John Coltrane: Ballads (Verve Essential) [VERVE]

Why you'll love it

This Verve Essential Vinyl Series pressing comes with the original artwork and is made in Germany. Ballads entered the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2008.

This edition

• Verve Essential Vinyl Series
• Original artwork
• Pressed in Germany
• Stereo mix

About the album

John Coltrane's classic quartet was famous for long, searching solos, so a whole album of quiet standards came as a gentle surprise. Recorded in December 1961 and 1962 with Rudy Van Gelder engineering, Ballads finds the group working through songs they had never played together before.

Critic Gene Lees wrote that they arrived with music-store sheet music, talked through each tune, wrote out the changes and semi-rehearsed for half an hour. Then they played, and every piece except "All Or Nothing At All" was done in one take. "Say It (Over And Over Again)," "You Don't Know What Love Is" and "Nancy (With The Laughing Face)" are pure, unhurried tenderness, with McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison and Elvin Jones at their most sympathetic, and Reggie Workman sits in on bass for "It's Easy To Remember."

It's the Coltrane record people reach for when they want quiet company, and the album he made with singer Johnny Hartman in 1963, with the same quartet, makes a natural companion. Half an hour's rehearsal, one take, job done; we've spent longer choosing the shop playlist.

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

Tracklist

Listen

On Impulse! / Verve (cat# A-32), a reissue of the 1963 album.