After graduating from high school in High Point, he moved to Philadelphia in 1943, where he lived in a small one-room apartment and worked as a laborer in a sugar-refinery. Here he attended Ornstein School of Music, but only for a year. In 1945, he was drafted into the Navy and sent to Hawaii where he was assigned to play clarinet in a band called the Melody Makers. Upon his return from Hawaii a year later, Coltrane launched his music career. In the late nineteen forties, Coltrane began playing with several different R&B groups in small bars and clubs around Philadelphia. Many of the clubs had a tradition of "walking the bar- (to walk on top of the bar while playing one's instrument). Coltrane was embarrassed having to go through this custom every night. This give him a negative image about himself and is abilities His self-esteem was crushed even further when critics said his music was too bizarre. Soon Coltrane became very depressed, and searching for a way out, he turned to heroin. Heroin was a very popular drug among black musicians in the forties. It was a form of escape that, at first, brought them together, but in the end triggered lives and careers to collapse.
Coltrane was invited to play in Dizzy Gillespie's his big band in 49. Gillespie had been a very significant figure in the bebop movement. Bebop was a style of jazz, popular during the late thirties and forties. It was characterized by integrating faster tempos, and more complex phrases than the jazz of earlier years. Gillespie's band offered some sense of stability for Coltrane for the first time in a long time. However, after a two-year stint with Gillespie, Coltrane kicked out due to his heroin addiction. Again, Coltrane was reduced to "walking the bar- at in sleazy clubs. He experienced another episode of depression, which caused his addiction to grow.
Again a jazz icon came to the rescue. This time it was Miles Davis.