On September 23, 1926, John Coltrane was born. Coltrane's career was relatively short—about twenty years as a performer, and recordings from only the last decade—but he was one of the most influential saxophone players in jazz history.

He didn't begin playing the saxophone until high school when he played the alto sax in the school band. He learned the instrument quickly, though, and was playing regularly in Philadelphia clubs by the time he was 19.

In 1945, Coltrane enlisted in the Navy. He was stationed at Pearl Harbor, where he played with the base's swing band, the Melody Masters. The band was officially all-white, so Coltrane was not allowed to be a full member, and had to be reported to superior officers as a guest performer.

After his discharge from the Navy in 1946, Coltrane spent several years playing one-off gigs and brief engagements with various ensembles, mostly in the Philadelphia area. By this time, he had shifted from the alto saxophone and was usually playing tenor.

In 1955, Coltrane was invited by Miles Davis to join what became known as Davis' "First Great Quintet." The group's recorded output comes almost entirely from two long days of recording in 1956, from which four albums—Cookin', Relaxin', Workin', and Steamin'—were produced.

Coltrane played with Thelonious Monk's quartet for a few months in 1957. Monk and Coltrane were signed to different record labels, and contractual conflicts kept them from recording together very much, but they did record one album. Coltrane rejoined Davis from 1958 to 1960; the recorded highlight of this period is Davis' masterpiece Kind of Blue.

While working with Davis and Monk in the late 1950s, Coltrane had also begun recording as the leader of his own ensembles. His first album, Blue Train, is very much in what was then the mainstream of jazz, solidly executed bebop. By 1960, when Coltrane released Giant Steps, it was clear that he was introducing new ideas of his own. He was building his music around unusual harmonic progressions, and working in modes other than the traditional major and minor keys.

During the early 1960s, there was something of a split in Coltrane's style. In concert, his music was becoming ever more experimental. Melodic improvisation was the focus, with long melodies playing out over harmonically static chords or drones. At the same time, the albums he was recording were becoming more conservative. The Coltrane Quartet recorded Ballads, an album of standards; and collaborations with Duke Ellington and Johnny Hartman (the only time Coltrane would work as a bandleader with a singer).

In 1965, Coltrane released what is generally considered his masterpiece, A Love Supreme. It's a four-part suite inspired by his interest in religion and spirituality, themes that had become more important to him since the mid-1950s, when Coltrane believed that his spiritual experiences had helped him to overcome addiction to drugs and alcohol. Spiritual themes would dominate the last few years of Coltrane's life, which is reflected in his album titles of the period—Meditations, Cosmic Music, Selflessness.

As his themes became more spiritual, Coltrane's music was becoming increasingly more abstract. He became interested in advanced playing techniques that allowed the simultaneous playing of multiple notes, or the playing of extremely high notes outside the saxophone's normal range. A single piece in concert might last as much as an hour, with individual solos taking ten or fifteen minutes. One critic described Coltrane's late music as "speaking in tongues." The 1966 album Ascension is an uninterrupted 40-minute group improvisation, with solos for each member of the band, recorded with almost no musical planning.

Coltrane died of liver cancer on July 17, 1967. The labels for which he recorded have continued to release unheard Coltrane recordings for the last fifty years; a recently discovered set of 1963 recordings were released just this year as Both Directions at Once.

Coltrane was inducted into the Jazz Hall of Fame in 1967, and received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1997. In 2007, he was awarded a special posthumous Pulitzer Prize in recognition of his tremendous influence on jazz. Given his interest in spirituality, Coltrane might be amused that the African Orthodox Church, a small denomination of about 15,000 members, has named him a saint and that the Saint John Coltrane African Orthodox Church in San Francisco incorporates his music into its services.

Whether you choose to pray to it or not, you can find much more of John Coltrane's music available for streaming at Hoopla.