A HOUSE SUPREME (via Glenn Dryfoos):

Trane Fair Home: John Coltrane's house on Long Island rescued for history (Larry Blumenfeld, Village Voice)

Folks packing Huntington, Long Island's Town Hall one late April evening were there to sing praise to John Coltrane. One woman actually did sing a reworked version of Louis Armstrong's "What a Wonderful World." But most spoke softly to the five-member town council, supporting an effort to preserve the 2,500-square-foot brick ranch house on Candlewood Lane in Dix Hills, just south of the Long Island Expressway, that was Coltrane's final home.

Coltrane lived there for three years, until his 1967 death. In 1964, in a dormered upstairs room, he composed A Love Supreme, a recording as famous for its spiritual heft as for its enduring appeal.

A local developer had planned to remove the house, now condemned, and to subdivide the two-acre property for resale. Enter Dix Hills resident Steve Fulgoni, the recently elected head of his local historical society and an avid jazz fan. Fulgoni learned from a biography that Coltrane had lived in the town. Then he came across an Internet article making specific reference to the house. "I discovered that it was only weeks away from being torn down," he says.

Fulgoni set up a website (dixhills.com), and put the word out.

Landmark? It should be a shrine.

Posted by Orrin Judd at June 13, 2004 6:02 PM