Jazz harmony: The night Alice Coltrane met John
In the smoky underworld of jazz clubs and bars, it’s a cutthroat world of competition and who can make it to the top. But amid all the chaos and the noise, there are occasional moments when a softer, more romantic side of life can blossom, opening up a chance of love that only the fever-pitch scores of screeching saxophone solos can match. Indeed, this was exactly the fate that brought together the lives of both Alice and John Coltrane.
Both came from peppered backgrounds and peripatetic lifestyles. Alice, then going by her maiden name of McLeod, had been previously married Kenny ‘Pancho’ Hagood in 1960, with whom she had a daughter, Michelle. But the relationship was far from a match made in heaven. She was living in Paris, trying to raise a young child while making a name for herself on the jazz scene, all while her then-husband developed a heroin addiction. Needless to say, everything fell to pieces.
Returning to the safety blanket of her native Detroit with child in tow, Alice more than likely felt that the world was well and truly against her. As much as the task may have seemed like a hardship, forcing herself out to work every night back into the city’s bars ended up being her solace – and, indeed, her future, as one fateful evening she stumbled across the man who would alter the course of her life.
John Coltrane also came with his own baggage. He had been married once before too, to Naima, from 1955 until they separated in 1963. However, this relationship still proved pivotal to the rest of his life – it taught him spirituality, for one, which became an integral facet of his music, and largely kept his feet on the ground when the pace of jazz fame could have proved too much.
Thus, when he finally met Alice one night in a Detroit jazz club in 1963, when she had found a place playing in the Terry Gibbs Quartet, it truly felt as though the stars were destined to align. It was an instant match between the pair – a jazz harmony, if you will – that not only proved instrumental to them both in a personal capacity, but to the entirety of the scene and genre at large.
Having their first of three sons little over a year after they first met, the couple officially married in 1966 and started subsequently performing together as a result. Of course, tragedy struck soon after, with John’s untimely death from liver cancer at the age of only 40 in 1967 – but even despite their relatively short relationship, it had been enough to alter both their universes forever.
For Alice’s part, her shared fascination with spirituality was a shared spark with John, and this was an element only invigorated by loving him. She carried it all the way through the rest of her life and work – indeed, even eventually turning away from music to focus on religious education in her latter years.
But naturally, both the worlds of jazz and spirituality had to combine somehow, culminating in her final album, Transliner Light, in 2004. As such, it proves that this relationship was far more than just an electric romantic force – it was a partnership that, although not lasting particularly long in length, transformed and transcended the world of jazz as a whole through their combined impact. Spirituality isn’t going to be for everyone, of course, but if there is some kind of God above, it certainly proved its greatness in bringing Alice and John Coltrane together that one fateful 1963 night.
