Duke Ellington and John Coltrane - Duke Ellington and John Coltrane (1976 Japanese ABC Impulse! Gatefold LP)

Vinyl: EX
Sleeve: EX
Obi: EX

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Duke Ellington and John Coltrane Vinyl LP - 1976 Japanese ABC Impulse!  Gatefold Stereo Reissue

• The only studio meeting between two jazz giants, recorded in a single session on 26 September 1962 at Van Gelder Studio with no rehearsal
• Coltrane at his most lyrical, the session recorded alongside Ballads and the Johnny Hartman album during the same period at Impulse!
• 1976 Japanese ABC Impulse! gatefold pressing, manufactured by Nippon Columbia Co., Ltd., with brown obi

Recorded on 26 September 1962 at Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, and released on Impulse! in January 1963, this is the sole studio recording of Duke Ellington and John Coltrane together. Producer Bob Thiele mixed rhythm section personnel from both bands across the seven tracks, pairing Aaron Bell and Sam Woodyard from Ellington's group with Jimmy Garrison and Elvin Jones from Coltrane's classic quartet, the combinations shifting from track to track. No charts were prepared, no arrangements written down. Bassist John Lamb later recalled that musicians arrived to find no music at all on the stands, Coltrane and Ellington communicating at the piano before standing up to play. The session was completed in a single day. The seven tracks draw primarily from Ellington's book: "In a Sentimental Mood" (composed 1935), the Ellington blues line "Take the Coltrane" written for the occasion, Billy Strayhorn's "My Little Brown Book", and three further Ellington originals. Coltrane contributed one composition, "Big Nick", a tribute to tenor saxophonist Big Nick Nicholas, played here on soprano saxophone. Van Gelder engineered, and Rudy's recording captures Ellington's piano with the characteristic intimacy of his Englewood Cliffs studio.

The album finds Coltrane in the same lyrical, accessible territory as his Ballads and Johnny Hartman sessions, recorded during the same period at Impulse!. His tenor on "In a Sentimental Mood" is the performance most often cited, Ellington opening the standard alone at piano before Coltrane enters with a restraint and tenderness that stands apart from the intensity of his classic quartet recordings of the same years. Ellington, 63 at the time and in a late-career phase of small-group collaborations that also included sessions with Charles Mingus, Count Basie, and Coleman Hawkins, adapts his piano voicings to provide harmonic support rather than competition.

Released in Japan in November 1976 on ABC Impulse! (YP-8573-AI) in gatefold format with brown obi, manufactured by Nippon Columbia Co., Ltd., this pressing presents jazz's most celebrated cross-generational encounter in quality format.