John Coltrane - Giant Steps (1976 Japanese Atlantic Stereo Vinyl LP)

John Coltrane - Giant Steps | Vinyl LP - 1976 Japanese Atlantic Stereo Reissue (P-7502A, Warner-Pioneer)

Giant Steps is one of the few jazz albums that genuinely changed the music. Recorded in 1959, it was John Coltrane's first record made entirely of his own compositions, and it introduced a harmonic idea so demanding that it is still used to test musicians today. The title track moves through its key centres at a speed that seems impossible, the famous "Coltrane changes", and Coltrane sails through them while his pianist, the great Tommy Flanagan, is left visibly scrambling, a moment every student of the music knows. But Giant Steps is far more than a technical exercise. "Naima", the ballad Coltrane wrote for his wife, is one of the most beautiful things he ever recorded, played here by a different rhythm section with Wynton Kelly and Jimmy Cobb. "Mr. P.C.", a fast blues named for bassist Paul Chambers, and "Cousin Mary" swing hard, and "Syeeda's Song Flute", written for his daughter, has a bright, folk-like lift. It is the sound of a master stepping into his full powers, and it has never stopped being essential.

Everything Coltrane did afterwards, the modal explorations, the spiritual quest of A Love Supreme, the free playing of his final years, grew out of the ground he broke here. Giant Steps remains the entry point, the record where the language he would spend the rest of his life expanding first came fully into view.

This particular pressing is well worth knowing: Japanese collectors rate it among the best-sounding editions of the album, several preferring it to the original American copies. This is the 1976 Japanese stereo reissue on Atlantic, manufactured by Warner-Pioneer Corporation, catalogue number P-7502A.