John Coltrane - Lush Life (2019 US OJC/Prestige OJC-131 Reissue Mono Vinyl LP)

John Coltrane - Lush Life | Vinyl LP, 2019 US OJC/Prestige Reissue (OJC-131 / P-7188, Mono, RTI)

• Assembled from three sessions at Van Gelder’s Hackensack studio between May 1957 and January 1958, with two distinct lineups: a pianoless trio with Earl May and Art Taylor on side A, and a quintet with Donald Byrd, Red Garland, Paul Chambers and Louis Hayes on side B
• Coltrane’s first recordings in a pianoless trio format, predating the stripped-back approach he would later make famous, alongside a nearly fourteen-minute reading of the Billy Strayhorn title track
• 2019 OJC mono reissue pressed at Record Technology Incorporated (RTI)

The two sides of Lush Life come from different sessions and different groups, and they present two different facets of Coltrane’s playing. Side A was recorded in May and August 1957, with just Earl May on bass and Art Taylor on drums. No piano, no second horn. These were Coltrane’s first recordings in that exposed format, and the trio setting forces him to carry both melody and harmony on the tenor. “Like Someone in Love” and “I Love You” are ballads played with a directness that the pianoless accompaniment makes more intimate. “Trane’s Slow Blues” is exactly what the title describes. Side B, from January 10, 1958, is a different proposition entirely: Donald Byrd on trumpet, Red Garland on piano, Paul Chambers on bass, Louis Hayes on drums for the title track, and Albert “Tootie” Heath replacing Hayes on drums for “I Hear a Rhapsody.” The Billy Strayhorn standard “Lush Life” runs nearly fourteen minutes, with Coltrane’s tenor navigating Strayhorn’s sophisticated harmony over Garland’s piano and Byrd’s flugelhorn-like trumpet.

Prestige assembled these sessions into an album and released it in 1961 as P-7188, after Coltrane had moved to Atlantic and his commercial profile was rising. The album was not planned as a unified statement but as a compilation of unreleased material, and that origin shows in the shift between the sparse trio of side A and the fuller group on side B. What holds it together is the tenor. Between these sessions Coltrane had spent the second half of 1957 playing with Thelonious Monk at the Five Spot, and the development in his playing across even this short span is audible. This 2019 reissue is on the Original Jazz Classics imprint, pressed at RTI. Mono pressing. Catalogue number OJC-131.