John Coltrane's "Practice Buddies," From Benny Golson to Pat DeRosa

(For my many previous posts with new information on Coltrane, see the index.)

Here’s something kind of endearing about John Coltrane (1926-1967) that has never been discussed: He liked to practice with another musician, usually a saxophonist. As I’ll show you, I can document this from the mid-1940s right through until his death. I’m not talking about jamming, which he would do, like all jazz musicians, with various combinations of friends, especially when there was a bassist and drummer present. I’m talking primarily about the repetitive exercises and patterns that all of us musicians have to work on in order to get better on our instruments. It’s easy to get bored while repeating scales and arpeggios and the like by oneself, and then one might start noodling around, or playing familiar songs, instead of challenging oneself to work harder. I would guess that Coltrane found that having a colleague along helped him to stay focused.

Let’s start in the mid-1940s. My book John Coltrane: His Life and Music (also available in French, Italian, Russian and Hungarian), published back in 1998 (paperback in 2000), is still the only one that documents the study routine of an individual musician. I devoted three entire chapters (3,5, and 7) to showing what he practiced, with musical notation. I reconstructed this by carefully poring over published interviews, and by conducting my own interviews with numerous people who knew him in his early years. I found that even friends who were not musicians often remembered what songs he played.

Much more of this kind of work remains to be done. There is material about the practice habits of Sonny Rollins in Aidan Levy’s book and in Ben Givan’s article (which I shared in a previous essay). And Paul Berliner, in his major study Thinking in Jazz, documented the learning habits of a group of 52 musicians, including Barry Harris, Kenny Barron, Lee Konitz, Gary Bartz, Wynton Marsalis, and Max Roach. But, before it’s too late, we need in-depth work on the individual formative years of each of these artists, and many more, including those who are deceased.

OK, back to Coltrane:

Saxophonist Benny Golson told me that beginning in 1945, he practiced with Coltrane on many occasions, “We’d practice all day, go out and eat a sandwich” (my book, p.45), and that they took turns playing chord progressions (“changes”) at the piano while the other learned them on the saxophone.

Jimmy Heath told me that he and Coltrane used to practice together between about 1947 and 1949, and Jimmy was nice enough to take out his saxophone and play some examples for me of things that they practiced, which I notated in my book (pp.63-68). Coltrane himself said of Heath, “We used to practice together, and he would write out some of the things we were interested in. We would take things from records and digest them.” (DownBeat, “Coltrane on Coltrane,” 1960.)

Coltrane was so intent on finding a practice partner that he would even approach saxophonists, Black and white, when he was on tour. When Coltrane was in Chicago, he would seek out Eddie Harris: “I was playing piano with Gene Ammons, and I switched to tenor about that time, around 1951. John and I would often practice together.” (Thomas, Chasin’ the Trane, pp.54-55.)

Bob Winn, a leading white saxophonist on the Seattle scene during the 1950s and ‘60s, told jazz historian Paul de Barros about his experience performing with trumpeter Conte Candoli at the Terrace club in St. Louis, Missouri in January 1954. Coltrane was with the Johnny Hodges group, which alternated sets with Candoli’s band. Coltrane sought out Winn after the gig and asked to read through parts together.

On occasion John practiced with other instruments: Trumpeter and composer Cal Massey practiced with him around 1957, according to McCoy Tyner in my book, p.105, and Coltrane: A Biography by Simpkins, p.36. Simpkins adds that during this time Massey’s cousin, trumpeter Bill Massey, as well as trumpeter Johnny Coles, and “a baritone player named Stewart” also used to come by John’s place, “going over different chord progressions” (pp.36, 59-60).

Around the Fall of 1958, when Wayne Shorter got out of the Army, he began visiting Coltrane and practicing with him: "I would play the piano and sometimes he might ask me to play anything, just the first thing that came to my fingers and he would actually match it, like go for matching or complementing anything I played. Even though it would be a tone cluster.” (My book, p.138.) Shorter gave Ethan Iverson some more details:

…He opened the [piano] lid and then he did like this, made a tone cluster, “GRRRRUNGGGH,” kept the foot on the sustain, “GRRRRUNGGHH,” and we had our horns out, and he asked me, he said, as the tone was still going, he said, “See how much of this [how many of these notes] you can catch. Let’s see how much you can catch.” And I heard the “GRRRRUNGHH” so I wasn’t messing around, trying to loop center tones and not so centered and all that stuff, and he asked me to do the same thing to him and I did “WRRRRRUNGH,” and he got his horn and he was all over the place, [mimes rapid playing] really soft because of neighbors and all that. He had a towel in the bell.

Eric Dolphy was clearly a significant practice partner over a number of years, starting perhaps as early as 1954 when Coltrane was in Los Angeles with Johnny Hodges, but more regularly beginning in 1960 when Dolphy was living at 245 Carlton Avenue in Brooklyn (for which he wrote the piece “245”), and Coltrane was living in Queens. Trombonist-composer Slide Hampton owned the house, and his other tenants included at times Freddie Hubbard, Wes Montgomery, bassist Larry Ridley, the painter known as Prophet, and—most notably—Coltrane’s cousin Mary, with whom he was raised and who was like a sister to him. (They were both “only children.”) She lived there with her partner of the time, trombonist Charles Greenlee. So there’s no doubt that Coltrane visited the house. During 1961 into early 1962, Dolphy performed and recorded with Coltrane, and they must have practiced together often. And it didn’t end there—there is a short private tape from about April 1963 of Coltrane and Dolphy practicing together. It sounds as though they turned the recorder on and off to hear themselves back trying out certain things. So this relationship continued.

Soon after, on July 6, 1964, Coltrane and Alice bought a house in Dix Hills, a hamlet within the Town of Huntington, Long Island, New York, about an hour’s drive from Manhattan. (They were not yet married because John and Naima were separated, but were not divorced until June 1965.) They moved in there probably that same month. Alice was pregnant with their first child and had heard from a friend that Huntington was a nice place to live. John W. Coltrane, Jr. was born on August 26, 1964. (Ravi and Oran were born later. As a teenager John Jr. was studying the bass, but he was tragically killed in an automobile accident in 1982.)

Having a house in the country was quiet and relaxing. But the downside of living in Huntington was that John was isolated from his musical community, almost all of whom lived in New York City. He wondered, who would he practice with? As a partial solution, he invited musicians, even some that he barely knew, to visit him at the house. In 1966, he asked George Braith, who plays two saxophones at once, to come out and show him how he played them—that day, there was some jamming as well, with Alice on piano (Simpkins, p.234). Saxophonist Gene Ghee spoke to him after John’s concert at the Village Theater on December 26, 1966. (The first set was the Ornette Coleman trio.) Without hesitation, Coltrane invited the young musician, whom he had only spoken to briefly on the phone once before, to drive out to Huntington. At the house, Coltrane wrote out the changes to “Giant Steps” for Ghee to play at the piano, while John soloed over it—on alto sax! Ghee tells the whole story here.

These occasional guest musicians helped. But he needed a regular practice partner, someone local who would be available all the time. So, believe it or not, the world-famous Coltrane went to the local music store, run by Frank Gambi, and asked if they knew anybody he could practice with. This shows you how important it was to Coltrane to have a “practice buddy.” Frank recommended saxophonist Patrick “Pat” DeRosa, brother of the well-known jazz educator Clem DeRosa. Frank got Pat on the phone and put him and John in touch. Soon, the two saxophonists were practicing regularly, when Coltrane wasn’t away on tour.

DeRosa brought his 1957 Selmer Mark VI tenor sax to Coltrane’s house, or sometimes John came to his place. By mid-1967, there was even a plan to feature John at an upcoming performance with Pat’s big band, the Long Island Sounds. Pat was honored to have become Coltrane’s practice partner, but he was to be his last one. John died on July 17, 1967, and Alice called to tell Pat that John had passed away..

Pat DeRosa (Dec. 6, 1921 - March 30, 2023) went on to have a very long career as a performer, and as a music educator in the Huntington school system. He was recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records as the “Oldest Professional Saxophone Player” at the age of 96. At 10:30 in the video on this page, celebrating his induction into the Long Island Hall of Fame, you can see and hear that he still played well at the age of 99! He gave his last performance at the age of 100 and died at 101.

The DeRosas continue to be a highly musical family. Pat’s daughter Patricia DeRosa Padden and her daughter Nicole are both performers, songwriters, and music educators with Masters degrees. Pat’s nephew, Clem’s son Rich DeRosa, is Director of Jazz Composition and Arranging at the University of North Texas. Rich is also an excellent drummer—I saw him with Gerry Mulligan’s big band in Nice in 1983.

And as you probably know, Coltrane’s last home is now on the National Register of Historic Places and, at this writing, is being prepared to be open to the public in 2026. Here is a news video about the house that features DeRosa, as well as Michele Coltrane (Alice’s daughter from a previous marriage to singer Kenny Hagood, and John’s stepdaughter):

And here’s to Pat DeRosa, last in the long line of Coltrane’s “practice buddies”!

All the best,
Lewis

P.S. Thank you to Patricia DeRosa Padden, Rich DeRosa, Pat Dorian, and Gene Ghee for help with this essay.