My obligatory Coltrane comment. I actually didn't hear any Coltrane or even jazz at least a decade into seriously learning/practicing music. My first introduction to legato-based guitar playing was Allan Holdsworth, who used to play these beautiful monstrous never-ending buttery lines with luscious and unusual chords in harmony. I spent a while imitating that style of playing. Holdsworth had put some really great instructional material and in one interview he mentions how he never really wanted to play the guitar, but he couldn't really afford a saxophone to play like Coltrane.

It's kinda funny because Coltrane and Holdsworth are possibly at the opposite end of a spectrum when it comes to the way they approach harmony and rhythm, and while they play completely different instruments(one being a sax and the other being an electric guitar) their melodic lines through heavy legato use might as well be played by the same person.

I think I'll go listen to 'A Love Supreme' now, followed by Holdsworth's 'Secrets'.