Alice Coltrane -

Alice Coltrane (Aug. 27, 1937 — Jan. 12, 2007) was an American spiritual-jazz pianist, organist, and harpist from Detroit who released seven albums between 1968 and 1972 on Impulse! After early work with Terry Gibbs, she joined husband John Coltrane in 1966 and played on his final recordings. Coltrane collaborated with Carlos Santana on the 1974 Columbia album Illuminations, then continued her solo catalog through 1978 on Warner. In 2004, she returned to secular recording with Translinear Light.

Background

Alice Coltrane was born Alice Lucille McLeod on August 27, 1937, in Detroit, Michigan. Her mother played piano and sang in the Mount Olive Baptist Church choir, while elder half-brother Ernie Farrow became a jazz bassist. Younger sister Marilyn McLeod became a Motown songwriter. McLeod started piano lessons at age seven and played organ at Mount Olive by age nine.

McLeod attended Northeastern High School in Detroit, where she played percussion in concert bands and performed piano in a student trio. She graduated in June 1955 after school work on piano and percussion. McLeod then worked Detroit clubs and show bars with The Premiers, a vocal-instrumental quartet. Fortune Records issued the group’s 1957 single “When You Are in Love” (b/w “The Trap of Love”).

McLeod married Detroit singer Kenny “Pancho” Hagood in 1959 and traveled with him to Paris, where pianist Bud Powell became a mentor. She appeared on French television on January 9, 1960, with saxophonist Lucky Thompson, guitarist Jimmy Gourley, bassist Pierre Michelot, and drummer Kenny Clarke. McLeod returned to New York that November with daughter Michelle.

After the Hagood marriage ended, McLeod applied to Juilliard and the Manhattan School of Music but worked as a file clerk in New York. Ernie Farrow drew her back into full-time music, and both returned to Detroit near the end of 1961. McLeod worked solo piano jobs at the Hobby Show Bar and Detroit concerts with a sextet that included saxophonist Bennie Maupin and trombonist George Bohanon.

Detroit pianist–vibraphonist Terry Pollard and bassist Herman Wright connected McLeod with vibraphonist Terry Gibbs, who hired her after a January 1963 Manhattan audition. Gibbs recorded her that year on sessions for Terry Gibbs Plays Jewish Melodies in Jazztime, The Family Album, El Nutto, and Hootenanny My Way.

The Gibbs quartet shared Birdland with the John Coltrane Quartet from July 18 through July 31, 1963, where McLeod and Coltrane began a relationship. McLeod left Gibbs that autumn and traveled with Coltrane on a European tour. She married John Coltrane on October 20, 1965, in Juárez, Mexico.

Alice Coltrane entered John Coltrane’s group at Stanford University on January 23, 1966, then worked a two-week Jazz Workshop engagement in San Francisco. She recorded with the ensemble at Coast Recorders on February 2 and remained through the Village Vanguard engagement and Japanese tour. The group cut final sessions in 1967 at Van Gelder Recording Studio in Englewood Cliffs.

John Coltrane died on July 17, 1967, at Huntington Hospital on Long Island. A Lyon & Healy concert harp he ordered for Alice arrived after his death, and Coltrane taught herself the instrument. She recorded leader sessions at the family home studio in Dix Hills on January 29 and June 6, 1968, with saxophonist Pharoah Sanders, bassist Jimmy Garrison, and drummers Ben Riley and Rashied Ali. Impulse! issued the material that December as A Monastic Trio.

Discography: