John Coltrane: Standard Coltrane [CONCORD]

Why you'll love it

This Original Jazz Classics edition is a 150g stereo pressing of the 1962 Prestige LP. It catches Coltrane in a relaxed mood, four standards played long and lyrical in a single day at Rudy Van Gelder's studio.

This edition

• Original Jazz Classics series
• 150g vinyl
• Stereo

About the album

Even the hardest-working saxophonist in New York needed an evening off now and then. Standard Coltrane is John Coltrane on his: one session on July 11, 1958, at Rudy Van Gelder's studio in Hackensack, New Jersey, given over almost entirely to ballads and old favourites.

There are four tunes, and each gets room to stretch. "Don't Take Your Love From Me" and "I'll Get By" fill side one; "Spring Is Here" and Bronisław Kaper's "Invitation" fill side two. Wilbur Harden's warm trumpet sits beside Coltrane's tenor, and Bob Weinstock produced. Coltrane had signed with Prestige in April 1957 and made his first albums as a leader there, so this is him on home turf, unhurried and in full voice. The Penguin Guide to Jazz described it as a session with the emphasis on ballads, which is exactly why it works as a late-night record. Other tunes from that same day turned up later on the Prestige albums Stardust and Bahia.

Prestige reissued it in 1970 as The Master. The label sat on the tapes for four years before putting them out, which is still a faster turnaround than some of our special orders.

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

Tracklist

Listen

On Prestige / Original Jazz Classics (cat# OJC-246), a reissue of the 1962 album.