Young Coltrane stayed in North Carolina with relatives. By his senior year, he had learned to play a borrowed alto saxophone and was getting recognition from his classmates and even the locals. Work was hard to find in most of the Southern states in 1943, so when John Coltrane graduated he and two friends decided to move to Philadelphia, where one of the friends' brothers already lived.

Coltrane would live in Philadelphia off and on until about 1957. His decision

He returned to Philadelphia in 1946 after being discharged. At this point in his life Coltrane was totally committed to becoming a professional musician. Coltrane worked a variety of jobs through the late forties until in 1947 he joined Eddie Vinson's jazz band, switching reluctantly to play the tenor sax to do so. The group toured extensively, particularly in the South and southwest. It?s at this point that he started to drink excessively to top off his already heavy smoking habit. A short while after that he joined many other jazz musicians with his new addiction to heroin. After playing for two years with Dizzy Gillespie, he moved with his mother, cousin, and some friends to Strawberry Mansions which was on Philadelphia's northwest side which overlooked Fairmont Park. It?s at this time he enrolled at Granoff School of Music for further training on the tenor sax. He was dropped from Johnny Hodges' band when heroin began interfering with his music. Nineteen fifty five proved to be a big year for Coltrane. He picked up his nickname, "Trane," and married his wife Naima.

to migrate north was a common one, and Coltrane did indeed find work as a laborer in a sugar-refining factory. A couple of months later he enrolled in the Ornstein School of Music on 19th and Spruce Streets. In Philadelphia John Coltrane could hear a lot of the blues and jazz which weren't often broadcast in the South further extending his experience and horizons. He continued to

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