John Coltrane
A Love Supreme opens with a gong, a wash of cymbals and a saxophone fanfare, and closes with John Coltrane playing a devotional poem syllable by syllable through his horn. Recorded with McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison and Elvin Jones, that suite is music at its most spiritual.
He got there through relentless work. After stints with Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk and the hard bop of Blue Train, he developed the torrential runs critics called 'sheets of sound', raced through dizzying chord changes on Giant Steps and turned 'My Favorite Things' into a hypnotic vamp on soprano.
In his final years he plunged into free jazz on Ascension and the duets of Interstellar Space, before his death in 1967, aged 40.
If you like John Coltrane you should check out: Alice Coltrane, Eric Dolphy, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Sonny Rollins, Charlie Parker, Cannonball Adderley, Duke Ellington, Sun Ra, Charlie Mingus
