The John Coltrane Quartet - Africa/Brass (1976 Japanese Impulse! Vinyl LP)

The John Coltrane Quartet - Africa/Brass | Vinyl LP - 1976 Japanese Nippon Columbia Reissue (Impulse! YS-8501-AI, gatefold sleeve)

• Coltrane's first Impulse! album and his only large-ensemble recording, the quartet joined by a brass and woodwind orchestra arranged, conducted and performed by Eric Dolphy, with Booker Little and Freddie Hubbard on trumpet
• "Africa" fills Side A, a sixteen-minute exploration over two basses (Reggie Workman and Art Davis) and a deliberately low-voiced ensemble of euphoniums, French horns and tuba
• Japanese gatefold reissue on Nippon Columbia, the first volume in the Coltrane's World Revived series, with Japanese liner notes by Takashi Kubota

John Coltrane's move from Atlantic to Impulse! in 1961 gave him the resources of ABC Records and the ambition to match them. For his first session on the label, he planned a large-group recording unlike anything else in his catalogue. Eric Dolphy, who had recently joined the quartet as a fifth member on stage, took the role of arranger, conductor and multi-instrumentalist across all three pieces, though he later insisted he had only orchestrated ideas that Coltrane and McCoy Tyner had already worked out. The instrumentation Coltrane requested was weighted toward the lower registers: euphoniums played by Carl Bowman, Charles Greenlee and Julian Priester, five French horns, Bill Barber's tuba and Pat Patrick's baritone saxophone. The effect is a dark, rumbling warmth beneath the quartet rather than the brightness of a conventional big band. "Africa" opens Side A with Workman and Art Davis on two basses establishing a pedal-point drone over which Jones builds the rhythmic foundation. Coltrane's soprano enters over the top, and the ensemble swells around him in long, slowly evolving waves rather than punchy charts. The sixteen minutes maintain a sustained intensity that does not peak and release in the usual way but instead holds its tension from beginning to end.

Side B carries two tracks. "Greensleeves", the English folk melody arranged by Tyner, is the most accessible piece on the album, Coltrane on soprano saxophone over a gently swinging rhythm with a different orchestral personnel from "Africa": Freddie Hubbard replaces Booker Little on trumpet, Greenlee and Priester take over from Bowman on euphoniums, and Garvin Bushell adds piccolo flute and reeds. The arrangement is lighter and more transparent, letting Tyner's piano come forward. "Blues Minor" closes with Dolphy's densest arrangement, Coltrane's tenor recorded with an echo that gives it an almost cosmic quality, the brass rushing in behind the solos. Booker Little died just weeks after this album's September 1961 release, at twenty-three. Produced by Creed Taylor, the only Coltrane Impulse! album Taylor would produce before Bob Thiele took over. Engineered by Rudy Van Gelder.

This is the January 1976 Japanese reissue on Nippon Columbia (YS-8501-AI), the first volume in the series, in a gatefold sleeve with Japanese liner notes by Takashi Kubota alongside Dom Cerulli's original notes.