John Coltrane Trivia
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50 free John Coltrane trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
John Coltrane trivia covers the saxophonist who went from a Navy swing band in Hawaii to sainthood in a San Francisco church in the space of a 40-year life. He was Miles Davis's tenor player on Kind of Blue, wrote the hardest chord changes in jazz on Giant Steps, made the soprano saxophone fashionable again with My Favorite Things, and recorded A Love Supreme in a single evening in December 1964. This quiz follows the whole arc: North Carolina and Philadelphia, hearing Charlie Parker for the first time, the Miles Davis quintets and the Monk quartet at the Five Spot, Blue Train, the Atlantic years and the Coltrane changes, the Classic Quartet of Tyner, Garrison and Jones, the poem hidden in 'Psalm', Ascension and the free-jazz turn, Alice Coltrane and the second quartet, the album lost when Impulse! wiped the tape, and the posthumous honours from a Grammy to a special Pulitzer. Easy questions suit anyone who owns A Love Supreme; the expert tier is for the sessionography obsessives. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on Coltrane and his albums, and the supporting sentence is attached to each question.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which North Carolina town was John Coltrane born in 1926?
Hamlet
Hamlet. It was home for only a few months: Coltrane said his family moved to a larger town in the state while he was a baby, and he spent the next 17 years there.
Q 02Which elder statesman of jazz recorded an album with Coltrane in 1962, each man bringing his own bassist and drummer?
Duke Ellington
Duke Ellington. Coltrane, 27 years younger, called the date an honour and wished he could redo every number, then conceded that second tries would have cost the spontaneity.
Q 03Coltrane said that hearing which saxophonist for the first time 'hit me right between the eyes'?
Charlie Parker
Charlie Parker. Coltrane said that on alto his playing had been 'strictly a Bird thing', and that only taking up the tenor freed him from that one overwhelming influence.
Q 04Coltrane joined the US Navy on 6 August 1945, the day of which wartime event?
The atomic bombing of Hiroshima
The atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Japan surrendered within days, so Coltrane never saw combat: he was shipped to Hawaii anyway and spent his year of service playing in a Navy band.
Q 05Coltrane got his big break in 1955 by replacing which tenor saxophonist in a trumpeter's new quintet?
Sonny Rollins
Sonny Rollins. The swap later ran the other way: when Coltrane was dropped from the band in 1957, Rollins took the tenor chair back, and the two men recorded together only once.
Q 06Which trumpeter's big band did Coltrane join in 1949, going on to solo on the leader's 1951 record 'We Love to Boogie'?
Dizzy Gillespie
Dizzy Gillespie. Coltrane stayed on when the big band shrank to a sextet, and that brief solo was the only one the record-buying public could hear from him until 1955.
Q 07Which trumpeter hired Coltrane in 1955 for the band later called the 'First Great Quintet'?
Miles Davis
Miles Davis. To finish his Prestige contract before moving to Columbia, he had the quintet tape four albums in two marathon sessions in 1956: Cookin', Relaxin', Workin' and Steamin'.
Q 08Why did Coltrane lose his place in the 'First Great Quintet' in spring 1957?
His heroin addiction
His heroin addiction. The bandleader ran out of patience and fired him that April; Coltrane quit cold turkey and was back in the band within a year.
Q 09At which New York club did Coltrane play in Thelonious Monk's quartet in 1957?
The Five Spot Café
The Five Spot Café. Monk opened there with his cabaret card just restored, after years without the permit he needed to work in New York clubs, and Coltrane said he learned from him 'in every way'.
Q 10The 1958 album with 'Moment's Notice' and 'Lazy Bird' was Coltrane's only date as leader for which label?
Blue Note
Blue Note. Asked in 1960 which of his own records he liked best, Coltrane picked this one, Blue Train, saying it had 'such a good band'.
Q 11Critic Ira Gitler coined which phrase in 1958 for Coltrane's dense, rapid-fire runs of notes?
Sheets of sound
Sheets of sound. Coltrane told Gitler that year that the style was 'not a thing of beauty' yet, and that he would drop it if he could not make it one.
Q 12Coltrane played on which landmark 1959 album by his trumpeter boss?
Kind of Blue
Kind of Blue. The leader called almost no rehearsal and brought only sketches of scales and melodies to the studio, so the sextet was improvising on music it had barely seen.
Q 13Giant Steps (1960) was Coltrane's first album for which label?
Atlantic
Atlantic. His bandleader's business manager negotiated the contract, which guaranteed Coltrane $7,000 a year, and he opened his account with an album made up entirely of his own tunes.
Q 21Which bassist replaced Reggie Workman in 1962 to complete the Classic Quartet?
Jimmy Garrison
Jimmy Garrison. He was the last of the classic quartet to leave: he stayed on when the pianist and drummer quit in 1965 and 1966, and he was back on bass for Coltrane's final recordings in 1967.
Q 22Which label did Coltrane join in 1961, staying until his death?
Impulse! Records
Impulse! Records, where Coltrane was one of the earliest signings and soon the biggest star: the young label came to be called 'the house that Trane built'.
Q 23Which multi-instrumentalist joined Coltrane in 1961 and drew a DownBeat charge of 'anti-jazz'?
Eric Dolphy
Q 14The 'Coltrane changes' are noted for root movement by which unusual interval?
Major thirds
Major thirds. The pattern hops between three keys a major third apart, splitting the octave into equal parts, where most jazz tunes of the day moved by fifths.
Q 15The Giant Steps ballad 'Naima' is named after whom?
His wife at the time
His wife at the time, Juanita Naima Grubbs, a Muslim convert who shaped his spiritual outlook. He kept the ballad in his repertoire for the rest of his life, long after they had separated.
Q 16Roger McGuinn borrowed a phrase from Coltrane's 'India' on twelve-string guitar for which 1966 Byrds single?
Eight Miles High
Eight Miles High. McGuinn has called the song a tribute to Coltrane: a tape of two of his albums was almost the only music on the Byrds' tour bus, and its sound soaked in.
Q 17On the 1961 album My Favorite Things, record buyers first heard Coltrane on which instrument?
Soprano saxophone
Soprano saxophone, a horn that had become a rarity in jazz by the 1950s. Coltrane wrote that he bought one in February 1960 and found its high notes 'sort of puny' at first.
Q 18The title track of Coltrane's My Favorite Things comes from which Broadway show?
The Sound of Music
The Sound of Music. Coltrane turned the cheerful show tune into a hypnotic modal waltz, and the unlikely makeover became a radio hit and a commercial success.
Q 19Who played piano in Coltrane's Classic Quartet?
McCoy Tyner
McCoy Tyner. When he joined Benny Golson's Jazztet he warned them he would leave as soon as Coltrane had a band of his own, and within months he did.
Q 20Who was the drummer in the Classic Quartet?
Elvin Jones
Elvin Jones. On stage the pianist and bassist would often drop out and leave him and Coltrane to go at it as a duo, sometimes at great length.
Eric Dolphy. A DownBeat critic coined the charge in November 1961 after hearing the two in Hollywood; months later the magazine let them answer, and they asked what 'anti-jazz' even meant.
Q 24Coltrane said he had listened closely to John Gilmore, longtime tenor saxophonist with which bandleader, before his 1961 Village Vanguard recordings?
Sun Ra
Sun Ra. Gilmore spent four decades in his Arkestra and never became a star, yet Coltrane credited him as a direct influence on the fierce 15-minute blues he cut at the Vanguard.
Q 25With which baritone singer did Coltrane record a celebrated 1963 album of ballads?
Johnny Hartman
Johnny Hartman. He doubted he was a jazz singer and had to be coaxed into the date; Coltrane said he picked him because he was 'a fine singer, and I wanted him to make a comeback'.
Q 26Late in 'Acknowledgement', Coltrane stops playing to do what?
Chant
Chant: after working the four-note bass motif through key after key on tenor, he sings the words 'a love supreme' to it, his voice overdubbed in layers.
Q 27How did Coltrane's quartet record the album A Love Supreme?
In one session
In one session, on 9 December 1964. Coltrane came back the next day with a second saxophonist and bassist to try the opening again, but the album used only the quartet takes.
Q 28In 'Psalm', the final part of A Love Supreme, what is Coltrane's saxophone doing?
Reciting a poem, note by syllable
Reciting a poem, note by syllable: the tenor line follows, almost exactly, the words of the prayer Coltrane printed in the liner notes, though he never speaks a line of it.
Q 29For decades the only known live A Love Supreme came from a 1965 festival in which country?
France
France. The quartet played the suite at the Antibes festival in July 1965; a second tape, made by a local saxophonist at a Seattle club that October, stayed in private hands until 2021.
Q 30Which rock guitarist joined John McLaughlin to record Coltrane's 'A Love Supreme' on the 1973 album Love Devotion Surrender?
Carlos Santana
Carlos Santana. He and McLaughlin shared a guru, Sri Chinmoy, and made the album as a tribute to Coltrane, opening it with the suite's first part as a duel of electric guitars.