February 15, 2002

John Coltrane: Hamlet's jazz son

Through A Glass Darkly, by John Myers, Internet Photojournalist

The birth of John William Coltrane on Sept. 23, 1926, in a second-floor apartment at the corner of Hamlet Street and Bridges Avenue in Hamlet, NC, didn't portend a future jazz giant.

His father, John R. Coltrane, was a tailor and the son of a pastor of an AME Zion Church, Rev. John Coltrane of Sanford. His mother, Alice Blair, was a maid and also the daughter of a minister, Rev. William Wilson Blair, who was promoted to presiding elder of the AME Zion church soon after Coltrane's birth in 1926.

With a pedigree like that, one would expect young John may have been pointed toward the ministry, and the first move in his life seemed to have advanced that direction. His maternal grandfather, Rev. Blair, moved to High Point, NC, for his new post to oversee churches in the district, and his family followed him.

Allen Mask, left, and Dr. Fred McQueen, right, stand outside the Coltrane Building in Hamlet, the birthplace of John Coltrane. Dr. McQueen bought the fallen-down building and restored it in 1986.

Coltrane's memory almost died in Hamlet, but two local jazz lovers, Dr. Fred McQueen, a Hamlet physician, and Allen Mask, a retired Hamlet teacher and jazz pianist, teamed up to keep it alive. In 1992, an historical monument was placed by the state on U.S. 74 Business a block from Coltrane's birthplace after considerable lobbying and historical research by the two men.

In 1986, McQueen bought the fallen-down building where Coltrane was born and lovingly restored it. Now the Coltrane Building houses the local NAACP chapter office, the Helping Improve Potential program office and a beautician's office.

It also includes the Coltrane Blue Room, where local musicians occasionally gather and play some jazz. Hamlet has also hosted an annual Jazz Festival in honor of Coltrane's heritage.

One Coltrane historian, C.O. Simpkins, says the Coltrane family moved two months after the birth of John, to High Point, along with Rev. Blair. Other historians place the move to High Point as late as four years after his birth, but all documentation indicates the young Coltrane left Hamlet and never returned.

Perhaps he got his musical inclinations from his mother, who aspired to be an opera singer. He was certainly exposed to church music and spirituals both in churches growing up and in a high school for blacks in High Point founded by Quakers.

A young John Coltrane, taken early in his career.

"I want to be the force which is truly for good," Coltrane said in a 1962 interview, and added he believed his music transmitted "good." It was a typically sparse statement by the jazz great who never liked to talk about his music. "I can't explain anything," Coltrane said. "It's all in the music."

He learned to play the saxophone and clarinet during his growing-up years in High Point. After high school, he moved to Philadelphia and studied music and worked as a musician and other jobs before he was drafted into the U.S. Navy in 1945.

"Other musicians used to call him 'Country John,' because when he first got to Philadelphia, he would wear bad suits and things like that," said Larry Thomas, program manager at Durham, NC, jazz station WNCU in a 2001 interview. "But John came to be known as a deep thinker. He was a very spiritual cat."

"He was sort of like a country bumpkin when he came to town," said jazz musician Benny Golson in a 1986 interview. He met Coltrane in Philadelphia in the mid-1940s when they were teenagers. "We called him freight train, box car, anything that sounded like Coltrane. He was very good-natured. It never bothered him. John had a quiet strength about him," he said.

John Coltrane and Dizzy Gillespie, probably taken in New York in 1947-49.

Golson added, "John was always two steps ahead in his knowledge (of music), in his searching and finding. When we'd get there, he'd gone somewhere else."

Coltrane resumed his musical career after the war, joining the touring band of Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson, and then was hired by Cheraw, S.C., native, Dizzy Gillespie, in the late 1940s. Gillespie was one of the founders of the "Be-Bop" style of jazz.

Coltrane joined the Miles Davis Quintet in 1955 and was instrumental in some classic recordings, including "Kind of Blue," "Round About Midnight," and "Milestones."

He gained more singular fame when teaming up at the Five Spot Cafe in New York in 1957 with another N.C. native, Thelonious Monk, in sessions that electrified the jazz world.

Coltrane talked about his work with Monk in "The Great Jazz Artists," a book by James Lincoln Collier. "Working with Monk brought me close to a musical architect of the highest order. I felt I learned from him in every way -- sensually, theoretically, technically," Coltrane told Collier.

"I would talk to Monk about musical problems, and he would show me the answers by playing them on the piano. He gave me complete freedom in my playing, and no one ever did that before."

Working with Monk was when Coltrane developed one of his trademarks, known as "sheets of sound," with notes played so fast they blur together in what was called a musical waterfall.

Cover of John Coltrane's "A Love Supreme" album, in which he wrote about his spiritual awakening.

Coltrane formed his own group after the Monk sessions, and with McCoy Turner, Jimmy Garrison and Elvin Jones became one of the most influential jazz groups of the 1960s.

He was perhaps the first jazz musician to explore the sounds of Africa in "Lush Life," recorded in 1957-58 in New York, and also in a later album, "Africa/Brass," recorded in 1961.

In 1963, he wrote and recorded "Alabama," in response to the bombing deaths of four young black girls in Birmingham.

A discography of his career is pages long, ranging from light, breezy pieces such as "My Favorite Things," which was one of the best-selling jazz recordings of all time, to classics such as "Body and Soul," "Giant Steps," "Aisha," and "Naima."

John Coltrane and his wife Alice, taken in 1966 about a year before his death.

Perhaps the climax of Coltrane's life came in 1957, when he broke away from a heroin addiction with a spiritual awakening.

In the notes to his 1964 album "A Love Supreme," Coltrane wrote, "In 1957, I experienced the grace of God, which led me to a richer, fuller, more productive life. His way is through love; it is truly a love supreme."

Coltrane died on July 17, 1967, at age 40 of liver cancer.

But that same night, a young man named Franzo Wayne King heard the news of Coltrane's death and read his message from the liner notes of "A Love Supreme." King said, "Those words changed my life."

In 1969, he founded a church devoted to jazz and spirituality in San Francisco, and in 1973, the church adopted Coltrane as its patron. Today, at the Church of Saint John Coltrane, worshippers sing along with the strains of "A Love Supreme" at an altar with a scroll inscribed with a quote from Coltrane.

"Let us sing all songs to God. Let us pursue Him in the righteous path. Yes it is true. Seek and ye shall find."

Another quote from Coltrane in the liner notes of "Lush Life," shortly after his spiritual awakening, was reportedly one of the jazz great's favorite sayings, "All this and heaven, too."