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Life Magazine
OUR TIMES
On a recent Sunday in an impoverished San Francisco neighborhood, a multiethnic crowd of about 70 streams into a little storefront church. Inside, above the altar, are three icons, Jesus, the Virgin Mary-and Saint John Coltrane of Hamlet, N.C. (North Carolina, USA), holding a saxophone.
St. John's parish was founded in 1971 by a 27 year old sax playing hairdresser named Franzo King. Raised in the Pentecostal tradition, King had lost his faith in formal religion during the '60's. But Coltrane's avant-garde jazz steered him back. "I started seeing John as more than the heavyweight champion of the sax. His music was full fo the Holy Ghost, and it awakened something in me.
Coltrane's music has a similar effect on King's flock. Bishop King (he was anointed by the African Orthodox Church) employs a traditional liturgy, but the essences of the service is carried by music. A half dozen musicians-two saxophones, piano, conga drums, bass and tambourine-are placed throughout the crowd, and Coltrane's angular, hypnotic melodies seem to rise like prayers from the congregation itself.
If it seems odd that jazz, the music of smoky dives, should have so mystical an effect, consider the patron saint himself. Addicted to heroin, Coltrane quit cold trukey in 1957 and evolved into a self-disciplined, intensely spiritual man by the time he died in 1967 at 40. To the parishioners who come to this drug-ridden neighborhood to worship, he's a symbol of redemption. "John is a saint who went to hell and then came back with the keys," says Sister Mary Deborah, who helps run a free-meal program for the homeless. "Actually," adds Bishop King, "I've become quite a moderate concerning Coltrane. When somebody asks me, `When did John Coltrane become a saint?' I say, `When we demoted him from God.'"
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