Help me understand John Coltrane .... seriously.

Agree with "My Favorite Things" and "Naima." Both are available on Atlantic's "Best of John Coltrane" album. Especially love "My Favorite Things."

One of the first albums I ever bought, way back in the early 70s.

Turned me into a music lover.

I know how your feel, I experienced the same thing when getting into Jazz . So what I did was listen to some of his recordings that I knew the melody and then listened to Johns version. Although he is pretty much all over the map when he plays and how he interprets the song, one can still appreciate the way he does it. What really got me into John was listening to Miles Davis  Kind of Blue- a very basic Jazz lp that everyone, at any level of Jazz can listen to and get into.. I never get tired of listening to that album!
 Happy listening!!

I studied tenor sax from Grades 4 through 12 and my music teacher was a retired jazz musician.  Coltrane is what is known as a "progressive" jazz players.  Progressives use a lot of atonality, which can sound like they're playing the wrong notes, and they also don't strictly observe things like rhythm and meter.  Coltrane got more progressive as the years went on. I used to imitate him by. just hitting sax keys at random, which my bandmates thought was pretty funny. I much prefer "traditional" jazz players who are more melodic like Stan Getz on tenor, Paul Desmond on alto and Gerry Mulligan on baritone.  But if you're still interested in exploring Coltrane, he did an album with Duke Ellington - quartet of piano, sax, bass and drums -- which is about as accessible as Coltrane gets.  

"...I feel, strongly, that what we think of as just who WE are is learned."

John Erik Locke! Tabula rasa auditoria.