the last book I ever read (3 Shades of Blue: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, and the Lost Empire of Cool, excerpt two)

from 3 Shades of Blue: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, and the Lost Empire of Cool by James Kaplan:

There is a photograph of a young John Coltrane watching Charlie Parker solo. The date is Sunday, December 7, 1947, six years to the day after Pearl Harbor; the place is the Elate Club Ballroom on South Broad Street in Coltrane’s hometown, Philadelphia. The occasion is a benefit concert “for little Mary Etta Jordan, who is 6 years old and lost both her legs in a recent trolley accident.” Some three thousand people are in attendance.

Coltrane, who is sitting on the bandstand as a member of the saxophonist Jimmy Heath’s orchestra, turned twenty-one that September. At first glance it’s hard to see what he’s doing or looking at. But zooming in on the image shows that the young saxophonist, laying out while the great man plays, has a lighted cigarette in his hand, and is staring at Bird so intently that it seems as though the cigarette might burn his fingers any second.