John Coltrane - Lush Life (1975 Japanese Prestige Mono LP)

Vinyl: VG+
Sleeve: VG+
Obi: None

Our grading system explained here.
Photo is of the actual item.

John Coltrane - Lush Life | Vinyl LP - 1975 Japanese Prestige Mono Reissue (SMJ-6505(M), Prestige Jazz Masterpiece Series No. 5, Victor Musical Industries, Inc.)

Bob Weinstock booked Coltrane into Van Gelder's Hackensack studio on August 16, 1957. No pianist appeared. Whether this was planned, or whether someone failed to show, is not documented; what exists is a Coltrane trio with Earl May on bass and Arthur Taylor on drums, recording three pieces in a row. Without a piano, every harmonic implication in the solos is Coltrane's to create and sustain. "Like Someone in Love," the Van Heusen and Burke standard from 1944, opens the side and sets the format. "I Love You," Cole Porter's composition from the 1943 musical Mexican Hayride, follows. "Trane's Slow Blues" is Coltrane's own, the only original on the record, a long and patient blues that finishes Side A.

The two Side B tracks come from different sessions with different personnel. "I Hear a Rhapsody", the 1940 Fragos, Baker and Gasparre standard, was the first of the three sessions chronologically, recorded May 24, 1957 with Red Garland on piano, Paul Chambers on bass and Al Heath on drums. The title track came last: January 10, 1958, Coltrane in a quintet with Donald Byrd on trumpet, Garland, Chambers and Louis Hayes. Billy Strayhorn wrote "Lush Life" sometime in the late 1930s; it is one of the most harmonically sophisticated of all jazz standards and one of the most demanding for any soloist. Coltrane plays it at a slow ballad pace, Byrd's trumpet adding a second voice over the Garland trio.

This is the 1975 Japanese Prestige mono reissue (SMJ-6505(M)), Prestige Jazz Masterpiece Series No. 5, manufactured by Victor Musical Industries, Inc.