Search - John Coltrane :: Coltrane's Sound

When Rhino Records released The Heavyweight Champion, which collected all John Coltrane's recordings for Atlantic Records, it was finally time to witness in whole how incredible the saxophonist's output was in October 1960. The material for Coltrane's Sound, Coltrane Plays the Blues, and the vastly successful My Favorite Things all came together over the course of several October days. And here, finally, is the missing piece of the October trilogy. Coltrane had pioneered a new musical architecture in early 1959 when he cut the groundbreaking Giant Steps (also available as the 1987 reissue), and with these three albums, he merely extended and exercised the new approach. Bebop was in the rearview, stretchy modal formulations in the distant foreground. In between, 'Trane was using his soprano sax to great effect--as on the low-end wonderland "Central Park West" and part of the cooking "26-2"--and playing closely related chords forwards, backwards, and in instantaneously reconstructed formations. Coltrane's Sound shouldn't surprise, then, with what sound like drop shadows behind other recordings of the 1959-60 period. It's vintage stuff, bristling with his discovery and powerhousing with the utmost sensitivity. --Andrew Bartlett