10/16/2026
Musical and creative genius John Coltrane was born one hundred years ago, on September 23, 2026, departing his body in 1967, when podcast host Jon Katz was four years old.
Criminal defense lawyers and all trial lawyers can learn great lessons from Coltrane, including not to throw in the towel merely because your early efforts do not perform without a hitch, to hear even between the lines and to recognize the multitude of life possibilities that surround us, to remain true to our music and clients and to know that corner cutting is not an option, to integrate our work into our beings rather than seeking a work-life balance that separates the two, and to recognize that great improvisational jazz music is like great in-the-moment trial performance, that integrates persuasive storytelling, scene setting, role playing and reverse role playing.
John Coltrane got hooked on he**in by the 1950's. Additional great jazz musicians who got caught up in drug abuse included Charlie Parker (Bird), Fats Navarro, Bill Evans, and Herbie Hancock. Trane emerged from that dangerous path in 1957, and his 1964 writing for his essential A Love Supreme album underlines the importance of 1957 as a major life turning point for him. Herbie Hancock's autobiography acknowledges his serious mistake in trying crack, which he recognized with his first puff, and then he had to work to break free of that mistake.
Jon Katz met John Coltrane scholar Lewis Porter when Porter taught music and led the bands at Tufts University. Porter found and has played for musicians a recording of Trane from the 1940's, when nothing in that recording foretold the stratospheric musical breakthroughs Trane would make. Trane later said he did not see what Miles Davis saw in him to add him to his band. Miles had a great ability to sense talent, as did Dizzy Gillespie, who at one point added Trane to his own band. Porter references this as talent radar as big ears.
Great cross examination practitioner and teacher -- and criminal defense lawyer -- Larry Pozner underlines that winning cross examination can be taught to lawyers. Maybe that is not as true in teaching musicians, but Trane's example shows that one does not need to begin as a prodigy to jump by quantum leaps later on.
Why are women among a small minority of instrumental jazz musicians recognized as among the best? Professor Porter discusses that in this interview.
Did some jazz greats avoid performing in the segregated South? Miles Davis would not play there. Trane grew up in North Carolina, but apparently avoided performing in the South other than a New Orleans performance as at least one exception.
Two months after the September 1963 bombing murder of three teenage women and one eleven year old girl at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, Coltrane recorded "Alabama" with his group. Lewis Porter thinks that this instrumental piece's rhythm overlaps with Martin Luther King, Jr.'s sermon after this murder.
Twenty years after starting the project, Lewis Porter published the essential Trane read John Coltrane- His Life and Music. (finally being released this year in E-book format as well.) He has also written books on Lester Young (Prez) and David Liebman, He posts weekly and in depth with some great articles and sounds, on jazz on his Substack Playback with Lewis Porter page.
John Coltrane had his own apt knack for adding great talent to his band, most importantly piano superhuman McCoy Tyner. As Trane's music became more avant garde, McCoy Tyner and Elvin Jones moved on. Trane would not sit still nor rest on his laurels, and was convinced he was in the right musical direction, and he probably was.
With all the great music with which Trane blessed us despite his early passing at forty years old, imagine what his musical legacy would have been had he lived longer. This summonses that great scene from Walk the Line, where a music producer urges Johnny Cash to create a song that he would perform if that was his last day on this earth. That is the best way to live, to defend in court, and to create.
“There is never any end…there are always new sounds to imagine, new feelings to get at. And always there is the need to keep purifying these feelings and sounds so that we can really see what we've discovered in its pure state. So that we can see more and more clearly what we are . . . we have to keep on cleaning the mirror.”
Deeply thanking and bowing to John William Coltrane, September 23, 1926, to July 17, 1967.
