On this day back in 1926 John Coltrane was born in Hamlet, North Carolina. Trane is widely considered to be the greatest tenor saxophone player of the 1950's. In author Ben Ratliff's Coltrane: The Story of the Sound much is said about the strict practicing regimen Trane kept, sometimes practicing up to 8 hours a day! This discipline and beautiful playing is probably why he's the only jazz musician with a church, The St. John Coltrane African Orthodox Church in the Fillmore District of San Francisco. The inspiration for the church came one night in 1965 when Archbishop Franzo King and Reverend Mother Marina King saw Coltrane play and described the event as a "sound baptism". Coltrane would die just two years later from liver cancer, possibly onset by the addiction to heroin he had kicked years earlier. John's son Ravi is an accomplished saxophone player himself and as the executor of Trane's estate has made sure his albums are being remastered and stay in print.
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