John Coltrane: Africa/Brass (Verve Acoustic Sounds Series) [VERVE]

Why you'll love it

This Verve Acoustic Sounds Series edition comes in a tip-on gatefold jacket. It was Coltrane's first album for Impulse!, and its French horns, euphonium and tuba gave his quartet a big-band roar unlike anything he'd recorded before.

This edition

• Verve Acoustic Sounds Series
• Tip-on gatefold jacket
• Stereo mix

About the album

New label, big entrance. Impulse! executive Creed Taylor bought out Coltrane's Atlantic contract in 1961, made him the fledgling label's first signing and gave him one of the richest deals a jazz musician had ever seen. Coltrane marked the move with a large-group record, cut over two sessions in May and June at Rudy Van Gelder's new studio in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, with the band swelling to twenty-one musicians.

He first approached Gil Evans about arrangements, then handed the job to Eric Dolphy and McCoy Tyner, who adapted Tyner's piano voicings for the orchestra. "Africa" fills a whole side, Elvin Jones and two basses driving a rolling, hypnotic pulse, while "Greensleeves" gets the same major-minor treatment as his earlier hit My Favorite Things. "Blues Minor" swings hard, with Booker Little, Freddie Hubbard and Dolphy among the players around him.

Later commentators called it a key work for understanding where Coltrane went in his final years, and Impulse! returned to the sessions for a second volume in 1974. Twenty-one musicians in one room at Van Gelder's must have made finding a chair rather competitive.

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

Tracklist

Listen

On Impulse! / Verve (cat# A-6), a reissue of the 1961 album.