While Trane's Impulse! catalog is rightly venerated, and his earlier, hard-bop–leaning Prestige Records era mined for seeds of genius and development, 'Trane's work at Atlantic Records (roughly 1959–1966) is less revered. For hungry 'Trane fans, it's also less available as high-quality all-analog reissues. Analogue Productions markets five Atlantic remasters, but these records are practically unobtainable in mono.
"The Atlantic period was a bridge between Trane's work with Miles Davis and the Impulse! modal breakout," guitarist, composer, and music curator Tom Chang told me in an interview. "But it's also significant on its own, aside from being just a bridge. His innovations, both harmonically and within group interplay, laid the groundwork for his famous quartet with Elvin Jones, McCoy Tyner, and Jimmy Garrison."
'Trane's Atlantic era innovations include what has come to be known as "Trane Changes," his inventive method for navigating chord modulations, as heard in "Giant Steps." He introduced a modal concept and brought the soprano saxophone into jazz. Collaborating with trumpeter Don Cherry on The Avant-Garde—which sounds decidedly un–avant-garde today—Coltrane, along with Yusef Lateef, helped introduce the "drones" common in Indian classical music. It was also a move away from burnout velocity toward a more mindful, meditative approach, which would find its fruition on Impulse! The Atlantic period was when Coltrane pushed jazz to its conventional limits, then reimagined it entirely, creating, alongside Alice Coltrane, a new jazz language reflected today in the music of Isaiah Collier, Nduduzo Makhathini, and Kamasi Washington, among others.
Sadly, the sound of Coltrane's original Atlantic albums fails to impress. That open wound lies perhaps with one man: Tom Dowd, the engineer for the bulk of Trane's Atlantic sessions as well as those of Aretha Franklin, Derek and the Dominos, Ray Charles, Booker T. & the M.G.'s, and countless other chart-topping artists. While Dowd was an innovative engineer (and producer), the sound of his jazz recordings, compared to contemporaries Rudy Van Gelder and Roy DuNann, is often noisy and lacking dimensionality and balance, and it often exhibits a degree of coarseness. Could it be rescued with a top-quality remastering? It was long past time to find out.
Rhino Records' six-LP box set John Coltrane 1960–1964 (081227808440) is all-analog, cut from original mono master tapes by Kevin Gray at Cohearent and pressed on 180gm vinyl at Optimal. Included are six albums: Giant Steps, Coltrane Jazz, My Favorite Things, Olé Coltrane, Coltrane Plays the Blues, and Coltrane's Sound. Heavyweight, glossy gatefold jackets replicate the French covers, with the original US cover art inside. The set is housed in a crimson linen, foil-stamped slipcase. This is a numbered edition, limited to 2000 copies, available exclusively at rhino.com.
My 1961 first mono pressing of Olé Coltrane (Atlantic 1373) produced a tight, constricted mono image, spiraling soprano, and squeaky flute suffocated in edgy, coarse, peaky sound. The Rhino remaster offers better resolution, a rounder, sweeter atmosphere, and a better sense of instruments in space. It's not a radical transformation (as some Tone Poets are), but this is a more refined, listenable version, with (perhaps paradoxically for a mono release) both a wider center field and sharper focus.
My 1962 first stereo pressing of Coltrane Plays the Blues (Atlantic SD 1382) is one of those hard-panned early stereo discs that dissects music like a fly under glass: drums and piano shoved hard right, tenor and bass hard left, with a hollow center. The sound is flat and shallow. The Rhino mono remaster is completely different, and better: bass like a bowl of chocolate ice cream, rich and opulent. The mix sounds whole, with Trane's fat tenor squarely front and center, blooming into the room.
The 1964 first stereo pressing of Coltrane's Sound (Atlantic SD 1419) fares better than the others: more homogenous, less hard-panned, more dimensional. The Rhino mono pushes the bass too hard, and Trane's tenor is slightly less distinct. Yet, the added weight, focus, and drive more than compensate. It's much more closely run, but the reissue is an improvement.
Set highlights include a quieter, tighter-bassed "Giant Steps"; a sumptuous remastering of the ballad "Naima"; and the nearly 14-minute "My Favorite Things," where Trane transforms a sentimental, corny Broadway showtune into a hypnotic modal statement—soprano droning and looping like a snake around its charmer. It became a top-40 radio hit and established John Coltrane as both a popular artist and an enduring trailblazer. For those new to Coltrane, 1960–1964 is a wonderful entry point into his genius
