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Why John Coltrane Matters
Trane’s birthday (September 23) is a Holy Day
North Carolina
John Coltrane was born today, September 23, 1926, in Hamlet, N.C. He grew up in High Point, N.C. I passed through the city once looking to buy some furniture. A few locals mentioned that John Coltrane had been born in their city. It felt like he was still there, alive and living the way they spoke about him.
John Coltrane would see much of the world in his travels. Like Malcolm X, Medgar Evers, and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., John Coltrane would not survive the 1960s. He died in 1967. He was doing work. Human work. The work of a sage, an artist trying to leave behind a roadmap for people that might guide them through trouble and enhance the good in them.
Washington D.C. 1992 (Love Supreme)
The first John Coltrane album I purchased was “A Love Supreme.” I had never heard it before. It was all word of mouth. I was a poet on the Washington D.C. poetry scene. A lot of poets loved jazz. A lot of poets loved John Coltrane. They talked about John Coltrane all the time. I could feel how good and important he was to art and humanity through them. I purchased “A Love Supreme” on cassette and played it until it popped. Then I bought another.
