John Coltrane, US Navy enlistment photo. 1945.

Coltrane, born in 1926, is 18 years old in the photo. From the Tumblr of Jazz at Lincoln Center …

In 1945 John Coltrane, at the age of 18, entered the Navy as a “volunteer apprentice seaman” and a year later made his first recording with a Navy band called the “Melody Masters.”