er with mild interest. It was only after he heard the
             great alto saxophonist Johnny Hodges playing with the Duke Ellington band
             on the radio, that he became passionate about music. He dropped the clarinet
             and took up the alto saxophone, soon becoming very accomplished. When
             Coltrane was thirteen, he experienced several tragedies that would leave a
             lasting impression on him and would have a great impact on the music of his
             later years. Within a year, his father, his uncle, and his minister all died. He
             lost every important male influence in his life. 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. For a
             year, Coltrane attended Ornstein School of Music. Then 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. "With all those years of
             constant practice in High Point behind him, possessing a powerful inner
             strength from being raised in a deeply religious family, and with a foundation
             in musical theory and an innate curiosity about life, Coltrane was well
             prepared to seriously enter a battle." In the late nineteen forties, Coltrane
             began playing with several different R&B groups in small bars and clubs
             around Philadelphia. It became a tradition in many of the clubs at this time for
             musicians to "walk the bar" (i.e. to walk on top of...