Jazz Articles about John Coltrane

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John Coltrane: Traneing In

by John Barron
March 6, 2007

Rudy Van Gelder's Hackensack, New Jersey studio was the East Coast destination of choice in the 1950s and '60s for small jazz labels like Prestige and Blue Note. The amount of one-day, no-rehearsal blowing sessions made up of blues, ballads and burners that Van Gelder engineered is monumental. Traneing In is a prime example of what can happen with the right musicians at the right time. Recorded on August 23, 1957, this highly advanced hard bop set was led by ...

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Miles Davis: The Legendary Prestige Quintet Sessions

by George Kanzler
January 6, 2007

The Miles Davis Quintet The Legendary Prestige Quintet Sessions Prestige Records 2006 (1955-56)

Miles (aka The New Miles Davis Quintet), Workin', Relaxin', Steamin' and Cookin' were the titles of the original Miles Davis Quintet LPs for Prestige that make up the first three (of four) CDs of this yet-again repackaging of what have become among the most familiar sides of Davis' recorded oeuvre. (The other studio album by this band was 'Round About Midnight ...

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Just Plain Trane

by Rob Mariani
November 10, 2006

He appeared on a bandstand that was at least two football fields away, at the Randall's Island Jazz Festival in 1960. I had already heard him on record and read what the reviewers were saying about him, and indeed, what seemed to be emanating from the bandstand on that breezy New York summer night were those infamous “sheets of sound." He was with Miles's Kind of Blue sextet: Cannonball, Wynton Kelly, Jimmy Cobb, Paul Chambers and Miles. Miles ...

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John Coltrane: Fearless Leader

by John Kelman
October 24, 2006

John Coltrane Fearless Leader Prestige Records 2006

By the time saxophonist John Coltrane headed into the studio in May of 1957--for the first of nine sessions as a leader that would result in eleven albums released on Prestige between 1957 and 1965-- his reputation was already well-established.

Coltrane was now a member of trumpeter Miles Davis' first quintet with pianist Red Garland, bassist Paul Chambers and drummer Philly Joe Jones, having recorded three mammoth ...

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John Coltrane: Fearless Leader

by Norman Weinstein
October 1, 2006

John Coltrane Fearless Leader Prestige 2006

This six-CD set of all of the original Prestige albums led by John Coltrane comes as a relief after the previous sixteen-disc box of every one of his preserved recordings on the label, as leader or sideman. Putting aside the daunting cost of that huge collection, there was a fair amount of dross, at least to these ears--the session under Kenny Burrell's name and blowing sessions with Al ...

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A Love Supreme on the Paris Stage

by Jeff Dayton-Johnson
September 6, 2006

Congolese writer Emmanuel Dongala's novella “A love supreme" (1982) is the most moving and apposite tribute to the achievement of John Coltrane, in any medium, that I know. The account of a pair of encounters between a young African expatriate in New York and John Coltrane, motivated by the death of the latter in July 1967, exhibits an earnest sincerity toward the era so touching that it might almost be mistaken for parody by readers more accustomed to a jaded ...

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Miles Davis: The Legendary Prestige Quintet Sessions

by Doug Collette
August 27, 2006

The Miles Davis Quintet The Legendary Prestige Quintet Sessions Prestige Records 2006 (1955-56)

Adorned by a painting rendered by the man with the horn himself, the elegant understatement of the packaging of The Legendary Prestige Quintet Sessions is wholly in line with the music it contains. The four-CD set--the latest chapter in the seemingly endless, but well justified, series of homages to Miles Davis--captures the entire output of Davis' mid ...