AllMovie

John Coltrane: Trane Tracks is a Brit-produced documentary covering the life of the musician of the title. Coltrane himself needs little introduction, given his virtual invention of hard bop with the breakthrough albums Blue Train (1957), Giant Steps (1959), Coltrane Plays the Blues (1960), and My Favorite Things (1960) among dozens and dozens of others. Within a remarkably brief span, Coltrane became - along with Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, and Dizzy Gillespie - one of the founding fathers not simply of bop but of the jazz idiom per se. This eighty-minute program draws upon extensive performance and archival footage, and countless interviews with those who call Coltrane a lasting mentor - from McCoy Tyner to Elvin Jones - to provide a dramatic overview of the jazz giant's life and legacy, some four decades after his passing.