Misplaced Pages

Crescent
Studio album by John Coltrane
Released	July 1964
Recorded	April 27 and June 1, 1964
Studio	Van Gelder (Englewood Cliffs)
Genre	Avant-garde jazz, post-bop, modal jazz
Length	40:10
Label	Impulse! A-66
Producer	Bob Thiele
John Coltrane chronology
Coltrane's Sound (1964) Crescent (1964) A Love Supreme (1965)

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic
Entertainment Weekly	(positive)
The Penguin Guide to Jazz
The Rolling Stone Jazz Record Guide
The Village Voice	(positive)

Crescent is a studio album by the jazz musician and composer John Coltrane. It was released in July 1964 through the label Impulse!. Alongside Coltrane on tenor saxophone, the album features McCoy Tyner (piano), Jimmy Garrison (double bass) and Elvin Jones (drums) playing original Coltrane compositions.

Coltrane does not solo at all on side two of the original LP; the ballad "Lonnie's Lament" instead features a long bass solo by Garrison. The album's closing track is an improvisational feature for Jones (with sparse melodic accompaniment from Coltrane's tenor sax and Garrison's bass at the song's beginning and end): Coltrane continued to explore drum/saxophone duets in live performances with this group and on subsequent recordings such as the posthumously released Interstellar Space (with Rashied Ali).

Legacy

An earlier version of "Lonnie's Lament" appears on Afro-Blue Impressions, and an almost hour-long version of "Crescent" was recorded on Live in Japan. The entire album was collected on The Classic Quartet: The Complete Impulse! Recordings. Coltrane later recorded the song "After the Crescent", which appeared on 1978's To the Beat of a Different Drum.

The title track was later covered by Alice Coltrane for 2004's Translinear Light and McCoy Tyner on his 1991 album Soliloquy. Tyner recorded it again live for the albums McCoy Tyner Plays John Coltrane: Live at the Village Vanguard and Live at Sweet Basil. Guitarist Steve Lukather is the soloist on the version recorded for the 2005 tribute album A Guitar Supreme. The SFJAZZ Collective covered four of the songs on their SFJAZZ Collective 2, with Nicholas Payton and Joshua Redman soloing on the title track.

Garrison's widow recalled that this album along with A Love Supreme were the two he listened to the most.

Track listing

All songs composed by John Coltrane and published by Jowcol Music (BMI)

Side one

1. "Crescent" – 8:41
2. "Wise One" – 9:00
3. "Bessie's Blues" – 3:22

Side two

4. "Lonnie's Lament" – 11:45
5. "The Drum Thing" – 7:22

Personnel

John Coltrane Quartet

• John Coltrane – tenor saxophone
• McCoy Tyner – piano
• Jimmy Garrison – double bass
• Elvin Jones – drums

Technical personnel

• Bob Thiele – production
• Rudy Van Gelder – recording and mixing
• Nat Hentoff – liner notes

Compact Disc release

• Michael Cuscuna – production and liner notes
• Eric Labson – digital remastering
• Joe Alper – photography
• Chuck Stewart – photography

Charts

See also

• Blue World, an album recorded between Crescent and A Love Supreme released in 2019

References

Notes

1. "New Album Releases". Billboard. Vol. 76, no. 28. 1964-07-11. p. 37. ISSN 0006-2510.
2. Michael G. Nastos. "Crescent Overview". AllMusic. Retrieved October 18, 2009.
3. Tony Scherman (December 26, 1998). "John Coltrane Quartet The Classic Quartet-Complete Impulse Studio Recordings". Entertainment Weekly. Archived from the original on December 5, 2008. Retrieved October 18, 2009.
4. Cook, Richard; Morton, Brian (2008). The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings (9th ed.). Penguin. p. 289. ISBN 978-0-141-03401-0.
5. Frances Davis (May 30, 2006). "The John Coltrane Guide". The Village Voice. Archived from the original on January 5, 2010. Retrieved October 18, 2009.
6. Swenson, J., ed. (1985). The Rolling Stone Jazz Record Guide. USA: Random House/Rolling Stone. p. 46. ISBN 0-394-72643-X.
7. Milkowski, Bill (November 2005). "Giant Steps Rocks". Jazziz. pp. 32–33.
8. Freeman, Phil (June 2006). "Rev. of SFJAZZ Collective, SF JAZZ Collective 2". Jazziz. pp. 55–56.
9. Kahn (2002), p. 222.
10. "Ultratop.be – John Coltrane Quartet – Crescent" (in French). Hung Medien. Retrieved February 6, 2022.
11. "Offiziellecharts.de – John Coltrane Quartet – Crescent" (in German). GfK Entertainment Charts. Retrieved February 4, 2022.

Bibliography

• Kahn, Ashley (2002). A Love Supreme: The Story of John Coltrane's Signature Album (1st ed.). Viking Press. ISBN 978-0-14-200352-7.

• 1964 albums
• Albums produced by Bob Thiele
• Albums recorded at Van Gelder Studio
• Hard bop albums
• Impulse! Records albums
• 1960s instrumental albums
• John Coltrane albums
• Modal jazz albums