Six months after her husband passed away she dedicated one of the musical pieces to him. Alice Coltrane, 1968Īlice Coltrane’s first session as a leader took place in January of 1968. This is a review of the music she made in her early career under her own name, releasing albums for the Impulse! Records jazz label in the late 1960s and early 1970s. I don’t have the genius of John, but I will try to elevate the music as much as I possibly can.” Elevate she did, throughout her career as musician and spiritual being. In an interview by Pauline Rivelli in July 1968, Alice Coltrane remarked: “I don’t think that I have the talent of my husband. But what followed was an amazing streak of creativity empowered by a spiritual awakening that resulted in deeply moving music. As a widow she found herself with no experience leading her own band, and other than the exposure to large audiences through her husband’s band, she was relatively unknown as a musician in her own right. A faithful meeting with John Coltrane led to their marriage and she joined his group in 1966. In 1960, Alice Coltrane – then Alice McLeod – started playing professionally and later became a member of Terry Gibbs’ quartet. Her musical life was wrapped up in his, and the future of her own musical career was unclear. Without her husband, mentor and band leader, and with a family to take care of, she now had a life to live without him. Few paid attention to the one person who was left with the biggest void, his wife Alice Coltrane. Many claimed that no one can fill his shoes and some named various sax players such as Archie Shepp, Albert Ayler and Pharoah Sanders as his successors. Coltrane rejected his doctor’s recommendation to have an operation and refused to be hospitalized.
Most jazz enthusiasts and many musicians did not know of his deteriorating condition during the last months of his life. John Coltrane’s death at the young age of 40 from liver cancer in July of 1967 left the jazz community in shock. 12 Alice Coltrane’s spiritual jazz, 1968-1971.
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