John Coltrane: Coltrane [CRAFT RECORDINGS]

Why you'll love it

Kevin Gray cut this all-analog edition from the original master tapes at Cohearent Audio, and RTI pressed it on 180g vinyl in a tip-on jacket with an obi. It documents Coltrane's very first session as sole bandleader.

This edition

• All-analog mastering from the original master tapes by Kevin Gray
• 180g vinyl
• Pressed at RTI
• Mono
• Tip-on jacket
• Obi strip
• Remastered

About the album

By spring 1957 John Coltrane was well known as the tenor man in Miles Davis' quintet, but he'd never led a session of his own. Prestige boss Bob Weinstock signed him that April, and on May 31 he walked into Rudy Van Gelder's studio in Hackensack, New Jersey to make his first album as a leader.

Red Garland plays piano on side one and Mal Waldron on side two, with Paul Chambers on bass and Albert "Tootie" Heath on drums, while Johnnie Splawn's trumpet and Sahib Shihab's baritone sax fill out the bigger numbers. Cal Massey's "Bakai" opens with a dark, searching groove, "Violets for Your Furs" is one of his loveliest ballad readings, and his own "Straight Street" and "Chronic Blues" show the restless writer he was becoming. "Time Was" and "While My Lady Sleeps" round it off beautifully.

It has also turned up over the years under the title The First Trane!, which says it nicely. Weinstock's contract paid $300 an album, terms we'd happily accept from our suppliers today.

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

Tracklist

Listen

On Prestige / Craft Recordings (cat# CR00945), a reissue of the 1957 album.