Category: Tommy Flanagan

John Coltrane

I’ve checked, and to date, I’ve only mentioned John Coltrane twice on my blog. Let me clarify: this lack of coverage is not for lack of admiration, it is after all not by chance that I’ve listed the amazing album My Favorite Things in My 25 Essential Jazz Albums.

It is just that overall, so much more has been written about the Jazz legends, both online and offline, than about current contemporary musicians.

Therefore, I try to focus a lot of my Jazz writing here on recordings of the last 2 decades.

That said, every once in a while the record industry finds a smart way of re-releasing existing content, which gives me a nice excuse to write about it.

Coltrane’58 – The Prestige Recordings (Prestige Remaster 2019)

To make it clear: there is no new content on this box that hasn’t been released previously. What is interesting about it is essentially two things: a remaster of the original recordings, and the chronological ordering of all of his recordings.

You get 37 tracks, all recorded in the year of 1958 when Coltrane signed with Prestige, and started to emerge as the star and legend he was bound to become in the following years. They are taken from albums such as Soultrane, Lush Life, or Kenny Burrell & John Coltrane.

Personally, I don’t think this year is as great as some of his all time masterpieces, be it Giant Steps (1959), My Favorite Things (1960) or obviously A Love Supreme (1964).

That said, this is nevertheless a box of thoroughly enjoyable music, uniting such fantastic musicians such as Tommy Flanagan, Red Garland, Paul Chambers, Jimmy Cobb, Louis Hayes or Art Taylor as the rhythm section, and great soloists such as Kenny Burrell and Freddy Hubbard.

Furthermore, the remastering really is quite well done, apparently taken directly from the original master tapes. Prestige unfortunately never was one of the “audiophile” labels, that said, for a 60 year old recording, this entire box really is fully enjoyable.

Before buying it, you may want to check out which of the original albums you may already own, or if you already (like me) have the Complete Prestige Recordings box set, in which case the only reason for buying would be the remastering.

If you don’t have any of these albums yet, this is a purchase I can recommend without any hesitation.

My rating: 4 stars

You can find it here (Qobuz)