You hear the name John Coltrane, and you probably
picture a very specific scene, right? Oh yeah,
usually like smooth jazz. Right, smooth jazz,
maybe a smoky, dimly lit club, the clinking of
glasses, and this guy just, you know, effortlessly
playing a saxophone. It feels really relaxed.
Yeah, it feels like background music to a very
sophisticated evening. Exactly. But the source
documents we are looking at today for this deep
dive reveal a life and really a creative process
that was anything but relaxing. Anything but.
It's actually kind of jarring when you look at
it. It really is. Yeah. I mean, we were talking
about crushing addiction or radical spiritual
awakening and, well, a musical obsession that
was so extreme, it fundamentally broke the rules
of Western music. Yeah, the gap between that
relaxing background music that some people associate
with jazz and the actual ferocity of Coltrane's
life and his work. It's just massive. It's night
and day. Right. When you dig into these sources,
it really is a complete dismantling of the perception
that most people have of him. And why should
you, our listener, care about this? Well, because
regardless of whether you even listen to jazz,
this deep dive is a masterclass in how someone
takes immense, almost unbearable personal suffering
and figures out a way to translate it into a
universal language. OK, let's unpack this because
to really understand the genius of culturing.
We had to start with his work ethic. Yeah, and
work ethic almost feels like, I don't know, too
mild a term for what the sources actually describe.
Yeah, it wasn't just spontaneous magical inspiration
falling from the sky. No, not at all. It was
brutal math and it was a lot of sweat. So can
you walk us through his early years, like specifically
that 1945 Navy service? Absolutely. So to understand
his incredible drive, you really have to look
at the environment that forged it. In 1945, Coltrane
enlists in the Navy, primarily to avoid being
drafted by the Army. Makes sense. Right. And
he gets shipped off to Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.
Now, his musical talent is already totally undeniable
at this point, and it's quickly recognized by
his superiors. So he ends up playing in the bass
swing band. Melody Masters, right? The Melody
Masters, exactly. But there is a glaring systemic
obstacle here. The Melody Masters was an all
-white band. And he was stationed at a base that
at the time was the largest posting of African
-American servicemen in the entire world, right?
Yeah. So he is navigating this highly segregated
military environment. Precisely. The military
was strictly segregated. So to get around these
rules, the band basically treated Coltrane as
a guest performer. Wait, a guest performer? Yeah,
which basically meant he was being smuggled into
the band's performances just to hide his raise
from the superior officers who, you know, might
just shut the whole thing down. Wow. And when
he wasn't playing, he wasn't being treated like
some star musician. He was doing kitchen duty,
washing dishes and standing on regular security
details. Just normal grunt work. Exactly. But
the documentation shows that even in that really
hostile, marginalized environment, he was already
assuming a leadership role musically, like he
was organizing rehearsals and actively pushing
the band's boundaries. I mean, that level of
dedication in that kind of environment is just
astonishing. But that drive, it only compounded
when he got back to civilian life. Oh, absolutely.
The source text has this quote from fellow musician
Jimmy Heath, who noted that Coltrane practiced
25 hours a day 25 hours a day right and there
is this one specific anecdote from a hotel in
San Francisco that I just keep thinking about
so Coltrane is in his room practicing the saxophone
and Obviously a tenor sax in a standard hotel
room is incredibly loud deafening Yeah, so someone
complains to the front desk and management knocks
on his door telling him to stop So does he pack
up his instrument? No? Nope. He just takes the
horn out of his mouth and practices the fingering,
just silently pressing the keys for a full hour.
And the physical toll of that obsession, I mean,
it was severe. The documentation shows it was
really common for him to just fall asleep from
pure exhaustion with the horn still in his mouth.
That's wild. Or, you know, he would sit in a
chair and practice a single solitary note, just
adjusting his breath and his embouchure for hours
on end. Hours on one note. Yeah, just to see
how many different tones he could extract from
one single fingering. It totally reminds me of
a coder or like an elite athlete who gets locked
into this flow state that honestly borders on
mania. Right. Yeah. They forget to eat. They
forget to sleep. The entire world just shrinks
down to the screen or the corridor, in this case,
the brass tube. But I have to ask about the timeline
and the biography here. In 1938, when Coltrane
was just a 12 year old kid. His father, his aunt,
and his grandparents all died within a few months
of each other. Yeah, it was tragic. Was this
intense, relentless obsession with the saxophone
a trauma response to losing his entire foundational
support system? If we connect this to the bigger
picture, it's a very compelling psychological
framework. Profound loss, especially in such
a young age, often leaves a person feeling completely
powerless. Right. The world is suddenly chaotic.
It's unpredictable. It's cruel. What practicing
does, especially the way Coltrane did it, you
know, obsessing over the absolute physical mechanics
of an instrument, is it funnels that grief into
relentless controllable repetition. Oh, that
makes a lot of sense. He couldn't control who
lived or died in his family, but he could control
exactly how the air moved through his horn. He
was essentially building a universe where the
rules actually made sense to him. He was seeking
absolute control. But if he is practicing 25
hours a day, building this incredibly disciplined
world of musical mechanics, how does he end up
hitting rock bottom? Because the sources show
a massive derailment in the 1950s. Because you
can practice all you want, but you cannot out
practice your personal demons. Wow. Yeah. The
obsession for control eventually collided with
the reality of the jazz club environment of the
50s and, well, his unhealed trauma. That relentless
drive became intertwined with the severe heroin
addiction. Which was so common in that scene.
Very common. And by the mid -50s, he is playing
with Miles Davis in what historians call the
first great quintet. I mean, that is jazz royalty.
It is. But Coltrane's addiction becomes so debilitating,
his behavior gets so erratic, that Miles Davis,
who, by the way, was no stranger to the darker
side of the jazz scene himself, actually fires
him. which has to be a devastating wake up call.
Being fired by Miles Davis is like being kicked
out of the musical equivalent of the Apollo space
program. It was a pivotal crisis. He loses his
spot in the absolute most important band in the
country. And this sets the stage for what the
sources describe as his 1957 spiritual awakening.
OK. Coltrane goes back home to Philadelphia and
he decides to kick heroin and alcohol cold turkey.
Which from a purely physiological standpoint
is incredibly dangerous and agonizing. Absolutely.
Going cold turkey off heroin. involves violent
tremors, sweating, muscle spasms, and just this
deep psychological dread. It is a total system
shock. It is a harrowing physical ordeal, but
he locks himself away and endures it. And during
this withdrawal, he experiences a really profound
clarity. He makes A pact. A pact. Yeah, he writes
about this later in his life stating that during
that agonizing period he humbly asked for the
privilege to make others happy through his music.
Wait, I want to clarify something here, because
there is this very pervasive cultural trope of
the tortured artist. Oh, sure. We see it all
the time, right? Yeah. The idea that the drugs,
the misery, the chaos, those are the actual ingredients
for genius. Does the timeline suggest that the
heroine fueled his most groundbreaking work?
Not at all. And that is a really crucial distinction
to make. The addiction was an obstacle. It wasn't
the fuel. OK. The fuel was the spiritual mission
he found on the other side of the addiction.
Getting clean didn't dull his edges. It gave
him a renewed terrifyingly clear focus. What's
fascinating here is the complete psychological
shift. How so? Well up until 1957 you could argue
he was playing to master the instrument or maybe
to prove himself among his peers or just to simply
outrun his childhood trauma. But after that awakening
he stopped playing for his ego. He started playing
entirely as an act of devotion to a higher power.
But how do you translate a spiritual pact into
jazz? Like with a newly cleared mind, he realizes
the old rules of the genre are suddenly too small
for the massive concepts he wants to express.
Exactly. He needed a completely new musical vocabulary.
And the sources point to this era where critics
start describing his playing as sheets of sound.
How exactly does a horn player create a sheet
of sound? It comes down to musical physics and
time. The critic Ira Gitler actually coined that
term in 1957. Traditional jazz usually operates
in a standard four time signature, so four beats
to a measure. Musicians typically play notes
that fit symmetrically into those beats, like
eighth notes or sixteenth notes. Standard math.
Standard math. But Coltrane told an interviewer
that he had this massive number of chord progressions
he was hearing in his head and standard notes
wouldn't fit in the allotted time. So he started
grouping notes asymmetrically. Wait, hold on.
Grouping them asymmetrically? Yeah. How do you
cram an uneven number of notes into a space built
for an even number without the whole band just
falling apart? It requires an unbelievable level
of breath control and finger dexterity. He would
force five or seven notes into a single beat.
Five or seven. Yeah. So instead of individual
distinct melodies, the listener experiences this
cascading, overlapping wall of continuous notes.
Oh, wow. He was playing so fast and packing so
much harmonic information into a single second
that the human ear basically blends it together
into a single sheet. It's almost like he was
trying to bend the physics of time itself. He
really. was. And this intense mathematical approach
peaks in 1960 with the album Giant Steps. The
title track is famous for what musicians call
Coltrane changes. The sources say it's considered
a rite of passage or like a harmonic labyrinth
for musicians to even attempt. Why is it so difficult?
because it completely breaks the standard rules
of resolution. In traditional songwriting, chords
resolve in predictable steps. It's like walking
smoothly down a staircase. You know where your
foot is going to land? Exactly. But Coltrane
changes jump around in major thirds. It's the
musical equivalent of taking an elevator that
stops at completely random floors, but the floors
are spaced out using a highly complex mathematical
formula. That sounds exhausting. It forces the
soloist to constantly pivot their tonal sense.
without any warning. So he essentially built
a mathematical puzzle. But the peak of this structural
architecture comes a few years later, in 1964,
with the masterpiece album A Love Supreme. Here's
where it gets really interesting. A Love Supreme
is a four -part suite, serving as an ode to his
faith in God. But the fourth movement of this
suite is titled Psalm. And the source text reveals
how he constructed this. This part is amazing.
It really is. Coltrane wrote an original poem
to God, which he printed in the album's liner
notes. And when he plays the saxophone on that
track, he isn't just improvising jazz. He is
playing almost exactly one note for every single
syllable of that written poem. He dictates his
entire musical phrasing based on those hidden
words. It is an astonishing compositional choice.
He is quite literally speaking through the horn
syllable by syllable. It's like taking a standard
written sentence, renewing all the spaces, the
punctuation, and all the vowels and forcing the
listener to find the deep emotional meaning just
in the harsh raw consonants. Right. You strip
away the comfortable structure to force an immediate
emotional reaction. You don't need to know the
hidden words to feel the power of the song. But
knowing that the constraint is there, well, it
changes how you hear it. That analogy perfectly
captures the paradox of this era. Coltrane was
using extreme, almost suffocating mathematical
constraint, matching exact syllables of a poem
to specific notes in order to achieve ultimate
spiritual freedom. It's brilliant. He believed
that if he could perfectly align the math of
the music with his spiritual intention, he could
tap into a universal frequency. But the wild
thing is, even that perfect architecture eventually
felt too restrictive for him. Yeah, he couldn't
stay there. Because to find true unedited with
the universe. He decides he has to completely
dismantle the music he had just spent his entire
life perfecting. Yes, he enters what is widely
considered his avant -garde or free jazz period.
The standard quartet format just wasn't generating
enough energy for him anymore. So what does he
do? So he starts heavily augmenting his band.
He brings in Pharaoh Sanders on tenor saxophone.
And Sanders wasn't playing traditional scales.
The sources note he was drastically expanding
the vocabulary of the horn, primarily using a
technique called multifonics to produce sounds
that mimicked a human cry and shriek. OK, I've
always wondered about that. A saxophone is designed
to only play one note at a time, right? Right.
So how does a single reed instrument produce
multiple notes at once to sound like a shriek?
It's incredibly difficult. To play multifonics,
the musician has to really contort their embouchure,
which is the way their mouth grips the mouthpiece
and the reed and use highly unconventional fingerings.
OK. By doing this, they force the air column
inside the brass tube to literally split. The
instrument is fighting its own acoustic physics,
and as a result, two or more distinct clashing
pitches ring out at the exact same time. That
sounds intense. It sounds like a scream, because
the metal itself is practically under acoustic
stress. Wow. And he didn't stop at the Warrens.
The sources say he starts using two bass players
at the same time. Yes, two basses. The text notes,
they did this to mimic the sound of an East Indian
water drum. One bass would act as a stabilizing
hypnotic pulse, while the other was totally free
to improvise over it. Then he adds multiple drummers,
bringing in Rashid Ali alongside his longtime
drummer, Elvin Jones. Why two drummers? Well,
because Coltrane stated he felt the need for
more time, more rhythm all around me. He needed
the rhythm to be multi -directional. He was weaving
polyrhythms that completely broke the boundaries
of Western musical tradition. I mean, he was
deconstructing the four -time signature entirely.
But this radical shift did not go over well,
did it? No. There was a massive Highly vocal
backlash right downbeat magazine famously published
an article calling what Coltrane was doing anti
jazz It bewildered the critics and it really
alienated his own bandmates It did pianist McCoy
Tyner and drummer Elvin Jones who had been with
him through his most celebrated successful years
They both ended up quitting Tyner said all he
could hear was a wall of noise. He couldn't even
hear his own piano over the two drummers. And
Elvin Jims had that incredible quote about his
departure. He said, you wouldn't expect Einstein
to be playing jacks, would you? He deeply respected
Coltrane's genius, but the music had become so
dense, so chaotic that Jones felt he could no
longer meaningfully participate in the experiment.
It's like a scientist who discovers a brand new
theoretical element. but to prove to the world
that it exists, he has to completely blow up
his own laboratory. That's a great way to put
it. And I want to ask you, the listener, to really
think about the psychology of that for a second.
How willing would you be to alienate your own
colleagues, watch your biggest fans walk out
of your concerts, and endure critics calling
your life's work anti -jazz, all just to chase
a truth that only you can hear? This raises an
important question about what Coltrane actually
believed he was accomplishing with this chaos.
Yeah, why do it? Well, this wasn't destruction
for the sake of being edgy or avant -garde. The
source text details his deep dive into world
religions during this period. He was obsessively
studying the Quran, the Bible, Kabbalah, astrology,
Hinduisms, and Buddhism. Just searching everywhere.
Like everywhere. In 1965, he recorded an album
called Om, which featured chants from the Hindu
Bhagavad Gita and the Buddhist Tibetan Book of
the Dead. He literally believed that music had
physical, mystical power. Exactly. The text quotes
him saying that he wanted to discover a method
where if he wanted it to rain, he could play
a song and it would start to rain. If a friend
was ill, he could play a specific song and cure
them. It wasn't noise to him. It was an attempt
at musical alchemy. From an acoustic theory standpoint,
he was exploring resonance and vibration. He
believed that everything in the universe vibrates
at a specific frequency. If he could find the
exact frequency of an illness or the exact frequency
of a storm cloud, he could play the counter frequency
on his saxophone and physically manipulate reality
for the betterment of humanity. He was trying
to speak directly to God and alter the fabric
of nature. But if he is playing with that level
of physical intent, blowing out multiphonics
and touring relentlessly, did that alchemical
pursuit wear him down? It did, and it brings
us to the profound and really tragic irony of
his life. In 1967, at the age of just 40, John
Coltrane died suddenly of liver cancer. And the
shockwaves in the music community were just massive.
Miles Davis is quoted saying, I didn't know he
was that sick or even sick at all. Coltrane had
kept his illness largely a secret. touring and
recording at a furious pace right up until the
end. Yeah, he didn't stop. But the detail in
the source material about the root cause of his
death is really heartbreaking. Biographers and
medical professionals speculate that the liver
cancer was likely brought on by a severe case
of hepatitis. Yes, specifically hepatitis contracted
from sharing dirty needles during his heroin
addiction in the early 1950s. He had his spiritual
awakening. He endured the withdrawals and got
clean. He dedicated his entire existence to making
people happy and exploring the divine, but the
physical seeds of his destruction were sown in
his bloodstream years before his awakening even
happened. The physical body eventually caught
up. The human body couldn't outrun the past,
even if his spirit had completely transcended
it. but the impact of his spiritual quest outlived
his physical body in a very tangible way. Oh,
so? Well, after his death, a congregation in
San Francisco formed called the Yardbird Temple.
This group eventually evolved and was officially
recognized as the St. John Coltrane African Orthodox
Church. They canonized him as a saint. They did.
The church uses his music and his specific lyrics
from A Love Supreme as prayers in their weekly
liturgy. He is even painted in traditional Byzantine
iconographic style, complete with a golden halo,
holding his saxophone as one of the 90 saints
in the Dancing Saints icon at an Episcopal church.
It's incredible. So what does this all mean?
We've tracked this incredible arc from a marginalized
young man hiding his race in a Navy band in Hawaii,
to a heroin addict hitting rock bottom, to an
avant -garde pioneer searching for the frequency
of God, to a painted icon in a church. If you
look at the framework of historical saints across
various world traditions, Coltrane's path is
remarkably consistent. Yeah. Saints are rarely
born perfect. In fact, they are usually deeply
flawed human beings who experience a radical
transformation almost always through intense
personal suffering and a dark night of the soul.
That fits perfectly. And on the other side of
that suffering, they leave behind a framework.
In Coltrane's case, he left a sonic framework
for others to find meaning, healing, and transcendence.
The church isn't a novelty or a gimmick. It's
a sincere recognition of a man who functioned
musically as a religious figure. It really is
profound. When you step back, Coltrane squeezed
multiple lifetimes of innovation, failure, redemption,
and spiritual seeking into just 12 years of sobriety.
Just 12 years. From 1955 to 1967, he completely
reshaped the geometry of music. Hearing about
that level of dedication, it honestly forces
you to look at your own life and consider what
you are applying your own 25 hours a day toward.
Are you building a vocabulary that matters? It
absolutely does make you think. The sheer volume
and depth of his output during that short 12
-year window is staggering and, you know, it
continues to reveal itself. And that output is
still finding us today. The source text notes
a lingering mystery that proves his reach isn't
over. In 2018, more than 50 years after he died,
a lost album from 1963 called Both Directions
at Once was suddenly discovered and released
to the world. I remember that. The master tapes
were thought to be destroyed, but a copy survived.
And now, in 2026, marking the 100th anniversary
of his birth, new reinterpretations of his work
like a love supreme revisited with the Danish
radio big band, are charting and finding entirely
new audiences. It just doesn't stop. It really
doesn't. And it leaves us with a final thought
for you to mull over as you go about your day.
If a musician's recordings can literally be resurrected
from the ashes decades after they were thought
to be lost forever, at what point does a human
being actually stop speaking to us?