Blue Note

March 6 2018

On March 9, John Coltrane’s transcendent Blue Train album will be released in a limited 60th Anniversary color vinyl LP edition. Limited to 1000 copies worldwide and available exclusively from The Sound of Vinyl, the collectible special edition presents the classic album’s stereo mix on a 180-gram LP pressed on opaque blue with black swirls vinyl.

This Thursday, March 8, members of The Sound of Vinyl Text Message service will receive early access to purchase the limited edition Blue Train color vinyl LP, one day before it is available for purchase on The Sound of Vinyl website. Sign up for The Sound of Vinyl Text Message service here: https://thesoundofvinyl.us/access/sov-signup-coltrane-blue-train.html

This Friday, March 9, the limited edition Blue Train color vinyl LP will be available for purchase on The Sound of Vinyl website: http://thesoundofvinyl.us

In 1957, while still discovering his own voice on the tenor saxophone in bands led by Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane enlisted a band of peers to record a new album at Rudy Van Gelder’s Hackensack, NJ studio. With a new spirit rising, Coltrane was joined by trumpeter Lee Morgan, trombonist Curtis Fuller, pianist Kenny Drew, and the rhythm section from Davis’s classic ‘50s quintet -- bassist Paul Chambers and drummer Philly Joe Jones -- to create Blue Train, a 40-minute-plus masterwork that stands as one of the greatest jazz records of all time. Released in December 1957, Blue Train was Coltrane’s second album as leader and his sole recording under his own name for Blue Note Records.

Coltrane went on to launch new rockets of interstellar music, including 1959’s groundbreaking Giant Steps, 1964’s sublime jazz prayer A Love Supreme, and 1966’s large ensemble expedition Ascension, which sparked the burgeoning free jazz movement. But it all started for Coltrane with Blue Train, a pioneering five-song, blues-steeped, post-bop outing that exhilarates with pockets of brawn and poetry, excursions of ferocity and finesse, stretches of blazing velocity and soulful tenderness. By all measures it began as an organic session with four spirited Trane originals and a gorgeous rendition of the Jerome Kern-Johnny Mercer ballad, “I’m Old Fashioned.” Graced by the incantations of inspired improvisation, Blue Train yielded a transcendence that few recordings achieve. Coltrane himself recognized the consummate character of Blue Train, referring to it later in his career as one of his favorite recordings.