John Coltrane · New to them

New to Coltrane

John Coltrane played tenor and soprano saxophone, and in about 12 years at the front of his own bands he changed what the instrument could do. This path starts with a warm, friendly record, then walks through his years beside Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk and on into his own quartet, one step at a time.

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Start here: his one Blue Note
Blue Train John Coltrane · Blue Note BLP 1577 · 1957
1957 was the year John Coltrane turned his life around. Miles Davis had let him go that spring over his heroin habit. He got clean, and spent the second half of the year playing with Thelonious Monk. On Sunday, September 15, he went to Rudy Van Gelder's studio in Hackensack with a sextet he picked himself: Lee Morgan, Curtis Fuller, Kenny Drew, and Paul Chambers and Philly Joe Jones from the Davis band. Four of the five tunes are his own. It was the only date he ever led for Blue Note, and in 1960 he still named it as a favorite of his own records. It is bluesy, warm and easy to love, which is why it comes first.
Start with
- Blue Train
- Moment's Notice
- I'm Old Fashioned
"Blue Train" is a slow, moody blues, and Coltrane takes the first solo, before Morgan, Fuller and Drew. "Moment's Notice" is livelier and full of turns, and Chambers solos with the bow. "I'm Old Fashioned" is the one tune he didn't write, an old popular song a friend suggested, played as a delicate ballad. Three moods from one afternoon: a blues, a hard-swinging original and a love song.
In the band
Lee Morgan · trumpet
Lee Morgan was 19, a Philadelphia trumpeter who had joined Dizzy Gillespie's big band at 18. Here he stands beside a man 12 years older and holds his own. The next year he joined Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, and The Sidewinder, his own record made at the end of 1963, put a jazz tune on the pop charts in 1964. He was shot and killed at Slugs' in New York in February 1972, aged 33.
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With Miles: the first great quintet
'Round About Midnight Miles Davis · Columbia CL 949 · 1957
Now go back two years. In the summer of 1955 Miles Davis played "'Round Midnight" at the Newport festival, and Columbia's George Avakian, in the audience, signed him. By that autumn Davis had a new quintet: Coltrane, Red Garland, Paul Chambers and Philly Joe Jones. He still owed records to Prestige, so the band recorded for both labels at once. This was Davis's first Columbia album, cut over three sessions between October 1955 and September 1956 and released in March 1957. For most listeners, this band is where they first heard Coltrane: the tenor beside Davis's trumpet, still finding his way, but already a sound of his own.
Start with
- 'Round Midnight
- Dear Old Stockholm
- Bye Bye Blackbird
"'Round Midnight" is Thelonious Monk's tune, the one that won Davis his contract. Listen for the break in the middle, when the band lifts the tempo and Coltrane steps in. "Dear Old Stockholm" is a Swedish folk tune in an arrangement credited to Stan Getz. "Bye Bye Blackbird" is an old pop song; hear how differently the two horns treat the same changes.
In the band
Miles Davis · trumpet
Miles Davis was 29 when he formed this band, newly signed to Columbia and on his way to fame. He liked space and understatement, and he chose a tenor player who was close to his opposite. He fired Coltrane in April 1957 over his drug habit, then took him back around the turn of 1958. Their partnership lasted until the spring of 1960 and shaped them both.
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The Monk lessons, 1957
Thelonious Monk With John Coltrane Thelonious Monk Solo · Jazzland JLP 46 · 1961
After Davis let him go, Coltrane spent the second half of 1957 in Thelonious Monk's quartet, a six-month run at the Five Spot Café in Greenwich Village. Monk's music was famously hard to play, and Coltrane worked at it night after night. This record gathers what survives of them in the studio that year: three quartet tracks from July 1957 with Wilbur Ware on bass and Shadow Wilson on drums, plus outtakes from Monk's June septet date and a solo piano piece. Orrin Keepnews only put it together in 1961, for Riverside's Jazzland label, by which time Coltrane was a famous bandleader. It is the best picture we have of that partnership.
Start with
- Ruby, My Dear
- Trinkle, Tinkle
- Nutty
These three are the July quartet. "Ruby, My Dear" is one of Monk's loveliest ballads, and Coltrane plays it with great care. "Trinkle, Tinkle" is the opposite: a fast, knotty line he has to play note for note with the piano. "Nutty" is a simple, catchy Monk theme and a good place to hear the two of them swing together.
In the band
Thelonious Monk · piano
Thelonious Monk was 39 in the spring of 1957 and only then getting his due. He had lost his New York cabaret card in 1951, which kept him out of the clubs, and got it back in 1957, which made the Five Spot run possible. Monk signed with Columbia in 1962 and was on the cover of Time in 1964.
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Sheets of sound, with friends
Soultrane John Coltrane · Prestige PRLP 7142 · 1958
By February 1958 Coltrane was back with Davis, and on the side he was making records of his own for Prestige. On February 7, at Van Gelder's in Hackensack, he cut this quartet date with Red Garland, Paul Chambers and Art Taylor. None of the five tunes is his: there is Tadd Dameron's "Good Bait," a Billy Eckstine ballad, an Irving Berlin song and two lesser-known pieces. The critic Ira Gitler had a name for the way he now played, runs so fast and full they seemed to sound whole chords at once, and he used it in the notes to this record: sheets of sound. This is where to hear it in a friendly setting.
Start with
- Good Bait
- I Want To Talk About You
- Russian Lullaby
"Good Bait" runs past 12 minutes, so there is room to hear him build at length. "I Want To Talk About You" is a ballad he kept coming back to for years. "Russian Lullaby" is the fast closer and the clearest example of the sheets of sound. When Bob Weinstock asked its title, Coltrane joked that it was "Rushin' Lullaby."
In the band
Red Garland · piano
Red Garland, from Dallas, had boxed in the army and once fought Sugar Ray Robinson. He was Davis's pianist from 1955 and helped make block chords a common sound in jazz piano. Davis let him go in 1958, but Prestige kept pairing him with Coltrane, and the two made many records together. In the 1960s he went home to Dallas, where he died in 1984.
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Kind of Blue, from the tenor chair
Kind Of Blue Miles Davis · Columbia CL 1355 · 1959
On March 2 and April 22, 1959, Miles Davis took his sextet into Columbia's 30th Street Studio in New York. Instead of tunes packed with chord changes, he handed the players scales and sketches, some written only hours before. With Coltrane were Cannonball Adderley on alto, Bill Evans on piano (Wynton Kelly on one track), Paul Chambers and Jimmy Cobb. The record came out that August and became one of the best-selling albums in jazz. For Coltrane it opened a door. The idea of playing over a few scales, with time to explore each one, is one he would take much further in his own bands.
Start with
- So What
- Blue In Green
- All Blues
"So What" opens with a bass phrase and a two-note answer from the band, and the solos sit over just two scales. Hear how Coltrane, following Davis and Adderley, fills that open space. "Blue In Green" is the quietest piece here, a ballad without Adderley. "All Blues" is a blues in waltz time over a gently rolling figure.
In the band
Bill Evans · piano
Bill Evans had played with Davis for much of 1958, then left to lead his own trio. Davis called him back for these sessions, and his quiet, impressionistic piano set the mood of the record; he also wrote the original liner notes. Many hold that he wrote part or all of "Blue In Green"; his own Portrait in Jazz, made later that year, credits it to Davis and Evans. His own trio soon changed what a piano trio could be.
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Giant Steps: his own tunes
Giant Steps John Coltrane · Atlantic LP 1311 · 1960
Twelve days after the last Kind of Blue session, Coltrane went into Atlantic Studios in New York with Tommy Flanagan, Paul Chambers and Art Taylor for his new label. All seven tunes are his own, and several are named for people close to him: his wife Naima, his daughter Syeeda, his cousin Mary, and Chambers, as "Mr. P.C." The title track races through key centers a major third apart, a pattern players now call Coltrane changes. Released in February 1960, it went the other way from Davis: more chords, not fewer, and faster. Every saxophone student still has to face it.
Start with
- Giant Steps
- Naima
- Mr. P.C.
On "Giant Steps" the chords change every beat or two, and Coltrane runs through them without letting up. "Naima," for his wife, comes from a later session, in December 1959, with Wynton Kelly and Jimmy Cobb; it is slow and moves over held bass notes. "Mr. P.C." is a fast minor blues for Chambers.
In the band
Tommy Flanagan · piano
Tommy Flanagan came from Detroit, moved to New York in 1956 and had already played on Sonny Rollins's Saxophone Colossus. The "Giant Steps" changes caught him out in the studio, and his solo on the issued take is one of the rare times he sounds unsure. Nobody held it against him. He spent years as Ella Fitzgerald's pianist and musical director, and was one of the most admired pianists in jazz until his death in 2001.
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A show tune on soprano
My Favorite Things John Coltrane · Atlantic LP 1361 · 1961
In the spring of 1960 Coltrane finally left Davis and formed his own band. By October it had settled: McCoy Tyner on piano, Steve Davis on bass, Elvin Jones on drums. Miles Davis had bought him a soprano saxophone on their European tour that March, an instrument hardly anyone in modern jazz played. Over a week of sessions at Atlantic Studios that October he recorded a 13-minute version of a Rodgers and Hammerstein song from The Sound of Music. An edited single became a radio hit in 1961, and the album sold half a million copies. It was the first of his records released with him on soprano, and it is how many people first heard him.
Start with
- My Favorite Things
- Summertime
- But Not For Me
On "My Favorite Things" Tyner and Coltrane drop the song's chords and solo over two vamps in waltz time, one minor and one major. Listen to how long Coltrane stays in each before the melody comes back. "Summertime" and "But Not For Me" are on tenor and show the other side of him in 1960, still working through fast-moving chords.
In the band
McCoy Tyner · piano
McCoy Tyner grew up in Philadelphia and met Coltrane there in 1955, when he was 16; Coltrane became like a big brother to him. In 1960 he spent about six months in the Jazztet with Benny Golson and Art Farmer before joining Coltrane. His chords, often built in fourths, and his heavy left hand became the floor the band stood on. He led his own groups until his death in 2020.
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The quartet meets a brass section
Africa/Brass The John Coltrane Quartet · Impulse! A-6 · 1961
In May 1961 the new label Impulse! bought out Coltrane's Atlantic contract, and his first record for it was his biggest setting yet. On May 23 and June 7, at Van Gelder's new studio in Englewood Cliffs, the quartet, now with Reggie Workman on bass, was joined by trumpets, French horns, euphoniums, a tuba and reeds, 21 players in all. Coltrane first asked Gil Evans to write the arrangements, but nothing came of it, so Eric Dolphy and McCoy Tyner did the orchestration. Creed Taylor produced. It is the closest Coltrane came to leading a big band.
Start with
- Africa
- Greensleeves
- Blues Minor
"Africa" and "Blues Minor" are Coltrane's own. The orchestra parts were adapted from Tyner's piano voicings, so listen for the piano's sound spread across the brass. "Greensleeves" is the old English folk song, which Coltrane chose himself and set with a shift between minor and major, much as he had with "My Favorite Things."
In the band
Eric Dolphy · alto sax
Eric Dolphy came from Los Angeles and played alto saxophone, flute and bass clarinet. He made his name with Chico Hamilton and Charles Mingus, and Coltrane made him a full member of his band in 1961. Here he is player and orchestrator at once. In 1964 he made Out to Lunch! for Blue Note, and that June he died in Berlin, of diabetes no one had diagnosed. He was 36.
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Live at the Vanguard, 1961
"Live" At The Village Vanguard Coltrane · Impulse! A-10 · 1962
In early November 1961 Impulse!'s new producer, Bob Thiele, recorded the band over several nights at the Village Vanguard in New York. Eric Dolphy was now a regular. Side two is a single track, "Chasin' The Trane," a blues more than 16 minutes long, played as a trio with no piano. When the record came out in February 1962, the Down Beat critic John Tynan called it part of a growing "anti-jazz" trend, and the magazine invited Coltrane and Dolphy to answer in print. It is now one of his most admired records, and the place to hear what his band sounded like in a club.
Start with
- Chasin' The Trane
- Spiritual
- Softly As In A Morning Sunrise
"Chasin' The Trane" is just tenor, Jimmy Garrison's bass and Elvin Jones's drums, and Coltrane keeps going chorus after chorus. "Spiritual" adds Dolphy on bass clarinet, with Coltrane on soprano. "Softly As In A Morning Sunrise" is an old standard played by the quartet, again with soprano, and the easiest way into the set.
In the band
Jimmy Garrison · bass
Jimmy Garrison was born in Miami and raised in Philadelphia, and had recorded with Ornette Coleman that year. "Chasin' The Trane" is one of his first recorded performances with Coltrane's group; in 1962 he formally replaced Reggie Workman. He became the quartet's anchor and stayed with Coltrane through every change to the end. He died in 1976, aged 42.
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A singer, and six ballads
John Coltrane And Johnny Hartman John Coltrane And Johnny Hartman · Impulse! A-40 · 1963
Coltrane asked Bob Thiele to set up a record with Johnny Hartman, a baritone he admired. Hartman wasn't sure; he didn't think of himself as a jazz singer. Thiele sent him to hear the quartet at Birdland, and after closing time Hartman, Coltrane and McCoy Tyner worked through songs. On March 7, 1963, at Van Gelder's, they recorded six, most in a single take. It came out that summer. It is the only record Coltrane made as a leader with a singer, and several of its versions are widely held as the definitive ones.
Start with
- They Say It's Wonderful
- You Are Too Beautiful
- Autumn Serenade
Listen to how the band makes room for the voice: Coltrane introduces and answers the melodies, and his solos are short. "They Say It's Wonderful" is an Irving Berlin song from Annie Get Your Gun. "You Are Too Beautiful" needed two takes, Hartman said, because Elvin Jones dropped a drumstick during the first.
In the band
Johnny Hartman · vocal
Johnny Hartman was born in Louisiana in 1923 and raised in Chicago. He sang with Earl Hines in 1946 and 1947, and briefly with Dizzy Gillespie's big band in 1948. His rich baritone suited ballads, but by the mid-1960s that style had little commercial pull, and in the 1970s he sang in cocktail lounges. This record kept his name alive. He died in 1983.
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The classic quartet as one
Crescent John Coltrane Quartet · Impulse! A-66 · 1964
By 1964 the quartet of Coltrane, McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison and Elvin Jones had been together for two years. On April 27 and June 1, at Van Gelder's in Englewood Cliffs, they made this record of five Coltrane tunes, released that July with notes by Nat Hentoff. It gives the band room: on side two, Coltrane doesn't take a solo at all. Instead you get a long bass solo and a feature for the drums. After the live date and the ballads, this is the place to hear the four of them as one unit, each with a voice.
Start with
- Crescent
- Lonnie's Lament
- The Drum Thing
"Crescent" opens the record. On "Lonnie's Lament," Garrison takes a long solo on bass. "The Drum Thing" is a feature for Elvin Jones, with saxophone and bass only at the start and end. Side one also holds "Wise One" and the short "Bessie's Blues," worth hearing next.
In the band
Elvin Jones · drums
Elvin Jones grew up in Pontiac, Michigan, the younger brother of pianist Hank Jones and trumpeter Thad Jones. He started out in Detroit and played in Sonny Rollins's trio before joining Coltrane in 1960. His drumming, thick with cross-rhythms, pushed Coltrane hard. He left in early 1966, uneasy with the band's new direction, and led his own groups, including the Elvin Jones Jazz Machine, until his death in 2004.
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A Love Supreme: the prayer
A Love Supreme John Coltrane · Impulse! A-77 · 1965
On December 9, 1964, the quartet recorded a suite in four parts in one session at Van Gelder's. In the notes, Coltrane wrote of a spiritual awakening he had in 1957, the year he got clean, and printed a devotional poem of his own. It came out in January 1965. His records usually sold about 30,000 copies; this one sold about half a million by 1970. People come back to it for a lifetime. It also opens the door to the freer music he made in the two and a half years he had left.
Start with
- A Love Supreme: Part I - Acknowledgement
- A Love Supreme: Part IV - Psalm
"Acknowledgement" opens with a gong and cymbals, then Garrison's bass sets out a four-note figure. Coltrane plays with it again and again, and near the end voices chant the title over it, Coltrane himself, overdubbed. In "Psalm" he plays the words of the poem on his horn instead of speaking them, a "wordless recitation," as the scholar Lewis Porter calls it.
In the band
McCoy Tyner · piano
McCoy Tyner was 25 at this session. Within a year Coltrane's music turned toward free playing, with a second tenor and a second drummer. Tyner said he couldn't see himself contributing to that, and he left at the end of 1965. He went on to lead his own bands for more than 50 years, and his chords in fourths became one of the most copied sounds in jazz piano.
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