John Coltrane

John Coltrane is a titan of avant-garde jazz, but the blues was central to his musical language, alongside bop, harmonic study, church music, and postwar jazz modernism. He cut his teeth in the R&B/jump-blues band of Eddie 'Cleanhead' Vinson. Even as he pushed jazz harmony to its absolute limits, his foundational masterpieces ('Blue Train,' 'Equinox,' 'Mr. P.C.') were fundamentally 12-bar minor blues.