John Coltrane

John Coltrane (September 23, 1926 to July 17, 1967) was an American jazz saxophonist and composer born in Hamlet, North Carolina, who grew up in High Point.^[1] Both of his grandfathers were ministers in the African Methodist Episcopal Zion church, and the deaths of his father, aunt and grandparents within months of each other beginning in late 1938 marked his childhood.^[1]

After his family moved to Philadelphia in 1943, he began serious study of the saxophone and served in the Navy from 1945 to 1946.^[1] He joined Miles Davis's quintet in 1955, played with Thelonious Monk in 1957, and returned to Davis, appearing on Milestones and Kind of Blue.^[1] His 1960 album Giant Steps, made up entirely of his own compositions, introduced the harmonic movement known as the Coltrane changes, and he formed his own quartet with McCoy Tyner, Elvin Jones and, later, Jimmy Garrison.^[1]

In 1963 he recorded "Alabama," an instrumental widely understood as a response to the Birmingham church bombing.^[2] He died of liver cancer at age forty.^[1]