Author(s): Ben Ratliff

Biographies & Memoirs

John Coltrane, who died aged 40 in 1967, is one of half a dozen truly fundamental contributors to the history of jazz. No-one - not Armstrong, Ellington or Monk, nor even Charlie Parker - inspires quite the same mystique or continuing intensity of fascination. No young saxophonist of the past forty years has been able to escape his influence, and few musicians have had their work so obsessively documented on record.