A revolutionary jazz musician and composer whose playing style was described by critics as “sheets of sound”, John Coltrane died on July 17, 1967, at the age of 40.

During his 20-year career, Mr Coltrane rose to become one of the leading tenor sax of his day and the radical, experimental jazz style he adopted in his later music left a lasting impression on both mainstream and avant-garde jazz.

From his Christian roots, he developed an interest in world religions including Hinduism, Islam and Buddhism, crediting a spiritual awakening which helped him to beat his drug and alcohol problems and produce music to uplift his audience, saying: “I would like to bring to people something like happiness.”

In San Francisco , the Saint John Coltrane African Orthodox Church, declared John Coltrane to be a saint in 1971 and use his song lyrics as prayers in their services.

Born in Hamlet in North Carolina on September 23, 1926, John William Coltrane saw his close-knit family disintegrate following the death of his father and uncle in his early teens and took up playing the clarinet and then the alto saxophone in high school as he discovered jazz music through radio, film and on jukeboxes.

In 1945 he spent a year in the Navy where he played and recorded bebop as part of a Hawaii-based band.

Once discharged, he started playing around Philadelphia with the likes of Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson and Jimmy Heath before joining Dizzy Gillespie’s big band as an alto sax and later as a tenor sax and with whom he made his first recording in 1949.

During the early 1950s, Coltrane – or Trane as he was nicknamed – played in bands with Earl Bostic and one of his early idols Johnny Hodges but, despite his love for his music, he began to develop a taste for alcohol and heroin, which forced him out of Hodges’ band.

But Mr Coltrane then got a call from trumpeter Miles Davis in 1955, asking him to play tenor sax in his quintet, where he stayed until 1957 when he took time out to overcome his drug and alcohol demons. A spiritual epiphany led him to focus intensively on his music, practicing for hours each day to eventually become the leading tenor jazz sax of his time.

After a brief stint in 1957 with Thelonious Monk’s quartet, he rejoined Miles Davis until 1960 when he then felt ready to make the move from sax player to bandleader. He hired sidemen McCoy Tyner and Elvin Jones, with Jimmy Garrison in 1961 and the quartet went on to enjoy an international following going on to produce one of his most successful albums My Favourite Things.

He began to throw off the shackles of traditional jazz, experimenting and improvising more with his music in albums such as his Grammy-nominated A Love Supreme in 1965 but as he kept pushing the boundaries, he alienated many fans and caused tensions with the band until it split in early 1966.

His personal life was also in crisis after he split from his wife of eight years Naima and started seeing Alice McLeod, with whom he went on to have three children, John, Ravi and Oran .

He continued to perform and to record, producing albums including Kulu Se Mama and Mediations in 1966 and approved the release of Expression a few days before his sudden death of liver cancer.

Mr Coltrane’s music and reputation has far outlived him, with several albums released during the remainder of the 1960s and the 1970s and a number of posthumous Grammy-nominations for The Coltrane Legacy in 1970, the song Giant Steps From Alternate Takes in 1974 and Afro Blue Impressions in 1977.

He also won a Grammy for Best Jazz Soloist for Bye Bye Blackbird in 1981 and received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1992, marking the 25th anniversary of his death.

His music is still used in films and television shows today and has featured in the likes of ER, The Cosby Show, NYPD Blue and Days Of Our Lives.

Keen to help talented younger musicians during his lifetime, his family set up the John Coltrane Foundation after his death to offer scholarships for the jazz stars of the future.