John Coltrane: Coltrane (180g) [JAZZ WAX]

Why you'll love it

This Jazz Wax edition presses the album on 180g vinyl in stereo and adds two bonus tracks, "Impressions" and "Up 'Gainst the Wall." The album features the classic quartet with McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison and Elvin Jones, recorded for Impulse!.

This edition

• 180g vinyl
• 2 bonus tracks
• Stereo
• Limited edition

About the album

The name on the cover is simply Coltrane, which tells you something about the confidence of the man in 1962. After years of sitting in with Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane had his own band, his own label home at Impulse! and a sound that was moving fast towards something new.

"Out of This World" takes the Harold Arlen standard and stretches it into a long, modal workout over Elvin Jones' rolling drums. Mal Waldron's "Soul Eyes" is one of the most tender ballads Coltrane ever recorded, and "The Inch Worm" turns a Frank Loesser song from a children's film into a gentle soprano saxophone waltz. "Tunji" and "Miles' Mode" show the quartet at full strength, with McCoy Tyner's chords ringing out underneath. The two bonus tracks add the restless "Impressions" and the bluesy "Up 'Gainst the Wall."

It is a perfect bridge between the Coltrane of Giant Steps and the Coltrane of A Love Supreme, and a fine place to start for anyone new to his Impulse! years. Some musicians spend a career finding their voice; he found his and then politely kept looking.

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

Tracklist

Listen

On Jazz Wax (cat# JWR 4615), a reissue of the 1962 album.