John Coltrane, artwork by Michael Symonds
John Coltrane was the most influential saxophonist to follow Charlie Parker. His work in the late 1950s served as a model for most aspiring (as well as many established) hard-bop tenorists. The up-tempo blues Blue Train, appearing on the only album Coltrane recorded for Blue Note, epitomizes the tenorists fully developed, pre-modal hard-bop approach. It displays his great intensity and features the dizzying scalar passages that came to be called sheets of sound. In their own improvisations, Coltranes stellar colleagues illustrate their instruments' roles in the hard-bop style.