Alice Coltrane: Ptah, the El Daoud (Verve By Request Series) [VERVE]

Why you'll love it

This Verve By Request reissue comes in a gatefold jacket, mastered at Sterling Sound. AllMusic calls it a truly great album, and Pitchfork singles out "Turiya & Ramakrishna" for some of her greatest piano playing on record.

This edition

• Verve By Request Series
• Gatefold jacket
• Mastered at Sterling Sound

About the album

Ptah, the El Daoud was recorded in a single session on January 26, 1970, in the basement of Alice Coltrane's home in Dix Hills, New York. It was her third album as a leader and the first to bring horn players fully into her world: Pharoah Sanders and Joe Henderson on tenor saxophones and alto flutes, with Ed Michel producing for Impulse!.

Coltrane wrote everything. The title track honours the Egyptian god Ptah ("El Daoud" means "the beloved"), and it opens with a purifying blast before settling into a deep, swinging groove. "Turiya & Ramakrishna" is a slow, bluesy piano meditation, "Blue Nile" finds her switching to harp while both saxophonists pick up flutes, and "Mantra" closes with tumbling piano and long ribbons of tenor. Sanders sits in the right channel and Henderson in the left throughout; Coltrane described Henderson as more intellectual and Sanders as more transcendental.

JazzIz named it one of five essential albums of 1970, and it's become a cornerstone of spiritual jazz. The stereo split also settles the age-old question of who gets which speaker, which is more than most households manage.

Also at Kops: more Alice Coltrane on vinyl · browse Classic Jazz

Tracklist

Listen

On Impulse! / Verve (cat# B0036051-01), a reissue of the 1970 album.