John Coltrane

USA, 1945–1967

American saxophonist and composer. Giant Steps pushed harmonic substitution to its limit and A Love Supreme moved towards modal and free playing, an approach taken up by later improvisers in and beyond jazz.

MusicRoots documents 5 artists who influenced John Coltrane and 18 artists John Coltrane influenced in turn. Every connection cites a published source.

Who influenced John Coltrane?

• Coleman Hawkins — Hawkins's 'Body and Soul' was one of the first recordings Coltrane mastered — a primary influence on his saxophone approach.
• Lester Young — Lester Young was Coltrane's earliest saxophone model — Coltrane came to the tenor after being drawn to Young's and Johnny Hodges's playing.
• Charlie Parker — Parker was Coltrane's idol from 1947: 'The first time I heard Bird play, it hit me right between the eyes.' The two occasionally played together in the late 1940s.
• Thelonious Monk — Coltrane spent six months in Monk's quartet at the Five Spot in 1957, after Miles Davis had fired him, and came out of it a different player.
• Albert Ayler — In the mid-1960s Coltrane took up the harsh timbres and loose beat of the free players, Ayler among them, and largely left standard harmony behind.

Which artists did John Coltrane influence?

• Sergey Kuryokhin — Coltrane's late free playing was among the free-jazz sources Kuryokhin absorbed when he turned to the avant-garde in the late 1970s.
• Wayne Shorter — Coltrane was one of Shorter's first saxophone idols and a practice partner in the mid-1950s, before Shorter turned away toward a more succinct manner of his own.
• Grateful Dead — Coltrane showed Garcia that improvisation could be simultaneously infinite and spiritual.
• Santana — Coltrane's sheets-of-sound technique and spiritual intensity shaped Santana's extended soloing and his concept of music as meditation.
• MC5 — Late Coltrane — the point where a solo stops resolving and just keeps going. That is what the long passages on Kick Out the Jams are reaching for.
• The Allman Brothers Band — Coltrane's modal, exploratory improvisation was a model for the Allmans' long-form jamming — the jazz spirit under 'Whipping Post' and 'Mountain Jam'.
• Patti Smith — Coltrane's ecstatic free-jazz reach was a model for Smith's improvisatory, incantatory performance.
• Mahavishnu Orchestra — Coltrane's A Love Supreme was McLaughlin's spiritual and modal touchstone — the intensity and devotion at the heart of Mahavishnu.
• Captain Beefheart — John Coltrane's crazy time signatures fed Beefheart's polyrhythmic fracture — the Magic Band studied Coltrane's 'Africa Brass' and Village Vanguard recordings.
• David Bowie — Bowie's half-brother Terry Burns brought modern jazz into the house, and enthusiasm for Coltrane is what put a saxophone in Bowie's hands: a Grafton alto in 1961, then lessons with Ronnie Ross.
• Terry Riley — Coltrane's modal improvisation and spiritual intensity influenced the open improvisational structure of 'In C'.
• Steve Reich — Coltrane's modal and rhythmic intensity was what Reich called a direct impulse for his own early experiments with repetition.
• The Byrds — The other pole of 'Eight Miles High' — Coltrane's modal saxophone (India, Africa/Brass) was McGuinn's model for the song's 12-string flights.
• Laura Nyro — Coltrane's jazz was among the influences behind Nyro's harmonic adventurousness.
• Rakim — Rakim, a saxophonist before rapping, has said he modelled his breath control and phrasing on jazz horn players — John Coltrane in particular — giving his flow its smooth, legato quality.
• Kamasi Washington — Washington's tenor playing and the choir-and-strings scale of The Epic descend directly from Coltrane's late music.
• Pharoah Sanders — Sanders played in Coltrane's late group from 1964 until Coltrane's death in 1967; the free playing of those years is what he then built a music of his own from.
• Gil Scott-Heron — One of the musicians Scott-Heron named as an influence — the jazz his spoken verse is set against rather than sung over.