One of the reasons many saxophone players play with similar styles is because there is an influence coming from a primary source. Many of them are influenced by musicians like Charlie Parker, Lester Young and Dexster Gordon. But overall the saxophone player that is usually considered to be the most influential of the last fifty years is John Coltrane. He is not only a major influence to saxophone players, but to all jazz instrumentalists as well. .
John William Coltrane was born in Hamlet, North Carolina, on September 23, 1926. Two months later, his family moved to High Point, North Carolina, where he lived in a fairly well-off part of town. He grew up in a southern black family that was deeply religious, and very traditional. Coltrane was raised exposed to music since both of his parents were musicians. His father played the violin and ukulele, and his mother was a member of the church choir. Coltrane in his early teens played the clarinet, but with little interest in it. It was the alto saxophone sound produced by Johnny Hodges playing in the Duke Ellington band on the radio that inspired him to drop the clarinet and begin playing the alto saxophone. Coltrane with the alto saxophone immediately became a competent musician. .
In 1939, at age thirteen, Coltrane experienced several tragedies that left behind a lasting impression on him and a great impact on the music of his later years. Within a year, his father, his uncle, and his minister all passed away. Every important male influence in his life had passed away leaving him with only the influence of jazz musicians he would listen to on the radio. He moved to Philadelphia in 1943 after graduating from high school in High Point and lived in a small one-room apartment and worked as a laborer in a sugar-refinery. While working in the sugar-refinery, Coltrane attended Ornstein School of Music. Then in 1945, he was drafted into the Navy and sent to Hawaii where he played clarinet in a band called the Melody Makers (keep in mind that military bands were and still are made up of very educated and talented musicians.
