Alice Coltrane

Musician and religious leader

• Born: August 27, 1937
• Birthplace: Detroit, Michigan
• Died: January 12, 2007
• Place of death: Los Angeles, California

Although Coltrane is perhaps best known for helping to preserve the musical legacy of her husband, John Coltrane, she had a significant musical career of her own. She was one of the few musicians to incorporate the harp into jazz arrangements. She also was a devotee of Hinduism and dedicated much of her later years to the ashram she established in Malibu, California.

Early Life

Alice Lucille McLeod Coltrane was born on August 27, 1937, in Detroit, Michigan. Her parents, Solon and Anne McLeod, were deeply religious and raised Coltrane in church. Around age seven, she developed her love for music and began learning to play the piano, including focused study of Sergei Rachmaninoff, Ludwig van Beethoven, Igor Stravinsky, and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.

Coltrane earned a scholarship to the Detroit Institute of Technology upon completing high school, but she decided to focus her energy on music. She began playing piano for the choirs at her church and picked up jazz by listening to her half brother, bassist Ernie Farrow. Her heavily arpeggiated style was influenced by the Detroit jazz harpist Dorothy Ashby, whom she admired as a child.

In 1959, Coltrane moved to Paris to study informally with noted bebop pianist Bud Powell. While in Paris she was briefly married to singer Kenny “Pancho” Hagood, with whom she had a daughter, Michelle. She returned to Detroit in the early 1960’s and began playing jazz professionally with vibraphonist Terry Pollard and a trio she led, which included Farrow. She moved to New York in 1962, where she began playing in vibraphonist Terry Gibbs’s quartet. She appears on his Terry Gibbs Plays Jewish Melodies in Jazztime (1963) recording.

Life’s Work

While in New York, Coltrane met tenor saxophonist John Coltrane. She replaced McCoy Tyner as pianist in John’s quartet in 1965 and remained in the group until his death in 1967. She appeared on John’s Live at the Village Vanguard Again (1966) and Expression (1967) albums. The two were married in 1965 and had three children: John, Jr., Oran, and Ravi.

After John’s death, Coltrane started recording with her own group. Her first solo album, A Monastic Trio, was released in 1968. It was intended as a tribute to John; she played harp on some of the tracks, which she had learned to play because of his encouragement. The album was recorded with John’s last group with the addition of Ben Riley as a second drummer. Her third album, Ptah, the El Daoud (1970), added horns to the mix. It featured Pharoah Sanders and Joe Henderson on tenor saxophone and alto flute. This recording followed the example of John’s Meditations (1965) by having Sanders and Henderson isolated on the right and left channels, respectively.

In 1970, Coltrane became a follower of Swami Satchidananda. Her fourth album, Journey in Satchidananda (1970), reflected his influence as well as John’s. The song “Something About John Coltrane” is based on some of her late husband’s melodies, and the overall theme of the album is based on the teachings of the swami. Coltrane’s next two recordings, Universal Consciousness and World Galaxy (both 1972), reveal her skills as an arranger as they include a string orchestra to accompany Coltrane’s organ playing.

In 1972, Coltrane and her children moved to California, where she established the Vedantic Center in 1975. While she continued to record, her focus increasingly shifted to Hinduism. She recorded Illuminations with Carlos Santana in 1974, but otherwise her recordings through the 1970’s and 1980’s were less well received than her earlier work. By 1980, she had become known as Turiya Sagittinanda, Sanskrit for “the highest song of God.”

In 1983, the Vedantic Center opened the Shanti Anantam Ashram near Malibu, California, and Coltrane was named its swamini, or spiritual director. After that point, she recorded very rarely. She released a compilation in 1999 to satisfy the demands of an audience that was developing a renewed interest in her music, and her final studio album, Translinear Light, was produced by her son Ravi and released in 2004. She continued to perform some live concerts with a quartet featuring Ravi.

Coltrane died January 12, 2007, of respiratory failure in Los Angeles. She was buried alongside John at Pinelawn Memorial Park in Farmingdale, New York.

Significance

While Coltrane furthered John’s legacy by recording some of his songs over the years and promoting his music wherever she went, she also created her own distinct musical legacy. Her use of the harp and harp-inspired piano techniques brought a new dimension to jazz that few musicians had explored before her. Coltrane also had a significant influence on her late husband’s music. Her work with the harp influenced his experimentation with the so-called “sheets of sound” for which John was known, as well as his use of multiphonics to emulate the resonance of the harp. Later in Coltrane’s life, her religious teaching provided guidance and wisdom to her followers.

Bibliography

Kahn, Ashley. A Love Supreme: The Story of John Coltrane’s Signature Album. New York: Viking, 2002. Coltrane receives ample attention in this examination of John’s best-selling album and its significance to jazz. Kahn describes how and where A Love Supreme was recorded and why it appealed to an unusually large audience.

Porter, Lewis. John Coltrane: His Life and Music. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000. Biography of John with musical analysis. Details Coltrane’s contributions to John’s music and life.

Thomas, J. C. Chasin’ the Trane. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1975. Thomas’s paean to John contains perhaps the greatest biographical detail on his life and career.

Wilmer, Valerie. As Serious As Your Life: The Story of the New Jazz. London: Serpent’s Tail Press, 2000. Overview of the free jazz movement, with particular attention paid to its significant performers and innovators, including Coltrane.