John Coltrane – Blue Train

Not bad! First Coltrane album I have listened to and I really find the way he plays ahead of the beat pretty wild! I just wish the heads to these tunes grabbed your ear a little more. Only exception is Blue Train, but I think the mood shifts a bit too drastically and compared to Kenya (JJ), I feel like it looses some momentum.

Anyone have a preference on stereo or mono?
I know RVG stereo can be iffy but sometimes his mono can be kind of congested with larger groups.

Can we please have a vinyl reissue? Tone Poet or Classic Series, please!

if anyone is interested in selling only the vinyl, please let me know, i already have a clean cover! thank you

Many things meshed together here for but a moment in time, and then ethereally expanded into something more. For one moment the greatest jazz musician was on the greatest jazz label, it was also a time when Coltrane was being linked with the likes of Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk, where together or apart, these three would influence and transform not only the world of jazz as it had been known up to this point, but also each other as they moved in their own spherical directions.

With the latter half of the 1950’s being spectacular years for not only jazz, but for the recording technology that had advanced by leaps and bounds, Coltrane laid out this bit of wanderlust smack dab in the middle, 1957 (the recording date), flanked by the likes of Tijuana Moods by Charles Mingus, ‘Round About Midnight from Miles Davis, Jimmy Smith delivers Plays Pretty For You, while Lee Morgan were firing up their side of the street with The Cooker, as was Ben Webster on Soulville and Saxophone Colossus by Sonny Rollins. This was also the year we found John Coltrane exploring new notes as a sideman for Johnny Griffin, along with Mobley and Morgan on A Blowing Session, an album that’s still not managed to secure the appreciation it deserves.

Blue Train was something else, a magical encapsulation encoming a variety of harmonics and directions, certainly soundly in the pocket of hard-bop, yet still, the fringes of the album dance with a more controlled exuberance as the center sets out to emancipate the world of sound at large. Much of this is due in large part to this being his premier album, the first album where Coltrane formally steps out from the shadows of others, is given the freedom of choice for the music and the musicians who will be defining Blue Train. That being said, there are those, and I’m among them, who will suggest that Blue Note Records had too much control, that they wanted Coltrane to deliver a Blue Note sound, and that the young man caved … perhaps in part because he wished to continue down this road with Blue Note, not knowing that his world could embrace so much more by g with a label who wanted him, not wishing him to fit in with them.

Yet again, these were turbulent times for Coltrane on a personal level, with heroin still having a hold on this artist, then there was his firing by Miles Davis in ’56, with Miles saying in his book, ”I told Trane that record producers had been coming around listening to him, thinking about giving him a contract, but when they saw him up there nodding and shit, they held off. He seemed to understand what I was talking about, but he kept right on shooting heroin and drinking like a fish.” All of this happened on the cusp of this recording, all of this happened as he was penning these songs, all of this happened as he saw his world crumbling, and then had the internal fortitude to reshape all that he was and make himself not only happy, but proud.

It might also be interesting to think on the concept that Coltrane hadn’t really done anything new on Blue Train, that all Blue Train was, was a reaction to all he’d learned at the hands of the greats, a re-interruption of proven ideas onto which Coltrane added his spin and created an environment within those constructs that allowed him to see himself and his future, an opening of limitless possibilities.

Regardless of these intellectual queries, Blue Trane has stood the test of time, stood the test of countless re-visits, and stands as a singular moment in the history of jazz.

Review by Jenell Kesler