Billboard : 01/30/1961
Spotlight Winner of the Week

Coltrane, who has been garnering much critical praise for his unorthodox rambling improvisations recently comes up with a rather typical set here. His material is unusual, his tempos varied enough to sustain interest, and his rhythm section sure and swinging. The tenor sax star always gets plays from modern jazz jocks, and his Little Old Lady and eerie Harmonique should grab even more.

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Cashbox : 02/11/1961

Seven of the eight racks were recorded soon after the artist’s break with Miles Davis and reveal his intense development of completely personal style. In originals (Harmonique, Fifth House, Like Sonny) and obscure oldies (Little Old Lady, I’ll Wait and Pray) he strives for and attains wholly unique expressions and not just in an experimental state, although that phase is recognizable. Accompaniment is by the Davis rhythm section. The work of a great artist.

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American Record Guide
Mait Edey : July, 1961

The most influential (which in the jazz world tends to mean the most doggedly imitated) saxophonist playing today is John Coltrane, a musician who is at once brilliant and deficient. His style is fashioned almost entirely of rapid scales and arpeggios of enormous harmonic sophistication, interspersed with shrill sustained notes in the higher register and occasional jagged motifs constructed of notes spaced at wide intervals. His brilliance is almost entirely harmonic. Harmonic variations (in the form of extensions of and superimpositions on the chords) pour out of his tenor with astonishing speed and variety. An additional fascination is his virtually infallible technique, which enables him to play those scales and arpeggios so fast that the individual notes seem to merge into what Zita Carno has called “sheets of sound”. And his sense of time is unfailingly precise, so fine that what seems to be a stream of sixteenth notes at a fast tempo might actually contain notes tied in groups of five, or even seven or nine.

His deficiencies are melodic, rhythmic, and in use of instrumental tone. Arpeggios and scales alone do not constitute melody, and Coltrane rarely plays a line which can be called a melody except in the very broadest sense. His ability to make those minute temporal discriminations over the meter doesn’t, somehow, provide him with the essential elements of swing: anticipations, retards, and the conjunction of notes of different time value. Purely rhythmic tension and release are almost absent. And his tone (hard, dry, usually without vibrato) is functionless in the sense that it does not vary with context to provide that added dimension to the phrase which is so important in the work of most of the best jazz players.

Coltrane is now under contract with Atlantic Records. His first Atlantic LP (Giant Steps, Atlantic 1311) appeared about a year ago, and is in my opinion an excellent album and his best to date. It contains several lovely original compositions, and Tommy Flanagan provides the most intelligent and sympathetic accompaniment Coltrane has ever had on record. Atlantic has now released this second LP, recorded shortly after the first with a rhythm section composed of Wynton Kelly, piano, Paul Chambers, bass, and Jimmy Cobb, drums, all either active or past members of the Miles Davis quintet, as was Coltrane himself until fairly recently. (One track has a different rhythm section.) Kelly is a dependable accompanist (considered by some to be one of the best) and sometimes a tasty soloist when he keeps clear of the Red Garland mannerisms which have been creeping into his work lately. However, he is not Tommy Flanagan, and I miss the difference. Most of the material on the first LP ranged in tempo from medium to very fast. There are more slow performances on the second; Coltrane seems to be making an effort to play warmer, more lyrical music than in the past (whether because he feels it or because he has been convinced that he should I can’t say). I feel that his natural abilities are not of this sort; slow tempos as such don’t elicit any new tenderness or warmth, but simply tempt him into a kind of nervous and aimless noodling. Of course, these are my high standards talking; I’ve learned to expect the exceptional from Coltrane, and don’t judge him by the ordinary standards of competence. By those standards this is a very good album. It is also an easier introduction to his style for those who are unfamiliar with it than the first Atlantic album was.

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HiFi / Stereo Review
Nat Hentoff : May, 1961

Interest: Major jazz tenorman
Performance: Forceful and personal
Recording: Good
Stereo Quality: Competent

As in the previous Giant Steps collection, this John Coltrane album should present few problems for the jazz listener. In these two sets, Coltrane is not so profligate with notes nor so absorbed in complex harmonic explorations as he has been before. His own themes are clear and arresting, and his solos are intense and cohesive.

Coltrane’s tone is urgent and contains more of the “cry” at the roots of jazz than the work of most of his contemporaries. Among other expressive performances, there is a brooding blues, an exceptionally tender ballad (I’ll Wait and Pray), and a fiercely yearning original, Fifth House. The notes, incidentally, refer to a soprano saxophone on one track. It’s not there.

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High Fidelity
John S. Wilson : April, 1961

Coltrane‘s several years of painful public experimentation as he explored the potential of his tenor saxophone have begun to pay off with remarkably cultivated and deeply expressive performances. The title tune on Lush Life is an impressively limber, thoughtful, and strongly emotional creation by Coltrane, with challenging addenda by Red Garland, piano, and Donald Byrd, trumpet. Coltrane reveals several of his abilities here. His firm, lyrical lines on a ballad and the sinuous, cutting treatment of a slow blues are extremely effective. But a plunge into his odd “sheets of sound” style quickly becomes monotonous. The Atlantic disc includes his first recording on soprano saxophone – a very tentative sample that does not do justice to the facility he has developed on this instrument. The easy, unforced quality of Coltrane’s recent playing is emphasized throughout this collection, but there are occasional slips into needlessly flat statements of ballad themes.

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San Francisco Chronicle
C.H. Garrigues : 02/12/1961

One of the minor mysteries of modern jazz has been the failure of John Coltrane to make a wholly satisfactory album.

Those who heard him at his most recent appearances here (either at the Monterey Jazz Festival or later at the Jazz Workshop) would find it difficult to doubt that he is the greatest living tenor saxophonist – perhaps one of the truly great figures of jazz.

That he is “far out” must be admitted. Although he is not “out” in the sense that Mingus is “out” or that Coleman is “out,” the logic of his solos is sometimes difficult to follow.

Yet when one has found the logic and has learned to follow it, it is compelling and indisputable. One listens in amazement and delight to what Coltrane has to say and one leaves reluctantly – in the hope of hearing more on the next night.

It is curious that this happens so seldom on a Coltrane record – a record, that is, where ‘Trane is the nominal leader. The competence is there, the technical achievement of what he sets out to do. But he starts out to do so little, in comparison with his “in person” performances, that the Coltrane fan is likely to be disappointed with the results.

To some degree, the album considered here may provide a possible clue to the heart of the mystery. Seven of the eight tracks hereon were made with Coltrane and the then Miles Davis rhythm section (Kelly, Chambers, Cobb); the other track was cut some months later with Coltrane leading his own group (McCoy Tyner, Steve Davis, Elvin Jones).

The difference between the seven tracks and the later one appears precisely the difference between Coltrane recorded and Coltrane live. And that difference seems to rest with the fact that Coltrane seems to lay back, to make his excursions somewhat tentatively, when working with the Davis group, and only to give free rein to his tremendously creative musical imagination when playing with his own men.

That this should be true is perhaps not surprising. The Davis rhythm section was created to work with Davis; it has been Coltrane’s lot to work with them, night after night, as another sideman. Not one of the three plays, on these tracks, the Coltrane way. Each, it must be admitted, is probably a superior musician to his opposite number in the Coltrane group. But the result is that Coltrane (an excessively modest performer who is never sure
of his own work) seems to hesitate to assert himself boldly as he never does hesitate when working with his own men.

The new album is, by and large, the most satisfactory of the Coltrane LP’s to date. But Atlantic has cataloged a new album, not yet released, to be called My Favorite Things. It is to be hoped this may prove to be a Coltrane Quartet album throughout, made with the new group and with ‘Trane playing on soprano sax as he does on the one track of the present album.

The arrival of such an album will be awaited with much interest.

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Saturday Review
Wilder Hobson : 04/29/1961

The tenor saxophonist John Coltrane ranks among the heroes of his horn. Long an improviser of dazzling chromatic originality and velocity (his playing has often been described as “sheets of sound”), he has gradually been simplifying and refining his expression until the day has come when his old admirers are almost bound to think of the abandoned power he is holding in reserve. By the same token, some of them may yearn for the old breathless fantasias. I, for one, would not wish to give up my discs of the old Coltrane, but I find the newer man delightful for the poised and restrained shaping of his choruses. Two new LPs offer examples. Coltrane Jazz (Atlantic 1354) includes several originals and such standards as Little Old Lady and My Shining Hour. The early complexities of Coltrane concealed a plaintive lyricism that is very evident here. My Favorite Things (Atlantic 1361) contains the Richard Rodgers title theme, together with Everytime We Say Goodbye, Summertime, and But Not for Me. On the first two tracks, Coltrane plays the soprano saxophone, and immediately proves himself a master of that instrument. On the first LP, seven out of eight tracks are made with Wynton Kelly, piano; Paul Chambers, bass; and Jimmy Cobb, drums. The eighth track, and the second LP, include McCoy Tyner, piano; Steve Davis, bass; and Elvin Jones, drums.

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Down Beat : 03/16/1961
Don DeMichael : 4.5 stars

One of the compelling elements of jazz is an artist’s striving to surpass his “best” effort to date. This striving, unfortunately, is a two-edged sword. On the one hand, it can result in more gratifying playing (“better,” if you prefer). On the other, the “best” can diminish the impact on listeners’ of future efforts if they do not measure up to the previous work.

Coltrane produced his most attractive album last year – Giant Steps. It was a mature and intense statement. Coltrane Jazz is not the album Giant Steps was, either in artistry or intensity. Still, it’s an exciting record, one that at the same time is similar to, yet different from, the first of the Atlantic albums. It is similar in personnel (the tenor-rhythm setup; Kelly, Chambers, and Cobb were also present on Naima, one of the tracks in the first album) but different in concept (the first found Coltrane fiery in his running of the difficult changes of some of tunes; on this one he plays linearly and calmly, although there was evidence of this also in Giant Steps).

Coltrane seems to be in a period when he is more concerned with intervals than with scales. The line he carves on Fifth House, which is built on What Is This Thing Called Love?, involves intervals of a flatted ninth, giving the melody an Eastern flavor. He continues in this vein during his solo. The continuity of statement and improvisation is not broken until Kelly solos.

Perhaps the reason this album does not come up to the level of Giant Steps is that Coltrane has not developed this interval approach as well as he had the scaler one he used so well in the first album.

Another new horizon Coltrane has yet to conquer is the use of the harmonics of the saxophone. Harmonics, in this case, is the simultaneous production of two or three “false” notes by embouchure and fingering manipulations. I heard Coltrane do this in a hotel room several months ago, and was startled by the eerie (no other term describes it) effect. He pulled the trick off beautifully. But on this album, he’s not so successful with it.

On the 3/4 blues Harmonique, the harmonics are an integral part of the melody. Sometimes the harmonics come out; at other times nothing is heard except a sort of fzzzzzpt. Perhaps the radical changes of embouchure required were too sudden. At any rate, Coltrane deserves praise for at least trying something quite difficult. But where he uses the effect as an ending (Wait and Pray), he succeeds. That he will eventually master this device I haven’t the slightest doubt.

On the one track, Village Blues, having basically the personnel of his present group (Tyner, Davis, and Jones), Coltrane unveils his soprano saxophone. The sound he achieves is so like his tenor sound that I could not tell when he was playing soprano and when tenor.

This track, besides providing the listener with a puzzle, shows the direction of Coltrane’s group. The track has symmetry, linearism and rhythmic variety. The use of [music notes] and its variant [different music notes] is heard throughout this track. (These figures are coming into more general use of late, but they have been one of the characteristics of jazz since its beginnings. The relative space between the two notes can be found in all jazz. It may take the form of these figures, or it may appear in other guises.)

Some of Coltrane’s best lyrical playing, not a gushy lyricism but a sharp-angled, cutting one, is on Wait and Pray, where his solo seems to grow out of the melody statement, and Some Other Blues. Of the originals he wrote for the date, Like Sonny (Rollins) is the most intriguing. It’s a circular composition, which ascends and descends in sequences without sounding like an exercise.

Kelly’s solos provide good changes of pace after Coltrane, lilting respites that magnify rather than diminish the tenor solos.

Chambers solos well, and his section work, especially on the tracks that call for ostinato bass, is sparkling. Cobb, who in other circumstances has been guilty of playing too much, is excellent. But the virtues of being a part of Coltrane’s permanent group show on Village Blues – there’s a closer affinity between the tenorist and the rhythm section.

This album may not be another Giant Steps, but it is valuable nonetheless.

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Liner Notes by Zita Carno

I once mentioned in an article I wrote for Jazz Review something to the effect that John Coltrane is always into things – always coming up with something unexpected and startling. Shortly after that I found out on two separate occasions just how true this statement really is.

On both occasions I stumbled on some behind-the-scenes activity. The first time I dropped by to visit with ‘Trane, late in 1959, I found him practicing, with the tape recorder going. The sounds coming out of that tenor of his were beyond belief – he seemed to be playing two notes at once, what string players call double-stops. Not that little trick some reedmen use of humming or singing a note and playing another one above or below it, but real honest-to-goodness notes and on occasion he could get three at a time.

That was when I found out about the harmonics on a tenor saxophone. ‘Trane told me he’d learned how to do them from some tenor man in Philly, had been working on them for some time, and “only now I’m starting to get them.” He explained how they were done – something about a certain way of tightening up the embouchure and certain fingerings – but I couldn’t quite grasp it, since I’m not a tenor saxophonist and don’t know very much about the mechanics of the instrument. However, that didn’t stop me from listening, making a comment here and there, and learning something.

The second time I was really floored. I went out to ‘Trane’s house one day earlier this year – soon after the Miles Davis group had returned from a long West Coast concert tour – and was stunned to see him open up a case and take out a soprano saxophone. “Hey, what’s this?” I asked him. “Don’t tell me you’re hearing things beyond even your range on the tenor?” ‘Trane, who has often accused me of hearing “things he didn’t want me to hear,” said that he was planning to use the soprano as an extension of the tenor. He’d picked up the little horn (and a spare tenor) while on the Coast.

But my biggest shock was yet to come. I’d heard soprano saxophones before – on records mostly, although I had heard Steve Lacy with Monk – but I was totally unprepared for soprano sax, Coltrane-style. For nearly an hour he played it, and I listened. He played it just like the tenor, and he got a sound out of it that was practically indistinguishable from the sound he gets on the tenor – except in the highest register where he makes it sound like an oboe. However (as usual), he wasn’t satisfied. The sound wasn’t quite what he wanted, he said, and he’d have to work on it.

The point I’m trying to make is that this constant experimentation, this never-ending probing into new things and new ways to do older things, is characteristic of ‘Trane. This applies not only to his playing, but also to his writing – to his whole way of thinking. He runs up on something new, works around with it till he gets what he wants, and incorporates it into his overall conception. His previous Atlantic album, Giant Steps, offers ample proof of this; take, for example, the characteristic up-a-minor-third-down-a-fifth progression of the title tune, the use of pedal-tones on Spiral and Naima. All these are the products of endless experimentation and working-out, and ‘Trane isn’t finished yet.

Coltrane Jazz (and I couldn’t think of a more apt description of what he does!) was recorded immediately after Giant Steps, with the exception of one track (Village Blues, recorded later), and in many ways represents a continuation of the ideas and concepts presented in the preceding record. The five Coltrane originals on this album could almost – note the almost – be called “more of the same,” inasmuch as two of the tunes make good use of the pedal-tone and/or the ostinato bass (actually three, because Harmonique has a B-flat running through the bass line almost constantly) and one has the characteristic Giant Steps changes in the bridge. But somehow, the treatment is different. There’s something else in there. Even the three standards (and notice that Trane manages to pick the seldom-done ones to record) sound different.

Before I go into detail about the tunes, a word concerning the personnel: seven of the tracks were recorded, apparently, at the same session as Naima – the rhythm section on those tracks consists of Wynton Kelly on piano, Paul Chambers on bass and Jimmy Cobb on drums. Village Blues was recorded sometime after ‘Trane had organized his own group: McCoy Tyner is on piano, Steve Davis on bass and Elvin Jones on drums.

Little Old Lady is one of those infrequently-heard or “not-so-standard” standards. Apparently the “little old lady” ‘Trane had in mind is quite a spry little swinger, for he takes this one at a medium-up-tempo that grooves from beginning to end. Nothing complicated here – he plays the tune, including the verse, then Kelly and Chambers (the latter playing pizzicato) have a solo chorus apiece, then ‘Trane returns to take it out but instead of stopping short at the end he fades out over a Latin beat.

Village Blues is the first of the Coltrane originals to appear on this record – a “down” sort of blues, strangely evocative. Over an ostinato figure in the bass, Tyner states the deceptively simple theme at first, then Coltrane picks it up. This is the track on which he makes his first recorded appearance with the aforementioned soprano saxophone – he plays both horns on this track, and here’s a little puzzle for the listener: which horn did he start with?

My Shining Hour is done here as a bright-tempoed swinger, with ‘Trane blowing in his usual warm, straightforward fashion. I have noticed for a long time that even at a fast tempo his playing has in it a remarkable lyricism at once thoughtful and intense – this is one of the most salient features of his style.

Fifth House is one of Trane’s most powerful lines, and a tune which offers another puzzle to the listener. It is based on the Countdown changes superimposed part of the way on a pedal C and G – yet one gets an idea that this tune may be based on a standard; the way the phrases move hints at this.

Harmonique gets its title from the harmonics ‘Trane plays on the theme. A deliberate and down-to-earth blues in 3/4 time, it has an almost Monkish humor in its wide skips which find Trane jumping from a low note to a high harmonic and in the accentuation of the first beat by the bass. It is also a bit reminiscent of another 3/4 blues I’ve heard him play – McCoy Tyner’s The Believer. ‘Trane fools some more with the harmonics at the start of his solo, then goes right into his “typical Coltrane blues stuff.”

Like Sonny is so called, says Coltrane, because he once heard Sonny Rollins play the little figure on which the tune is built, and he liked it so much he decided to use it in one of his own lines. I’ve always called it his impression of Sonny. Either way, it’s a very attractive little theme, Latin-flavored at the beginning, then going into straight swinging.

I’ll Wait And Pray – again, a seldom-done standard – is the only ballad of the set, and it gives ‘Trane a chance to demonstrate his wonderful way with a ballad. Soloing all the way, he blows with warmth and intensity, making effective use of his expressive high register, while the rhythm section backs him up sensitively. (Note the harmonic he plays at the end of this one.)

Some Other Blues is just that. A friend of mine – another tenor man – heard this one and remarked that it “started out like Now’s The Time and turned into some other blues.” Everyone wails here, and there’s a brilliant exchange of fours before they take it out.

And there you have it – Coltrane Jazz. From this point on I will not say any more – I’ll just let Mr. Coltrane take over and do the talking himself.