“I wasn’t really that impressed!” King says. At that time, in gratitude, I humbly asked to be given the means and privilege to make others happy through music.” In those years, Coltrane was addicted to heroin and - so the legend goes - while experiencing withdrawals heard the voice of God and got clean, rededicating his life to music. “All Praise be to God to whom all praise is due,” Coltrane begins, and then tells a story: “During the year 1957,” he writes, “I experienced, by the grace of God, a spiritual awakening which was to lead me to a richer, fuller, more productive life. One day, someone brought Coltrane’s 1965 record “ A Love Supreme,” and King looked at the liner notes, which Coltrane wrote himself. We’d put the music on and start testing our ears and our knowledge,” seeing if they could name the drummer or the piano player on a track without looking at the record sleeve. (Their daughter, 57, also joined.) “Maybe less than a dozen brothers and sisters would come together every week. King, now 77, says on a recent Zoom call with his wife, 75, from their home in San Francisco’s Bayview-Hunters Point. Chaplain Wanika Stephens, Archpriest, M.A., is also a pastor there.) The church began around 1964, as the Jazz Club in the couple’s garage - “a listening clinic,” F.W. Supreme Mother Marina King, before they possessed such lofty titles.

It was founded in 1969 by His Eminence Archbishop Franzo W. THE SAINT JOHN Coltrane Church in San Francisco - a branch of the African Orthodox Church, where the jazz musician John Coltrane is the canonized patron saint - is a family affair.

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