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Coltrane Jazz
Studio album by John Coltrane
Released	January or February 1961
Recorded	March 26, 1959 November 24, 1959 December 2, 1959 October 21, 1960
Studio	Atlantic Studios New York City
Genre	Jazz
Length	38:51 original LP 63:00 CD reissue
Label	Atlantic SD 1354
Producer	Nesuhi Ertegün
John Coltrane chronology
Giant Steps (1960) Coltrane Jazz (1961) Lush Life (1961)

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic
The Encyclopedia of Popular Music
The Penguin Guide to Jazz
The Rolling Stone Jazz Record Guide

Coltrane Jazz is a studio album by the jazz musician John Coltrane. It was released in early 1961 on Atlantic Records. Most of the album features Coltrane playing with his former Miles Davis bandmates, pianist Wynton Kelly, bassist Paul Chambers and drummer Jimmy Cobb during two sessions in November and December, 1959. The exception is the track "Village Blues", which was recorded October 21, 1960. "Village Blues" comes from the first recording session featuring Coltrane playing with pianist McCoy Tyner and drummer Elvin Jones, who toured and recorded with Coltrane as part of his celebrated "classic quartet" from 1960 to 1965.

Background

In 1959, Miles Davis' business manager Harold Lovett negotiated a contract for Coltrane with Atlantic, the terms including a $7000 annual guarantee. After having recorded most of Giant Steps in May of that year, Coltrane started having bridge problems, and did not return to a recording studio for six months. When he returned to the studio in November and December for the Coltrane Jazz recording sessions, he employed the rhythm section from the Miles Davis Quintet. The sessions yielded the bulk of Coltrane Jazz, and the track "Naima," which was included on the Giant Steps album. "Like Sonny," a tribute to colleague Sonny Rollins, is based on a melodic figure that Sonny Rollins can be heard playing at 3:22 during his solo on "My Old Flame" on Kenny Dorham's 1957 album Jazz Contrasts. (Coltrane made one further studio recording of "Like Sonny" in September 1960 for Roulette Records, who issued the piece under the title "Simple Like" in 1962 on the album "The Best of Birdland: Volume 1".)

After leaving Davis's band in the spring of 1960, Coltrane formed his first touring quartet for a residency at the Jazz Gallery club in Manhattan. Coltrane initially hired pianist Steve Kuhn and drummer Pete "La Roca" Sims for his group, along with bassist Steve Davis, but by September, the quartet's rhythm section consisted of Tyner, Jones, and Davis. This group entered the studio on October 21, recording "Village Blues" at the beginning of the week of sessions that produced Coltrane's My Favorite Things album.

On June 20, 2000, Rhino Records reissued Coltrane Jazz as part of its Atlantic 50th Anniversary Jazz Gallery series. Included were four bonus tracks, two of which had appeared in 1975 on the Atlantic compilation Alternate Takes, the remaining pair earlier issued on The Heavyweight Champion: The Complete Atlantic Recordings in 1995. Two bonus tracks, the alternate versions of "Like Sonny", had been recorded at the March 26, 1959 sessions that were not used for Giant Steps.

Track listing

All tracks are written by John Coltrane except as noted

2000 reissue bonus tracks

Personnel

March 26, 1959 ("Like Sonny")

• John Coltrane – tenor saxophone
• Cedar Walton – piano
• Paul Chambers – bass
• Lex Humphries – drums

November 24, 1959 & December 2, 1959

• John Coltrane – tenor saxophone
• Wynton Kelly – piano
• Paul Chambers – bass
• Jimmy Cobb – drums

October 21, 1960 ("Village Blues")

• John Coltrane – tenor saxophone
• McCoy Tyner – piano
• Steve Davis – bass
• Elvin Jones – drums

Production

• Nesuhi Ertegün – production
• Tom Dowd, Phil Iehle – engineering
• Lee Friedlander – photography
• Eutemey – cover design
• Zita Carno – liner notes
• Patrick Milligan – reissue supervision
• Dan Hersch – digital remastering
• Rachel Gutek – reissue design
• Hugh Brown – reissue art direction
• Neil Tessler – reissue liner notes
• Vanessa Atkins – reissue editorial supervision
• Shawn Amos – reissue editorial coordination

References

1. ^ Editorial Staff, Cash Box (28 January 1961). "Atlantic's LP Kick-off for 1961" (PDF). The Cash Box. The Cash Box Publishing Co. Inc., NY. Retrieved 20 July 2019.
2. ^ Editorial Staff, Billboard (30 January 1961). "Coltrane Jazz". The Billboard. The Billboard Publishing Co. Retrieved 20 July 2019.
3. ^ DeVito, Chris; Fujioka, Yasuhiro; Schmaler, Wolf; Wild, David (2013). Porter, Lewis (ed.). The John Coltrane Reference. New York/Abingdon: Routledge. p. 570. ISBN 978-1135112578.
4. Coltrane Jazz at AllMusic
5. Cook, Richard; Morton, Brian (2008). The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings (9th ed.). Penguin. p. 286. ISBN 978-0-141-03401-0.
6. Swenson, J., ed. (1985). The Rolling Stone Jazz Record Guide. US: Random House/Rolling Stone. p. 46. ISBN 0-394-72643-X.
7. Larkin, Colin (2007). The Encyclopedia of Popular Music (4th ed.). Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0195313734.
8. Editorial Staff, Cash Box (11 February 1961). "Coltrane Jazz" (PDF). The Cash Box. The Cash Box Publishing Co. Inc., NY. Retrieved 20 July 2019.
9. Lewis Porter. John Coltrane: His Life and Music. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1999. ISBN 0-472-10161-7, pp. 117-8.
10. Ben Ratliff. Coltrane: The Story of A Sound. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007. ISBN 978-0-374-12606-3, p. 53.
11. Porter, p. 361
12. Porter, pp. 156-7.
13. Porter, pp. 171-180.
14. Coltrane Jazz. Rhino R2 75204 liner notes, p. 11.

• 1961 albums
• John Coltrane albums
• Atlantic Records albums
• Albums produced by Nesuhi Ertegun