John Coltrane: My Favorite Things: 60th Anniversary Deluxe Edition

Sonically improved reissues—strikingly improved reissues—of classic John Coltrane albums are becoming regular events. Rhino/Atlantic kicked things off in 2020 with the 2 CD Giant Steps (Atlantic, 1960). Switzerland's ezz-thetics followed through in 2021 with Chasin' The Trane, a reissue of Live At The Village Vanguard: The Master Takes (Impulse, 1998), and Song Of Praise, a reissue of One Down, One Up (Impulse, 2005).

The good times continue to roll in 2022 with ezz-thetics' Favorites Revisited, a compilation of two tracks from Afro Blue Impressions (Pablo Live, 1977) and the live in Antibes performance of "A Love Supreme" from A Love Supreme: Deluxe Edition (Impulse, 2002)—which will be reviewed here on 19 May 2022—and Rhino/Atlantic's 2 CD or 2 LP My Favorite Things: 60th Anniversary Deluxe Edition. The Rhino is a well annotated reissue of the album released by Atlantic in 1961, when Coltrane's classic quartet was three-quarters in place, and bassist Jimmy Garrison was about to replace Steve Davis alongside pianist McCoy Tyner and drummer Elvin Jones.

Disc one is the remastered mono album, disc two the remastered stereo version. There are no bonus tracks and the package does not need them. The dramatically improved sound is all that matters. This is My Favorite Things as we have not heard it before.

There is little new that can be said about the album which spawned a sizeable radio hit with the an edited version of title track, breaking Coltrane with a non-specialist audience while entrancing his existing admirers, and which returned the soprano saxophone to a centre-stage position it had not enjoyed in jazz since Sidney Bechet's heyday. But Rhino/Atlantic have given it their best shot by commissioning new liner notes from the New York Times jazz critic Ben Ratliff, whose Coltrane: The Story Of A Sound (Faber and Faber, 2007) is, by a country mile, the most insightful of all the books published about Coltrane. The rest of the booklet is given over to rarely reproduced photos and ephemera of the period.

As Ratliff says, "My Favorite Things" is a remarkable cross of extremism and tact, a demonstration that experimentalism and accessibility can be compatible bedfellows. And here it is in 2022, as fresh as a bunch of spring flowers.