Back to 

John Coltrane (1926-67) was the most relentlessly exploratory musician in jazz history He was always searching, seeking to take his music further in what he quite consciously viewed as a spiritual quest. A native of North Carolina who later moved to Philadelphia, Coltrane joined the Miles Davis quintet in 1955, after years in the big band and combo of Dizzy Gillespie (where he played alto before switching to tenor). Coltrane's anguished tone and multi-noted, rhythmically complex solos with Davis quickly elevated him to the front ranks of jazz. His position was quickly solidified when Coltrane began recording extensively under his own name (often with pianist Red Garland's trio) and as a sideman in 1957, spent a brief yet invaluable stay with Thelonious Monk that same year; then returned to Davis as a featured soloist for the rest of the decade. The incredible technical and harmonic content of his playing at the time led to a style, described as "sheets of sound".
He organized his first quartet in 1960. This group, which featured pianist McCoy Tyner; drummer Elvin Jones, and, ultimately, bassist Jimmy Garrison, became one of the seminal jazz bands, playing with incredible energy and providing a forum for Coltrane's growth as a composer: The Coltrane quartet, often expanded to include a bassist and (for much of 1961) Eric Dolphy, proved extremely popular without abandoning its exploratory edge, and by 1965 was the premier group in jazz.
By the summer of '65 he had opened up his rhythmic and textural vocabulary even further by incorporating younger avant-garde players into his music. Pharoah Sanders joined the band as a permanent second saxophonist; Rashied Ali and Coltrane's wife Alice replaced Jones and Tyner; respectively; and his music entered yet another phase that generated debate regarding whether Coltrane had not once again gone too far: This final phase, while indeed filled with cataclysmic sounds, also contained music of a new and promising lyricism. He died of a liver disease in 1967.