There's no shortage of John Coltrane biographies on the market, so Ben Ratliff makes clear that his book will focus not on the man, but on his sound. That wasn't just a marketing decision, however. The truth is that Coltrane didn't live all that interesting of a life — a nasty heroin habit aside, he spent far too much time in the woodshed to have done anything memorable that didn't also involve his horn.

The enthralling story of how Coltrane went from being an anonymous tenor to a revolutionary titan transcends mere biography. The man was relentless in his single-minded dedication and innovation. A tune like "Giant Steps," for example, has a harmonic complexity that became a foundation of jazz pedagogy almost as soon he recorded it. And yet, after his "sheets of sound" phase as a sideman to Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk in the late '50s, Coltrane moved away from his rigorous study of theory and harmony. To the dismay of many traditionalists, his new sound turned away from technique and toward a more raw, emotional, and expressive spirituality.

While the story of Coltrane's groundbreaking transition has been told before — though Ratliff probably tells it best — the retelling encompasses only the first half of the book. The rest of the account deals with the inevitable repercussions of this rebellion. Coltrane's body of work transformed the jazz world and music as a whole — both before his premature death in 1967 and long after. At its core, The Story of a Sound is about how Coltrane's musical evolution reflected the maturation of jazz itself. Just as there's a Coltrane album for everyone, from Blue Train to Ascension , there are many rooms in the house of jazz, which he did as much as anyone to build.

-Chris Parris-Lamb