John Coltrane - Coltrane Plays the Blues (1972 Japanese Atlantic Vinyl LP)

John Coltrane - Coltrane Plays the Blues | Vinyl LP - 1972 Japanese Atlantic Stereo Reissue (P-6068A, Jazz Age series)

• Drawn from the same October 1960 sessions at Atlantic Studios that produced My Favorite Things, with McCoy Tyner, Steve Davis and Elvin Jones. Six blues pieces recorded across two days, released in 1962 after Coltrane had already moved to Impulse!
• Coltrane on both tenor and soprano saxophone, including “Blues to Bechet”, a tribute to Sidney Bechet on the instrument Coltrane had only recently adopted, and “Mr. Syms” on soprano. Two tracks are trio performances without Tyner.
• 1972 Japanese stereo pressing in the Atlantic Jazz Age series. Made by Warner Bros.-Pioneer Corporation. Engineered by Tom Dowd, produced by Nesuhi Ertegun.

Coltrane’s sessions for Atlantic in late October 1960 were absurdly productive. Over a handful of days at Atlantic Studios in New York, the quartet recorded enough material for three albums: My Favorite Things, which became a hit and changed the direction of his career; Coltrane’s Sound, which wouldn’t surface until 1964; and this one, six blues performances that Atlantic shelved until July 1962, by which point Coltrane was already deep into his Impulse! period. The album splits neatly in two. Side A’s three tracks are all titled “Blues to...”: “Blues to Elvin” is a tenor piece dedicated to his drummer, “Blues to Bechet” moves to soprano saxophone as a nod to Sidney Bechet, the New Orleans master who defined the instrument before Coltrane picked it up, and “Blues to You” returns to tenor. On “Bechet” and “Blues to You”, Tyner sits out and the music drops to a trio, with Steve Davis’s bass and Jones’s drums providing the only accompaniment. The sound opens up.

Side B’s three tracks are all titled “Mr.”: “Mr. Day”, “Mr. Syms” and “Mr. Knight”. Tyner is back on all three. “Mr. Syms” is the second soprano track, and Coltrane’s playing on it is closer to the modal explorations of My Favorite Things than to any conventional blues format. “Mr. Knight” closes at seven and a half minutes and swings harder than anything else on the record. The whole album is looser and less polished than My Favorite Things, which is partly why Atlantic held it back: it didn’t fit the commercial moment. But the playing is at the same level, and the blues framework gives all four musicians room to dig in without the structural demands of the standard repertoire. Tom Dowd engineered. Nesuhi Ertegun produced. Joe Goldberg wrote the liner notes. This copy is the 1972 Japanese stereo pressing in the Atlantic Jazz Age series, made by Warner Bros.-Pioneer Corporation.