' on the 1973 album Love Devotion Surrender?

Carlos Santana. He and McLaughlin shared a guru, Sri Chinmoy, and made the album as a tribute to Coltrane, opening it with the suite's first part as a duel of electric guitars.

Which 1965 Coltrane recording gathered eleven players for one album-length piece of collective free improvisation?

Ascension. Months after its release Coltrane decided he preferred the session's other take, so the label swapped it in under the same cover, marked only by 'Edition II' etched in the vinyl.

Which tenor saxophonist did Coltrane invite to join his band in 1965?

Pharoah Sanders. Coltrane said he prized the younger man's strength and conviction, and admitted he liked having that force beside him on nights when his own energy flagged.

Why did the pianist leave Coltrane's band in late 1965?

He could not hear himself over two drummers. 'All I could hear was a lot of noise,' he said later, adding that he no longer felt he had anything to contribute to the music.

Which instrument, rare in jazz, did Alice Coltrane become known for?

The harp. It was her husband's idea: he ordered a concert harp for her but died in 1967 before it arrived, and she went on to build her solo albums around it.

Interstellar Space, a duo album Coltrane recorded in 1967, paired him with which drummer?

Rashied Ali. He turned up expecting the whole band and asked where everyone was; Coltrane told him, 'It's just going to be you and me.'

Of what did Coltrane die in July 1967, aged 40?

Liver cancer. He kept working almost to the end, recording a fierce album of saxophone-and-drums duets less than five months before he died.

Why did Coltrane's 1963 session Both Directions at Once stay unheard until 2018?

The label lost its master tape, most likely junking it in the early 1970s to cut storage costs. The music survived on a reference copy Coltrane had given his first wife, which stayed with her family.

Which denomination canonised Coltrane, and has a congregation named for him in San Francisco?

The African Orthodox Church. The San Francisco congregation first worshipped Coltrane as God incarnate; joining the denomination in 1982 meant demoting him to a saint.

Which honour awarded Coltrane a special citation in 2007?

The Pulitzer Prize, forty years after his death. Its board cited his 'masterful improvisation' and 'iconic centrality to the history of jazz'; in his lifetime the music prize went to classical composers, and no jazz work won until 1997.

Which Spike Lee film was to be named after A Love Supreme until Coltrane's widow withdrew permission?

Mo' Better Blues. Alice Coltrane objected to the 1990 jazz drama's profanity and sex scenes, so the title went, though the suite's opening part still plays over the film's closing montage.

Coltrane's saxophonist son, born in 1965, was named after which musician?

Sitar player Ravi Shankar. The two had become friends and stayed in touch, part of a fascination with Indian music that Coltrane had been working into his own playing for years.

In which North Carolina furniture-making city did Coltrane grow up and go to school?

High Point. Within a few months when he was twelve, Coltrane lost his father, a grandfather and other relatives, and the clarinet he took up around then became his lifeline.

The 2016 documentary about Coltrane directed by John Scheinfeld was titled what?

Chasing Trane. Denzel Washington reads Coltrane's own words on the soundtrack, and the admirers interviewed range from Bill Clinton to Wynton Marsalis.

What unusual doubling did Coltrane use on his 1961 albums Olé Coltrane and Africa/Brass?

Two bassists. One held a low, pulsing drone while the other roamed free, an effect likened to an Indian water drum: Coltrane said he had heard Indian records and liked that drum's sound.

Which two bandleaders' groups played at Coltrane's funeral in New York in 1967?

Albert Ayler and Ornette Coleman, at Coltrane's own request. He had learned from both younger men: he said he felt indebted to Coleman, and Ayler's sound marked his late records.

Coltrane's 1963 lament 'Alabama' is widely heard as his response to which event?

The Birmingham church bombing, which killed four girls in September 1963. Coltrane recorded the piece two months later but never said publicly what it was about, leaving listeners to hear the mourning in it.

A forgotten tape of Coltrane with Thelonious Monk at Carnegie Hall in 1957 surfaced in 2005 at which institution?

The Library of Congress. Voice of America had recorded the concert for broadcast abroad, so it was never aired in the US; an engineer found the reels while preparing old tapes for preservation.

Coltrane moved north at 16 to which city, where the rowhouse he bought in 1952 is now a National Historic Landmark?

Philadelphia. He arrived in 1943 straight out of high school and fell in with young beboppers such as Benny Golson and Jimmy Heath; the city's clubs became his training ground.

Which company gave Coltrane a prototype alto saxophone to try out on his 1966 tour of Japan?

Yamaha. The firm, new to saxophones, wanted his verdict on the horn; he played it on stage during the tour, which is why his Japanese live albums catch him on alto, not his usual tenor.

Coltrane's maternal grandfather, the Reverend William Blair, was a minister in which church?

AME Zion. Both of Coltrane's grandfathers were ministers in the denomination, and his first band grew out of a Boy Scout troop at an AME Zion church, whose scoutmaster taught the boys their instruments.