Top 885 Artists-Number 7-John Coltrane

John Coltrane was of the greatest figures in the history of jazz, a gifted composer, sideman, and saxophone master who was with us for only a relatively short period of time, and yet produced a huge variety and volume of work.

His style evolved dramatically over the years. After making a name for himself in conventional jazz as a sideman for Miles Davis, his early solo work saw him begin to develop a highly improvised. formless "free jazz" that featured extended runs of playing hundreds of notes in a short time. His work in the mid-1960s became increasingly atonal and dissonant, as he concentrated almost solely on the tenor sax and worked with other free jazz artists on his recordings.

My favorite Coltrane has to be Coltrane's Sound. With the first edition of the classic Coltrane band (with Steve Davis on bass), this dark and brooding masterpiece reworks standard bop. "Liberia" is a version of "A Night In Tunisia", and "Satellite" redoes "How High The Moon".