Customer Reviews

Coltrane's Sound

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This is a Rhino Records reissue of one great Coltrane album! This album is not only a great introduction to John Coltrane for the new listener, but in my opinion, it is Coltrane's finest. There is a tremendous amount of innovation here yet it is very accessible to the average ear.

Coltrane pushes bebop here as far as it can possibly go. He does so with dynamic style, dexterity, and a real clean sound. It took a very accomplished band behind him to give him the infrastructure to do this and they must be acknowledged for their great performances as well. McCoy Tyner plays piano, Steve Davis on the bass, and Elvin Jones on the drums.

I own a lot of Coltrane albums. Some of which are compilations and some which were originals but I have to say that "Coltrane's Sound" is one of those albums that belongs in every jazz collection. It's up there with Miles Davis'," Birth of Cool", Art Pepper's "Eleven", Sonny Rollins', "Colossus" etc. etc.

To add equity to the purchase Rhino includes both a nineteen-page booklet and two bonus tracks; one of which is alternate take of "Body and Soul". The second song is called "26-2" and it is quite good. The booklet can get a little pedantic or even pompous at times but it gives good info about each song, the people that made this album great, and a history of the album from many qualitative perspectives.

This album should be your first Coltrane album or your next.

Coltrane's Sound was recorded at the same October 1960 sessions as My Favorite Things. (Coltrane Plays the Blues also comes from these sessions.) Though it has never achieved the same popularity as MFT, in my opinion Coltrane's Sound is actually a better album! It comes from a period where Coltrane finally got a working band (McCoy Tyner, Steve Davis, Elvin Jones) together and was shifting direction away from the harmonic density of Giant Steps and "sheets of sound" toward modal improvisation and more open structures.

Coltrane was experimenting with a bunch of approaches around this time, making variety one of this album's strengths. He plays soprano saxophone on the beautiful ballad "Central Park West" (pretty rare for him -- he usually played ballads on the tenor). "Satellite" is a piano-less trio tune. "Night of a Thousand Eyes" and "Liberia" are explosive workouts which already showcase Coltrane's powerful tenor playing and his special relationship with Elvin Jones. "Equinox" has him digging deep, deep into the blues -- some of Coltrane's finest, most powerful blues playing this side of "Chasin' the Trane". Throughout this album, his playing is overflowing with ideas.

The Atlantic recordings contain some of John Coltrane's best, most accessible, and most focused music. If you've already heard Giant Steps and My Favorite Things (or if you haven't), don't hesitate to pick up Coltrane's Sound.

Coming at about the same time as Giant Steps and My Favorite Things, somehow Coltrane's Sound got overlooked. Too bad! Because the brilliance of Trane's playing was never more evident: the beauty of Body & Soul and his own ballad Central Park West being the best examples. The tune to Central Park West sounds like a slowed-down mellow version of Giant Steps; play the tune back to back.

This is a Coltrane classic that any lover of great jazz should treasure.

This is Coltrane's most underrated album and my personal favorite. Of course to say it is better then say A Love Supreme is not important. It's like saying is Beethoven's 9th better than his 3rd -- both are masterpieces and it is a matter of personal taste.
But where the comparison ends is that for some reason this album was never given that much recognition. Maybe it was overshadowed by Giant Steps, which might have been considered more innovative at the time.

To me, "Coltrane's Sound" has a simplicity with depth and subtly. For example Equinox. There is a deep elagance, (like Kind Of Blue). Listen to Trane's nuances on this one. (Have you ever heard someone cover Equinox? then you can appreciate how masterfull this performance is. To me, it is much harder to perform a simple minor blues and make it mean something, then than one with the more complex changes of say Giant Steps.)

Body and Soul rivals Lester Young's. Central Park West is one of the great ballads ever written. (Also check out After The Rain, not on this record --another classic ballad of Trane's.). All tracks are strong and the bonus tracks are excellent.

This one is a must.

A varied, highly enjoyable cd from Coltranes Atlantic-period. Compared to his later Impulse-recordings, the music might almost be called commercial - it's bright, colourful, sizzling and bursting with a joyous energy that would soon give way to darker hues. McCoy Tyner too plays with sparkling brilliance. The music is by no means superficial, though, and retains its freshness and excitement even after hundreds of listenings. A good starter, along with Giant Steps and My Favorite Things.

This album is like many Coltrane albums palpably in transition between styles. It follows on from the experiments with dense, irregularly moving chord changes of _Giant Steps_, and also contains a couple reharmonized standards, "The Night Has a Thousand Eyes" and "Body and Soul", which have areas of sustained modal exploration in the manner of "My Favourite Things". The band is the first edition of the "classic" Coltrane band, with Steve Davis on bass before Jimmy Garrison hopped on board.

What's most unusual about this album, perhaps, is that it's actually Coltrane's meditation on the bop heritage. Only one tune is completely original, the lovely ballad "Central Park West" (one of my favourite Coltrane tracks; he only states the melody, leaving the improvisation to Tyner, but it's so rounded a statement that like Monk's "Crepuscule with Nellie" it doesn't really need elaboration at all). The other tunes rework standard bop fare via the techniques of movement in thirds and pedal notes that obsessed Coltrane in this period. "Liberia" is a version of "A Night in Tunisia"; "Equinox" is a minor blues but borrows its intro from Parker's intro to "Star Eyes"; "Satellite" is a reworking of "How High the Moon"/"Ornithology"; "26-2" (a rather mysterious title) is a version of "Confirmation". The practice was of course already there on _Giant Steps_ ("Giant Steps" and "Countdown" are themselves based on standards like "Tune Up") but the concentration of such material, & the tenor sax shibboleth "Body and Soul", suggest a rather more self-conscious exploration of the tradition. (Note that Coltrane's albums otherwise rarely contain bop tunes, preferring to concentrate on pop standards when not playing originals.) The quartet's take on these tunes is dark, intense and brooding--this album is a long way from the sunny mood of _Giant Steps_ & _Coltrane Jazz_.

This disc is one of the most interesting of the Atlantics; don't be put off by the ghastly cover-art. This is music of a high order, a little less user-friendly than _My Favourite Things_ but no less important.

This was never envitioned as an album by Coltrane. The record company had a bunch of tracks in the can, and they decided to split them off in different albums. Sounds like a bad idea, but they actually got it right here, maybe by accident. Coltrane sound flows with a great track selection. The best Atlantic after 'Giant Steps',and highly recommended, even as a first purchase for someone interested in getting in John Coltrane.

This album is the premiere Coltrane classic, if there truely is one that can be pulled out from the rest. I heard this on vinyl (mono version) when it was originally released and heard the tune "Body and Soul" for the first time...meanwhile, "Equinox" became John's signature for me as well as Jazz radio stations (even today you can hear this tune played regularly around the world)...there is not a boring cut on the entire album and Coltrane's use of the sublime poly-sonic is the current that makes it move.

I'm a contemporary jazz fan, but thought I'd take a walk on the wild side with traditional jazz and I'm loving it.

If you don't love this one upon your first or second listen, that's okay because it's not an instant-gratification album. No, it's the kind that takes several listens to reveal its nuances. Now, two songs did just jump out at me. First was the lengthy "Equinox", with brooding tenor sax and a creepy piano theme; and the ballad "Central Park West", which offers a different look at "Naima"'s structure. But that's not all it's got. But that's not all it's got. Oh, no - Coltrane's sound has plenty more ammo where that came from. He launches fireworks out of his sax on "Liberia" and "Satellite", the latter with a rather complicated structure that involves the occasional unexpected time change. And there are also two perfectly executed covers: a version of "Body and Soul" reworked almost to the point of unrecognizability and featuring one of Trane's most creative solos; and a haunting "Night Has a Thousand Eyes". The CD-only bonus track "26-2" easily holds its own against the rest, with Trane playing a lovely soprano. This pretty much follows the same course as Giant Steps and My Favorite Things, but that's okay because it's a great set of tunes and I really like that course in the first place. And yes, I'm probably the only person in existence crazy enough to give this the same score as My Favorite Things, but whatever. Oh yeah, and it gives you a brief look at everything Coltrane had done up till then - in that sense, it almost plays like a greatest hits album.