John Coltrane: There Was No End To The Music

Rob Armstrong

Columnist since 2013

Rob enjoys bicycling, music, homebrewing and rooting for the Phils.

Recent articles (2 total)

Published: February 8, 2013

However, the best jazz "institution" of the era was the Woodbine Club, located at 12th and Master Streets, for it was here that jazz musicians would gather at 2AM when their gigs ended. During these sessions, says Pope, musicians learned new ideas and showed younger players techniques that would then be incorporated back into the repertoires and sounds coming out of Philly, all adding to the vibrancy of the institution in this most musical of cities.

Playing consistently, night after night, in clubs allowed Trane and others to develop their unique sound. By the time he left Philadelphia for New York in 1958, "all of the information he had acquired in Philadelphia gave him the opportunity to open up all his ideas and concepts," says Pope. This knowledge was based not just on touring regularly with Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, and other major jazz greats, but also in the uniqueness of the tight knit scene developing here and the way Trane would share his ideas with other musicians he knew and trusted in Philadelphia, gathering insight into his own methods in the process.

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