Kevin Whitehead

Alice McLeod started out playing piano in church as a girl in Detroit, but became famous as harpist Alice Coltrane, wife and widow of saxophonist John.

From the first, there could be something oddly harp-like about Alice's swirly, sweeping piano moves, a tendency that grew more pronounced when she joined her husband's band in 1966.

John Coltrane was fascinated by the shimmering, angelic sound of the harp and had ordered one built for Alice, which arrived only after his untimely death in 1967, as if harp was his bequest, a directive on how to proceed.

Alice Coltrane took to it right away, pursuing orchestral ideas she and John had discussed.

Back then, she took a lot of criticism, especially after overdubbing a string section onto a couple of John's unreleased recordings.

When her music resembled his, folks said it fell short.

When she then went her own way, they didn't know what to think.

This is from 1971's Universal Consciousness.

Andy Beda's good new bio, Cosmic Music, The Life, Art, and Transcendence of Alice Coltrane, traces her musical life from early Detroit days through her years with John Coltrane and her wild 70s recordings featuring harp, strings, and her dynamic work on electric organ, where she might hold notes like a saxophonist.

Then came her long last act.

By the late 1970s, Alice Coltrane withdrew from public music making, having become a Hindu mystic.

In the 80s, she founded a California ashram where she was known as Swamini Teriya Sangeeta Nanda.

Her musical focus was now on devotional chants.

After she died in 2007, a familiar story played out.

Her records, once dismissed as crazy, got rediscovered and reappraised.

I was asleep on her jaw-dropping 70s stuff myself.

For better or worse, she helped inspire a recent spiritual jazz revival with two Coltrane's as patron saints.

Alice Coltrane came out of her husband's shadow by shining her own bright light.

Her music's still out there in every sense.

Before they played Chicago's Plugged Nickel with Miles Davis in 1965, drummer Tony Williams famously challenged his fellow sidemen to play anti-music on the gig, the opposite of what a listener or even the other players might expect.