# Deep Dive: The presence of the past in John Coltrane’s expressive and searching music: Photos, Video

- Link: https://jazzblues.eu/2019/09/23/deep-dive-the-presence-of-the-past-in-john-coltranes-expressive-and-searching-music-photos-video/
- Published: 2019-09-23T15:43:35+01:00
- Author: https://JazzBlues.EU

**Saxophonist John Coltrane was born on Sept. 23, 1926. On what would have been 
his 93rd birthday, scholar and historian David Tegnell offers this guest installment
of Deep Dive with Lewis Porter.**

More than 50 years after John Coltrane’s death, we have yet to fully unlock the 
meaning of his music of the 1960s, in part because we haven’t adequately investigated
the saxophonist’s relationship to traditional African American religious practice.

I first came to this conclusion while conducting a field study on African American
religious music in a Holiness church during the 1980s. There I noticed certain aesthetic
correspondences between Holiness worship modes and Coltrane’s improvisatory practices,
and realized that several of his strategies, which I had previously assumed to be
avant-garde, are in fact original to traditional worship.

In particular, Coltrane’s free improvisations struck me as similar in manner and
execution to religious testimony, wherein members of a congregation help to shape,
in the moment, a worshiper’s performed meditation. In the Coltrane group’s soundscape,
I also heard echoes of the incidental dissonance produced by congregations whose
members simultaneously and individually pray aloud. And the celebratory codas of
his solos seemed reminiscent of the eruptions of holy dancing in response to a congregant’s
heartfelt expressions.

Of course, John Coltrane grew up Methodist, not Holiness: specifically, African 
Methodist Episcopal Zion, one of several mainstream denominations to which the vast
majority of freedmen flocked, following emancipation. These freedmen sought to take
their rightful place in American society by embracing respectability as defined 
by the larger white Southern culture. In so doing, they kept at arm’s length — for
a time — the intensely expressive worship practices through which they and their
ancestors had created a distinct identity and a culture of resistance.

But around the turn of the 20th century, traditional African American culture reasserted
itself in the form of Pentecostal/Holiness worship, just as Southern states were
stripping Negroes of their right to vote, thereby establishing a 60-year regime 
of white supremacy. This cultural eruption reflected a growing conflict over how
African Americans might best respond to Jim Crow — resistance or accommodation? —
that would persist into the post-World War II civil rights movement.

Further complicating the picture, commercial swing music and religious blues (gospel)
extracted elements of traditional worship practice from its ritual nexus, thereby
obscuring for white consumers the longstanding role and function of a much more 
pervasive African American religious culture.

So it came as a complete shock to white jazz fans and critics when in 1961, concurrent
with African Americans’ renewed demands for civil rights, Coltrane abandoned accepted
methods for organizing jazz performances in favor of a freer, more emotionally charged
presentation that drew upon not only the aesthetic and technical aspects of traditional
religion, but also its spiritual purpose.

Protestant religious testimony (and attendant worship modes), as adapted and practiced
by slaves during secret plantation services in the dead of night, allowed participants
to express their feelings openly and fully and, through communion with others, to
maintain their belief in God, even when they had suffered beatings or their family
members were sold away.

This practice, which has continued to serve subsequent generations, is both spiritually
edifying to the individual and formative of community. Those who testify receive
immediate shouts of encouragement from the congregation, and so, often find themselves
revealing thoughts they had suppressed. In this way, testimony is simultaneously
an act of self-revelation and self-discovery that in turn encourages others. It 
is a collective act of love, an antidote to the mistreatment experienced at the 
hands of the larger society. Coltrane revealed that he understood the utility of
this deceptively simple practice when he said that he wanted his own improvisations
to make listeners “happy,” and for his music to “be a force for good.”

Holiness worshipers (and by extension their enslaved ancestors) invoke a God not
only of love, but also of justice, capable of overturning the social order. Often,
the congregation limns the presence of a powerful God through a sometimes-frightening
cacophony of shouted and guttural praise, accompanied by handclaps, heels striking
the floor, and the playing of percussive musical instruments. Church members, who
refer to themselves as Saints, may become one with this God through a lengthy spiritual
process of conversion, purification, and spirit-possession (“Saved, Sanctified, 
and Holy Ghost filled”). Consequently, during services, the Holy Ghost may descend
to reveal truths through anyone at any time.

John Coltrane risked his career and reputation to bring this humble but powerful
meditative practice into the secular marketplace, where he clothed it in learned
technique, and offered it as a way forward in a post-integration America. Coltrane
used his stunningly virtuosic improvisations to contest prevailing racial stereotypes,
revealing the invisible man to be highly intellectual, scrupulously honest, and 
emotionally complex. And at the height of the civil rights movement, Coltrane called
forth the spirit of his ancestors to render in music a ferocious judgment on centuries
of racial justice.

What did John Coltrane know of slavery and segregation at the time he reimagined
African American music? What may he have known of his family’s experience with that
long period of oppression? Over the past several years, I have sought to investigate
these questions by researching the lives of his ancestors.

I previously published my findings with respect to Coltrane’s maternal (Blair) family
in the article “Hamlet: John Coltrane’s Origins,” published in _Jazz Perspectives_,
a journal founded by Lewis Porter and John Howland.

In this guest installment of Deep Dive with Lewis Porter, I present a new documentary
study of John Coltrane’s paternal ancestry, beginning with his oldest known enslaved
relatives. This essay will outline the conditions of the Coltrane family’s enslavement,
and describe the circumstances of their life under freedom and segregation. Further,
I speculate as to how prior unions, events, decisions and actions may have been 
consequential for the formation of Coltrane’s character, and how Coltrane’s knowledge
of his ancestors’ experience may have shaped his idea of slavery, segregation and
traditional African American culture.

I conclude by relating the story of young John Coltrane’s disenchantment with respectability
and his nascent embrace of traditional culture — setting in motion a lifelong examination,
appropriation, and synthesis of complex musical/cultural currents.

No Coltrane family letters, diaries, sermons or other writings from that period 
survive — and because official documents do not reveal family relationships, day-
to-day activities, or belief systems, we can never know precisely how Coltrane’s
family practiced religion. Yet, the record makes clear their long and deep commitment
to traditional worship.

Neither do we know how and when Coltrane came to understand the connection between
traditional performed testimony and his own musical meditations. Perhaps his encounter
with fellow saxophonist Albert Ayler, himself a Pentecostal, at a critical moment
in his career, was decisive. Or, perhaps traditional worship concepts and practices
are so deeply embedded in the culture and Coltrane’s family experience as to be 
simply assumed. As the great music historian Sam Floyd once said to me, traditional
worship “is never far away.”

[[

**John Coltrane at the April 1966 recording for the album ‘Cosmic Music.’**

**The Presence of the Past**

John Coltrane grew up in a household headed by his maternal grandparents, both born
slaves — so for his family, slavery was a living memory, and segregation was of 
course a daily reality. In a 1962 letter to _DownBeat_ editor Don DeMicheal, Coltrane
provides some insight into his understanding of the relationship between African
American music and slavery and segregation:

We are born with this feeling that just comes out, no matter what conditions exist.
Otherwise, how could our founding fathers have produced this music, in the first
place when they surely found themselves (as many of us do today) existing in hostile
communities where there was everything to fear and damn few to trust. Any music 
which could grow and propagate itself as our music has, must have a hell of an affirmative
belief inherent in it.

John Coltrane’s improvisations of the 1960s were both timely and intensely personal.
Coltrane allowed his listeners to eavesdrop while he struggled with the emerging
existential reality of integration, the long-delayed encounter between two previously
separate — and hostile — cultures. Coltrane’s family history tells us something 
about what he brought to that table.

**New Discoveries**
 Invariably genealogists and historians are frustrated in their
efforts to unearth the names of former slaves. Laws prohibited slaves from learning
to read or write, so few of them could document their own lives; and before 1870,
the census listed slaves not by name, but solely by age, gender and race. Only by
a stroke of luck have we recently learned the identities of John Coltrane’s great-
grandparents on his father’s side, where and by whom they were enslaved.

**Coltrane Family Tree**
 Below, I provide an abridged family tree both to delineate
the through-line from the earliest-known ancestors down to John Coltrane, and to
provide a genealogical framework for the ensuing discussion. For the sake of clarity,
I have indicated spouses and children only for John Coltrane’s direct ancestors.

[[

Please also note:

The 1811 birth year indicated for John Coltrane’s great-grandmother Mary Ann is 
that which is inscribed on her grave marker; but this date must be wrong — for she
likely would not have birthed her last child at age 61. Other records suggest that
Mary Ann was actually born between 1820 and 1830.

Mary Ann Coltrane reported to the 1900 and 1910 census takers that she had given
birth to 12 children (in 1900, she stated that all 12 were still alive; but in 1910,
only four). I have been able to find (and list) just 10.

 * John William Coltrane’s father John Robert married twice, the first time to Beatrice
   Dockery.

[[

**William Henry Coltrane death certificate, listing his parents, Andrew and Mary
Ann Coltrane**

**Andrew and Mary Ann Coltrane**
 I first came across the names of John William 
Coltrane’s great-grandparents, Andrew and Mary Ann Coltrane, on the 1925 death certificate
of their son, William Henry (John William Coltrane’s paternal grandfather). This
discovery led me to Amos Grove, the African American cemetery just outside the small
central North Carolina farming town of Liberty, in Randolph County.  Here I found
the marked graves of Andrew and Mary Ann Coltrane. No one had tended these graves
for many years; the footstones have migrated under the force of periodic flood washes,
and Andrew’s gravestone had fallen over.

**Abner Coltrane**
 As I walked behind Mary Ann’s marker, I was astonished to find
on the reverse side an additional inscription: “Mary Ann was bought by Abner Coltrane
in 1821.”

[[

**Grave marker, Mary Ann Coltrane**

[[

**Grave marker, obverse, for Mary Ann Coltrane**

With this information, I was later able to confirm that Abner Coltrane (1800-1869)
had indeed purchased Mary Ann at a young age, and kept her enslaved until emancipated
in 1863.

Who placed Mary Ann’s gravestone? Who wrote the inscription, and why? Did Mary Ann
wish to exhort future generations never to forget her enslavement — or, did she 
perhaps want to express gratitude toward her former owner? Might Abner Coltrane’s
family have purchased the marker to thank Mary Ann for her years of service? If 
so, why did they not say so on the stone?

**A Negro boy named “Handy”**
 So I already knew something of Andrew and Mary Ann
when, unexpectedly, an envelope arrived from Lewis Porter containing photocopies
of several documents sent to him by Bob Coltrane, a descendant of Abner, who now
lives in Ohio.

[[

**Bill of sale recording Abner Coltrain’s (i.e., Coltrane) purchase of slave Andrew”
Boy Handy,” 1828**

At the top of the stack lay an 1828 bill of sale for a seven-year old “Negro Boy
named Handy,” purchased for $200 in Fayetteville, N.C., by “Abner Coltrain” (I have
not infrequently found the name Coltrane spelled variously in official documents
and even on gravestones). Abner’s Quaker father, Jacob, witnessed the transaction.
Porter’s envelope also held a plat map of Abner’s farm, as well as other documents
listing an adult slave identified alternately as Andrew and Handy.

**Coltrane Family Reunion**
 A couple of years later, I learned that members of 
the African American Coltrane family gather annually for a reunion, usually held
near Liberty, N.C. I contacted the organizers and asked if I might attend. Upon 
arrival, I was struck first by the size of the gathering, and second, by how many
people resembled John Coltrane! I was also surprised to see most attendees wearing
T-shirts that carried one of several variants of the Coltrane family tree. Each 
branch of the family traces its beginnings back to one of Andrew and Mary Ann’s 
children — yet none of the T-shirts included the common root, Andrew and Mary Ann.

Also absent from the reunion was any representative of William Henry Coltrane’s 
branch, i.e., John William Coltrane’s grandfather, as all descendants had long since
died or moved away. In fact, the organizers told me that only recently had they 
learned of the family’s relationship to the famous saxophonist, and that they had
then immediately invited John Coltrane’s son Ravi to attend this very reunion. (
Ravi did not.)

**Abner Coltrane’s Home**
 The Coltrane Family Reunion organizers seated me at a
table next to a young white woman who introduced herself as a descendant of the 
Coltrane family — the very people who had enslaved the Reunion members’ ancestors.
During our conversation, the young woman showed me a photograph of a house identified
as that of Abner Coltrane. While I possessed a plat map, I had thus far been unable
to locate Abner’s plantation, precisely. I asked for directions and set off to find
the house. (I have since learned that Abner Coltrane’s house was recently demolished,
in Feb. 2019.)

[[

**Front view of Abner Coltrane’s farmhouse, west of Liberty North Carolina**

[[

**Rear view of Abner Coltrane’s farmhouse**

**The Conditions of Slavery**
 The archival record is meager, but nonetheless tells
us something about the conditions Andrew and Mary Ann had to endure. Abner Coltrane
bought the land on which he built his house in 1845, and steadily increased his 
holdings until 1860, when he owned 2,000 acres. Because North Carolina’s central
Piedmont is less fertile than the coastal plain, Abner’s chief agricultural product
was necessarily livestock — cattle, swine, and sheep — which required a much smaller
labor force than if he had primarily grown crops. Seemingly, Abner’s practice was
to purchase boys who served as shepherds. Of his 21 slaves listed in the 1860 U.
S. census, only five are female; most of the men are teen-aged or younger. Andrew“
Handy” Coltrane may have been Abner’s first shepherd.

[[

**Slave Schedule, U. S. Census, 1860. Although no slave is named, the age and gender
of the first two listed suggest that Andrew and Mary Ann were Abner Coltrane’s oldest
slaves.**

Though unnamed in the census, the oldest of Abner’s slaves are certainly Andrew 
and Mary Ann, aged 41 and 37, respectively. It is more than possible that Mary Ann
served as Abner’s cook and perhaps nanny to his three children by his first wife,
Sarah Gardner (1809-1852): Stephen (1826-1896), James Madison (1833-1863), and Franklin(
1837-1894). If so, Mary Ann and Andrew probably lived in the same dwelling as Abner
Coltrane and his family and coped with the kind of strained intimacy typical of 
Southern planter households.

Andrew and Mary Ann began to cohabit in 1851 and Mary Ann gave birth to the first
of their 10 children that same year. We can only wonder whether Abner Coltrane’s
newly constructed house was large enough to accommodate these two families.

**Record of Cohabitation**
 At War’s end, the newly constituted North Carolina State
Legislature afforded freed slaves the opportunity to legalize their prior cohabitation.
Andrew and Mary Ann did so in 1866 by reporting to the County Courthouse in Asheboro.
Their names appear in a Record of Cohabitation for Randolph County, published in
Barnetta McGhee White’s 1995 book _Somebody Knows My Name: Marriages of Freed People
in North Carolina County By County_. Given that Andrew and Mary Ann did not begin
living together until relatively late in their lives (when they were 32 and 28, 
respectively), one might surmise that Abner opposed slave cohabitation — but an 
unexpected pregnancy within his household may have forced him to recognize his slaves’
union as a practical matter.

**A “Public Nuisance”**
 In the 18th century, a large contingent of Quakers settled
in Randolph County and portions of two adjacent counties, Davidson and Guilford.
The Quakers’ opposition to slavery and emphasis on light industry rather than farming
kept the number of slaves in this “Quaker Belt” below 13 percent of the (1860) population.
Consequently, although Abner Coltrane owned only 21 slaves, he was the fifth-largest
slaveholder in Randolph County.

Whereas slaves on the large plantations of fertile coastal North Carolina enjoyed
some protections afforded by sheer numbers, slaves in the interior Piedmont, who
typically worked in relative isolation on small family farms, were subject to owners’
capricious acts of violence, fueled by the personal nature of the slave/farmer relationship.
Superior Court records document one such violent outburst — by Abner Coltrane. During
the 1861 Spring Term, on the eve of the Civil War, a panel of Superior Court jurors
charged Abner with creating a “public nuisance” in the streets of the Randolph County
Seat of Asheboro. The indictment reads:

The Jurors for the State upon their oath present, that Abner Coltrain, late of Randolph
County, on the first day of January in the year of our Lord one thousand eight-hundred
and sixty one, at and in the County aforesaid in certain public streets and highways
there situate, and in the presence of divers persons there and there being, did,
in an unusual, cruel, inhuman, barbarous and shocking manner, whip, beat, mistreat
and abuse a slave named Alfred the property of the said Abner Coletrain, and did
in the said public streets and highways and in the presence of the said divers persons,
then and there, continue the whiping, beating, mistreatment and abuse of the said
slave Alfred for a long space of time, to wit: for three hours, in the manner aforesaid[?]
example of all others in like case offending; to the common nuisance of all the 
good citizens of the State and against the peace and dignity of the State.

After several years’ delay, and despite the testimony of seven witnesses, a jury
acquitted Abner Coltrane. The Court ordered Abner to pay its costs, which he ultimately
did following the end of the War, with worthless Confederate currency. The slave
he victimized, Alfred, whose name also appears in the cohabitation record, was unrelated
to Andrew and Mary Ann. However, the couple must have been aware of the beating 
and probably nursed their fellow slave back to health.

It may be cold comfort, but there is no indication that Abner Coltrane engaged in
the sexual predation that was all too common among slave owners. And he spared Andrew
and Mary Ann’s family the trauma of sale and separation. So the 1870 census indicates
the race of Mary Ann’s children as Black, not Mulatto, and lists eight of her nine
offspring born to date living at home. At least, Andrew and Mary Ann did not have
to spend precious time and resources at War’s end looking for missing family members.

**Freedom**
 The period of chaos after the Civil War appears to have been difficult
for Andrew and Mary Ann. Perhaps they were near starvation when in May 1867 they
and two confederates stole a pig from a neighboring farm; the Sherriff immediately
arrested all four and charged them with larceny. The Court ordered Andrew and Mary
Ann to pay $100 each — an impossible sum for them to raise.

[[

**1870 U.S. Census, showing Andrew and Mary Ann Coltrane (and children) reported
living as tenants, alongside Abner Coltrane’s widow Elizabeth and Abner’s two surviving
sons, Stephen and Franklin**

By 1869, Abner Coltrane was dead. His two surviving sons, Stephen and Franklin divided
their father’s estate with his widow (and second wife) Elizabeth. And so in 1870,
census takers found Andrew and Mary Ann, flanked by Abner’s heirs, living as tenants
on land they had previously worked as slaves.

The Agricultural Schedule of the census indicates that Andrew was a more productive
farmer than Franklin Coltrane — but, as tenant, Andrew had to turn over half his
yield to Franklin. While the African American Coltrane family had yet to escape 
the clutches of their former owners, at least Mary Ann no longer served as their
domestic. She now kept her own house, which included eight of her 10 children, one
of whom, William Henry, here aged 10, would later become John Coltrane’s paternal
grandfather.

**A Widow’s Allowance**
 Andrew Coltrane died of tuberculosis on Dec. 4, 1879. Mary
Ann immediately applied for a Widow’s Allowance, and the Court awarded her $147,
the difference between the $453 assessed value of her husband’s estate and $600.

[[

Widow’s Year’s Allowance, awarded by Randolph County to Mary Ann Coltrane, following
the death of her husband

CREDIT COURTESY OF THE STATE ARCHIVES OF NORTH CAROLINA

The requisite estate inventory provides us a glimpse into the Coltrane family’s 
existence. Two mules, four cattle, a wagon, and crop yields account for more than
two thirds of their net worth (although Andrew had yet to finish paying Franklin
for the mules and wagon). Farming implements and household items (including, notably,
a Bible) make up the rest.

[[

**Andrew Coltrane’s itemized estate, submitted by Mary Ann with her application 
for a Widow’s Year’s Allowance**

Touchingly, Andrew kept a bedroll at the parsonage, suggesting he volunteered as
a caretaker of the family (AME Zion) church, located 3-4 miles east of Abner Coltrane’s
plantation. Given his poor health at nearly age 70, Andrew may have preferred to
spend the night at the church rather than walk the roundtrip in one day. The bedroll
also speaks to Andrew’s commitment to his church and its congregation who had helped
him and his family survive.

[[

**Mary Ann, Alone**
 By the time census takers arrived in spring 1880, Mary Ann 
had moved her family, and entered into a new tenancy arrangement. Several of her
children had left since the last enumeration, including William Henry, who earlier
in the year had married Ellen (aka Helen) Forney. Perhaps pregnant, Ellen remained
behind with her mother-in-law.

A year later, Mary Ann used $22 of her Widow’s Allowance to purchase a nine-acre
farm located one mile west of Liberty. She bought the land for less than its valuation
from Leonard and Sarah Wright, members of Sandy Creek Baptist Church, neither of
whom had previously owned slaves. For the rest of her life, Mary Ann resided on 
this farm, where she raised not only her remaining children but also several of 
her grandchildren — one of whom, John Robert, would later become John William Coltrane’s
father.

**Mary Ann’s Kettle**
 I asked around Liberty for the location of Mary Ann Coltrane’s
farmhouse, and was told that the abandoned structure had long since fallen to the
ground. I found the site overgrown with thick foliage, through which I could see
only a portion of the floor. My intrepid brother plunged his hand into the undergrowth
below and pulled out this iron kettle. I like to think it belonged to Mary Ann, 
and that she used it to heat water over the fire in order to give young John Robert
a bath on Saturday night. I keep the kettle above my collection of Coltrane recordings.

[[

Kitchen kettle, possibly belonging to Mary Ann Coltrane, retrieved from the rubble
of her former farmhouse, Liberty, N.C.

CREDIT DAVID TEGNELL

**Rev. William Henry Coltrane**
 In 1895, William Henry Coltrane entered the ministry
of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion church. His duties required him to shuttle
between his district’s churches so often as to make it impractical to bring his 
family with him. Consequently, his wife Ellen, two daughters and two sons continued
to live with his mother Mary Ann on her farm in Liberty.

[[

**1900 U. S. Census, listing 5-year-old John R. Coltrane (John William Coltrane’s
father), residing with his mother Ellen and siblings on Mary Ann’s farm near Liberty,
N.C.**

But sometime before 1910, Rev. W. H. Coltrane’s family joined him; the census found
the family living together in Franklinton — perhaps a centrally located home base
within Rev. Coltrane’s circuit. At 93, Mary Ann was now too old to care for her 
grandchildren; her youngest son Isaac managed the Liberty farm and looked after 
his aged mother until her death the following year. We do not know precisely when
John Robert left Mary Ann’s farm, but we can surmise that he enjoyed there a comparatively
calm and stable rural childhood — while seemingly also attending elementary school,
as the 1910 census indicates he could both read and write.

**A Modest Career**
 Very few records survive documenting Rev. William Henry Coltrane’s
employment as an AME Zion minister, but we can safely say that he led a modest career
and earned an average salary. Apparently, Rev. Coltrane spent much of his entire
adult life working as a circuit rider, traveling by horseback or buggy among disparate
rural churches, each too small to support a pastor.

By contrast, John Coltrane’s maternal grandfather Rev. William Wilson Blair, also
an AME Zion minister, served contemporaneously as a presiding elder (district supervisor),
regularly attended the denomination’s Quadrennial Conference where he chaired important
committees, and commanded a salary comparable to that of High Point, North Carolina’s
African American school principals.

Yet Rev. Coltrane performed important work, ministering to the poorest and most 
exploited rural folk, who suffered profoundly under Jim Crow. He also facilitated
the regular performance of congregation-centered religious rituals, which for decades
had proved essential to the survival, emotional well-being, and identity of an entire
group of oppressed people. Thus, John William Coltrane’s family was deeply rooted
in a Southern rural religious tradition that included lined hymn singing, testimony,
shouting, and ecstatic praise. In 1958, John Coltrane said, “Both my grandfathers
were ministers…I grew up in that.”

[[

**1918 Annual Report of the Fayetteville District, Central North Carolina Conference,
indicating Rev. William H. Coltrane’s church circuit and salary.**

At right is a page from the Presiding Elder’s annual report of the Fayetteville 
District, delivered at the Central North Carolina Conference, December 4, 1918. 
Rev. W. H. Coltrane had just completed a year ministering to the churches within
the Mountain Grove Circuit. _(See item No. 9.) _He had earned a salary of $525, 
less than half that paid to John Coltrane’s maternal grandfather, pastor of St. 
Stephen AME Zion Church, High Point, North Carolina in 1920.

[[

**May 12, 1919 marriage license of J.R. Coltrane and his first wife, Beatrice Dockery**

**John Robert Coltrane**
 John Robert Coltrane (or J.R., as he was mostly known,
and as I will call him to avoid confusion with his son) remains an elusive, shadowy
figure. From the decade before his son John William was born, we know little more
than that in 1917 J. R. registered for the draft, and that in 1919, at age 24, he
married 18-year-old Beatrice Dockery. J.R.’s Registration Card indicates that he
was a resident of Hamlet at the time he registered, and that he had already established
his pressing club (clothes washing business). J.R.’s marriage license notes that
his parents were also living in Hamlet, that year. The following year, census takers
found Rev. W. H. Coltrane still residing in Hamlet, but failed to enumerate J.R.
and Beatrice Coltrane–so we do not know precisely where they were living.

There is much else that we do not know about J.R. from this period — where and when
he acquired his skill in tailoring; when and how J.R. learned to play the violin;
where his in-laws resided (the Dockerys also were not counted in 1920 or any other
census year). And we know almost nothing of Beatrice Dockery, except that she and
John Robert did not conceive a child.

[[

Aug. 17, 1925 marriage license of J.R. Coltrane and his second wife, Alice Gertrude
Blair. Note that the wedding took place in Bennettsville, S.C., rather than St. 
Stephens AME Zion church in Hamlet, N.C., where Alice’s father was pastor.

**Alice Gertrude Blair**
 John Robert Coltrane’s marriage to Beatrice Dockery was
short-lived. Sometime during 1924, J.R. met and became romantically involved with
Alice Gertrude Blair. Alice Blair was the 26-year-old daughter of Rev. William Wilson
Blair, newly appointed pastor of Hamlet’s St. Stephens AME Zion church. Since 1921,
Alice had been attending the residential high school program at Livingston College
in Salisbury, North Carolina. Probably during Christmas break of her senior year,
Alice became pregnant. For fear of being expelled from school, Alice kept this fact
a secret until after she graduated in May 1925.

On Aug. 17, 1925, shortly before the expected birth, Alice and J.R. eloped across
the South Carolina state line to nearby Bennettsville, where they married in a magistrate’s
office, returning by bus to Hamlet that day. No witnesses attended the wedding, 
family or friend. J.R. and Beatrice never officially divorced, so it would have 
been unthinkable for J.R. to wed Alice in the same church where he had married Beatrice
only six years earlier. Besides, Rev. Blair would have been mortified to preside
over the wedding of his daughter, obviously pregnant with an illegitimate child.

[[

**John William Coltrane’s Sept. 23, 1926 birth certificate, on which his mother 
indicates that she had previously given birth to a child ”born alive, but now dead.”**

**John William Coltrane’s Sibling**
 Sadly, J. R. and Alice Coltrane’s first child
did not survive. We know this because Alice Coltrane indicated on John William’s
birth certificate (Sept. 23, 1926) that she had previously given birth to a child“
born alive but now dead.”

**Separation and Return**
 Following their return from South Carolina, J.R. and 
Alice Coltrane took up residence on the second floor of a rooming house in Hamlet,
where a year later their son John William Coltrane was born.

[[

**Rear view of John Coltrane’s birthplace, Hamlet, N.C., photographed 1972**

Alice Blair Coltrane lived apart from her father only once in her life, prior to
Rev. Blair’s death in 1938: the approximately 15 months following her marriage to
J.R. If this separation signaled a rift, father and daughter appear to have smoothed
over their differences by Dec. 1926, perhaps facilitated by the birth of grandson
John William Coltrane.

At year’s end, after Rev. Blair completed his term as pastor of Hamlet’s St. Stephens
church, Alice and J.R. moved to High Point, N.C. with her parents, where the two
families lived together at 113 Price St.

[[

**Previously unpublished photograph of Rev. W.W. Blair, possibly 1910**

**Rev. W. W. Blair, the “dominating cat of the family”**
 In Rev. Blair, J.R. encountered
a formidable, learned, articulate man — accomplished and politically daring. Sixty
years old in 1920 when he first moved to High Point, Blair brought with him a lifetime
of experience in post-Reconstructions politics. For 25 years, i.e., from ages 20-
45, he had headed the Republican Party in eastern North Carolina’s Chowan County,
where nearly half the electorate was Black. He had served as County Commissioner
from 1896-1898, and had twice run for a seat in the State Legislature. He had thus
gained considerable skill in contending with powerful white Southerners. Consequently,
virtually upon arrival, High Point’s African American community embraced Rev. Blair
as their community leader. According to Betty Jackson, John William Coltrane’s classmate
and lifelong resident of High Point, “If you wanted something done, just ask Rev.
Blair.”

John William Coltrane told interviewer August Blume in 1958 that Rev. Blair was “
the dominating cat of the family. He was most well versed, active politically.” 
By comparison, he said his father (J.R.), “never seemed to say too much. He just
went about his business — that was it.” The events of the preceding summer could
not have endeared J.R. to Rev. Blair. J.R.’s infidelity and Alice’s first pregnancy
had tarnished the family’s reputation, placing at risk Rev. Blair’s employment and
his standing with whites. Rev. Blair therefore may have felt it prudent to relocate
from Hamlet to High Point, where few knew of the family’s embarrassment. And perhaps,
after moving in with his in-laws, J.R. decided it best to keep his head down.

**118 Underhill Street**
 In 1928, Rev. Blair built a house in High Point at 118
Underhill St. in a new middle class development called Griffin Park (here photographed
in 1986).

[[

**118 Underhill St., constructed by Rev. W.W. Blair, 1928-1929. Photographed in 
1986.**

While modest by contemporaneous white standards, the houses of High Point’s Griffin
Park contrasted strikingly with the surrounding dwellings populated by recent rural
immigrants fleeing tenancy (people from backgrounds similar to that of J.R.).

[[

**1939, photographs of neighborhoods surrounding Underhill St.**

**CREDIT COURTESY NORTH CAROLINA COLLECTION, UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT CHAPEL
HILL**

By 1940, these overcrowded slums were condemned, to be replaced by a housing project
financed in part by WPA money. Although J.R. contributed regularly to the Blair 
family’s income, he never shared in ownership of the Underhill house. He may have
considered himself fortunate to live there.

**The Pressing Club**
 It seems that J.R. often absented himself from home, spending
long hours at his pressing club. Betty Jackson told me that she rarely saw John 
Robert. Funeral director and family friend Walter Hoover described for C. O. Simpkins
the scene in J.R.’s pressing club, which was located next to Hoover’s funeral parlor
in 1934:

John [Robert]? …he’s just a fella, he just lived to, to his family, that’s about
all. He liked his bottle, but he didn’t take any active part in civic affairs, anything
like that, you know. Now, he [John William] took his music from his daddy. His daddy
was very musical. Played a uke. He played a violin. And I’m quite sure, that was
where John picked up his head for music, was from his father…and John [Robert] —
get him a drink…don’t care how much dry cleanin’ — well, along then, they didn’t
dry-clean; they’d put things in tubs and scrub ‘em—don’t care how much work he had
to do, he’d sit down there with that uke and—his favorite song was “[Sweetheart 
of] Sigma Chi.” …yeah, he liked takin’ a drink. He didn’t get out on the street,
though, when he was drinkin’, or anything like that.  (pause) He was a good businessman—
good business fellow. Everybody liked Coltrane.

[[

**Walter Hoover’s Funeral Home, ca. 1934. John Robert Coltrane’s Pressing Club would
have been around the back.**

Clearly, there was another reason why J.R. chose to stay away from the home of his
pastor father-in-law, who supported Prohibition. Hoover’s depiction suggests that
J.R. may have been more social and fun-loving than his wife Alice, but the hint 
of substance abuse should not be discounted. Of Alice Coltrane, Hoover had this 
to say: “John’s mother? Oh, she — just like an old shoe. She acted like she’s about
75 years old, when she was young — be so quiet, and all. ‘Long then, preacher’s 
children, and all, they, on account of their father, they didn’t take part in social
affairs.” While J.R. and Alice Coltrane certainly shared a love of music, one wonders
about their essential compatibility. Perhaps in very personal ways, their son John
William learned at an early age to navigate and reconcile disparate personalities.

According to John William Coltrane’s cousin and sometime Underhill resident “Cousin
Mary” Lyerly, who died recently at age 92, even when J.R. was at home he often closeted
himself in his upstairs bedroom, where he improvised at length: “He did it to entertain
himself within his own bedroom. I don’t think Uncle John ever brought his violin
or his ukulele outside of that bedroom.”

But John William Coltrane was listening, and said in 1961, “my father played the
violin very well.” Unfortunately, other than “The Sweetheart of Sigma Chi,” we know
nothing of his repertoire. Still, one has to wonder, why the violin? Growing up 
in the rural Piedmont of North Carolina, did J.R. hear or perform with country string
bands? Did he play blues on his instrument? Did he sing?

**Respectability**
 In segregationist High Point, it was impossible for any African
American to achieve economic parity with whites. The vast majority of Negroes were
systematically excluded from all but the most menial employment, and the handful
of professionals were paid less than their white counterparts. So the appearance
of middle class prosperity along Underhill Street was illusory: nearly all homeowners
required multiple incomes (whether from boarders or relatives) in order to meet 
mortgage payments. The Blairs were no exception; three families shared the house
at 118 Underhill.

A few years ago, an interviewer asked “Cousin Mary” whether her family had been 
well off during the 1930s. She replied, wryly, “We looked the part.” The Blair /
Coltrane family could “look the part” because they made their own clothing. Betty
Jackson, a frequent visitor to the Underhill home, recalls that Rev. Blair “was 
always well dressed” — no doubt in suits designed by his son-in-law. John Coltrane,
too, appears in his third-grade class photo better attired than his classmates, 
because he wore clothes sewn by his mother — a very good seamstress, according to
Mrs. Jackson.

Rev. Blair and his professional colleagues, who shared leadership responsibilities
for High Point’s African American community, were obliged to wear the mask of respectability
in interactions with white civic leaders. Deprived of the vote or any formal representation
on the town council, these men were politically powerless, and had to rely on persuasion
and reputation in their efforts to secure better schools and living conditions for
the rural immigrants flooding into High Point’s slums.

But in exchange for granting African Americans favors, white civic leaders expected
Negro leaders to be social exemplars, distinguishing themselves from the rural newcomers
in dress and behavior — in effect renouncing the culture of resistance their slave
ancestors had devised in order to survive. Thus, under the constant scrutiny of 
whites, aspiring African Americans brought their personal lives, schools and worship
services into conformity with white standards of respectability.

Newspaper accounts record that High Point’s Negro leaders typically approached the
town council with deference. But Rev. Blair did not — while observing the outward
forms of respectability, he dared to speak truth to power. According to Walter Hoover:

Reverend Blair was a powerhouse.  I’m tellin’ you, he was somethin’.  Yes, sir. 
The way other Negroes beat around the bush — you know, white folk — he didn’t. He’d
come right on out — spoke directly to the point. He’d tell ‘em what they wasn’t 
doin’ and how they was treatin’ the Negro, and all like that. Yeah, but the white
folks liked him, they all liked him.

Betty Jackson told me that Rev. Blair was Black High Point’s most outspoken leader
prior to the Civil Rights Movement.

**High Point’s Musical Milieu**
 Throughout most of his childhood, John Coltrane
regularly heard or performed the music of respectability. At the William Penn High
School auditorium, which served as a cultural hub for High Point’s African American
community, John often attended classical instrumental and choral concerts by local
and regional performers. At St. Stephen AME Zion Church, he listened to the choir
sing anthems, hymns, and oratorios in the British choral tradition; and occasionally,
during evening meetings — away from the gaze of whites — he caught a church-club
sponsored performance by a gospel quartet.

[[

Some members pose for a photo in the altar area of High Point’s St. Stephen AME 
Zion Church, with choir in the loft behind, ca. 1940.

CREDIT COURTESY BETTY JACKSON

During the 1930s, members of the Coltrane family’s social set waltzed to music provided
by string trios. It was not until 1940 that live swing music was introduced to High
Point, when small groups such as the Jumpettes performed for jitterbug dancers. 
Big bands almost never appeared in High Point, and only occasionally in nearby Greensboro
or Winston Salem — but, regardless, John was too young to attend.

Betty Jackson recalls that for children in her (and John Coltrane’s) social set,
some music was off-limits — blues performed in vaudeville tents, and the gospel 
singing of Pentecostal congregations:

They had minstrel shows [in tents] sometimes over on Hoover Street. My mother put
up some of the people in our house, but she wouldn’t let me talk to them. I guess
she thought they were a bad influence. And she just dared my sister and me to go
over there.  She said, “I dare you to go near there.” But I did get a look at Bessie
Smith, one time.

There were some [churches] we called holy churches. One down the street from us.
They would have tambourines, and whooping and hollering.  We never did go in, but
we’d look in the window. And of course they closed the windows. Didn’t want people
outside looking at them do all that buck dancing or whatever they did.

Yet, during the 1930s, a new music insinuated itself into Coltrane’s consciousness—
that of the Harlem Renaissance. In 1937, John Coltrane submitted to a school contest
a Negro History scrapbook, which reveals his keen interest in popular African American
musicians and dancers. Several of his inclusions — Marian Anderson, Paul Robeson,
Fletcher Henderson, the Nicholas Brothers, territory band singer Anna Ray Moore,
and the tenor Roland Hayes — came to his attention through radio broadcasts and 
films (which he watched from the colored balcony). This interest suggests that as
early as age 12, John Coltrane was aware of the power of popularly disseminated 
Black music to transform racial attitudes among the larger society.

**“My family was passionate about music”**
 John William Coltrane told an interviewer
in 1961: “My family was passionate about music.” The Blair / Coltrane family embraced
a more wide ranging musical taste than that of many of their High Point contemporaries.
J.R. appears to have favored secular material for his improvisations, while John’s
mother Alice sang hymns at home in a deep contralto voice, accompanying herself 
on the family’s newly acquired player piano. That piano today still contains a piano
roll of Beethoven’s “Moonlight” sonata. Coltrane’s Aunt Bettie Lyerly also sang,
and her daughter Mary performed interpretive solo dances both at May Day celebrations
and during church services.

In 1934, Rev. Blair wrote a review for the High Point Enterprise of an opera singer
who had performed at an AME Zion Annual Conference, thereby demonstrating his sophisticated
knowledge of opera. We also know that Rev. Blair regularly lined out hymns at Conferences,
and in church; John and Mary attended services at which their grandfather lined 
hymns before and after every sermon. And as district superintendent, Rev. Blair 
would have observed and participated in a variety of worship practices.

John William Coltrane’s stepdaughter Saeeda told me that when she was a girl growing
up in her grandmother’s home in Philadelphia, Alice Coltrane would scoop Saeeda 
up into her arms and moan spirituals; one might reasonably assume she did the same
with her son.

**Departing from the Path**
 Throughout his grade school years in High Point, and
under his mother’s watchful eye, John Coltrane trod the designated path toward respectability;
he graduated second in his class at Leonard Street [Elementary] School.

[[

**118 Underhill St., interior, looking from vestibule through built-in bookcases
forming a portal to the living room. To the left, through the arched doorway, is
the dining room where John Coltrane sat at the table, endlessly practicing the clarinet.**

But after the deaths of his maternal grandparents and father in 1938/1939, John’s
attitude toward formal education changed. At the outset of his teenage years, Coltrane
seems suddenly to have realized the futility of excelling at school when only low
wage jobs awaited him. At the expense of his schoolwork, John then threw himself
into mastering the clarinet.

Shortly after John turned 12, the family suffered three devastating financial blows.
One after the other, the primary breadwinners died: first Rev. Blair in Dec. 1938,
then J.R. Coltrane in Jan. 1939, and finally Goler Lyerly (“Cousin Mary’s” father)
in Oct. 1940. In the wake of these deaths, Alice and her sister Bettie desperately
tried to make ends meet — first taking jobs as maids at the white country club, 
then renting out rooms to boarders, and ultimately migrating to the North in search
of work, leaving John behind to finish school.

Now alone at home, without parental supervision, young John was free to depart from
the expected path in other ways. Coltrane’s childhood friend and classmate Franklin
Brower told Simpkins (disapprovingly) that during this time, Coltrane began to socialize
with a new set, attended parties where alcohol was present, and chased girls.

More importantly, around 1941, the teenaged Coltrane met and befriended 34-year-
old Charlie Haygood, who had recently moved to High Point from Catawba County where
he had worked as a farm laborer. Soon after arriving in town, Haygood opened a restaurant
in the Black business district of Washington Street (just a few blocks from Underhill),
where he played blues with a small group on weekends. Haygood lent Coltrane an alto
saxophone and invited him to perform with the group. Lawrence Graves, a year younger
than Coltrane, told me that he and other William Penn High School students walking
home from school would press their faces against the cafe window to watch and listen.
Graves said that on Friday and Saturday nights, patrons packed the house: “They 
were jammin’, boy.”

From the little I have learned of Haygood, it seems unlikely that Coltrane’s mother
and grandfather would have approved of this friendship. Haygood was short, stout,
had a wooden leg, operated an informal money-lending service on the side, and prior
to moving to High Point, he had been arrested and convicted for selling bootleg 
liquor in Catawba County. In later years, Haygood billed his band, “The Vibrators.”

But through Haygood, John Coltrane now tasted the forbidden fruit — and took his
first steps toward that grand synthesis of Western and non-Western, sacred and secular
musics that would ultimately form his mature work.

---

_David Tegnell moved from the Midwest to the South in 1983 to study Musicology at
the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He intends that his research complement
that of his friends and mentors, Drs. Lewis Porter and C. O. Simpkins. He currently
advises the High Point North Carolina Preservation Commission’s subcommittee on 
the restoration of Coltrane’s childhood home._

![John Coltrane at the Half Note in New York, 1965](https://i0.wp.com/www.wbgo.org/
sites/wbgo/files/styles/medium/public/201909/GettyImages-520816707.jpg?w=640&ssl
=1)

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