Coltrane's hometown
Coltrane was born in my home town here. There is a Historical marker on Hwy. 74 just one block from where he was born. The building still stands.
I visited your home town, and this site, a while back (late '90s). You're in Hamlet, a sleepy town that must have had a river run through it or something, just to get it to sprout into being. Please dont take offense - it's the kind of town I wish I grew up in. Towns like your's are throughout the Midwest, too: old 1 and 2 story buildings comprised of former storefronts that most likely had some great stories to tell... they're the America you see in panned still-shots of Ken Burns' documentaries.
Coltrane's birthplace is a building that's now an NAACP space, right? I recall an historical marker being there. If I ever win the lotto, they've got my dough to turn the whole block into a Coltrane museum.
Later in his life, his mom moved to nearby High Point. He brought Miles Davis and others to her house when they needed to take a break from touring. I visited this town twice a year for a home furnishings trade show in the 1990's. The only thing that kept me sane during those two-week periods of sales bullshit was the fact that Coltrane used to live there.
I was reminded of that fact every morning by the installation of another historical marker for Coltrane - this one's in an insulting location (IMHO) a block or so from Main Street. It's in the median of a little connector road just before a traffic light. Every time I looked at it, I made a pledge (unfullfilled to this day) to plant flowers around the posting, just to get people to look at it. I took solice thinking that maybe this exact location was where his mom's house was located...
When that marker was put in place, I heard an NPR broadcast (about 10 years ago) They spoke of Coltrane being from this little town that's now the furniture capital of the world. But the point of the story was that nobody they interviewed in High Point had ever heard of him.
They say the fruit doesn't fall far from the tree - but Coltrane rolled so far the tree forgot who he was.
I'm glad an AK'er like you, JIMFET, is there to represent - now get a regular listening session going on in that NAACP building he was born in and plant the seeds for this town to become the Coltrane mecca of the world. I envision an annual Sturgis-sized musical event, but with a race relation twist that's endorsed by the NAACP and attended by people from all over the world. Right there in the middle of North Carolina they will come... hippies, jazz freaks, big-city intellects and all sorts of musicians coming together in celebration of John Coltrane.
Why not?