John Coltrane – Crescent (Acoustic Sound Series)

Acoustic Sounds Series reissues from Verve/Universal Music Enterprises!

Monthly releases highlighting the world’s most historic and best jazz records!

Mastered by Ryan K. Smith at Sterling Sound from the original analog tapes

180-gram LPs pressed at Quality Record Pressings!

Stoughton Printing gatefold old-style tip-on jackets

Series supervised by Chad Kassem CEO of Acoustic Sounds

Ryan Smith has done a masterful job (no pun intended) with what again sounds like a master tape copy (unless the original tape has just lost some top end) at least based on a ‘top end’ comparison where on the original Coltrane’s sax has greater ‘presence’ texture and air and Jones’s drum kit more natural sizzle — as well as there being more ‘room air’ — but it’s also easy to make a case for far better bass and piano presentation on the reissue. Rudy’s original sounds as if he’s rolled off the bottom and done a bit of compression. Overall if forced to choose one, I’m not sure I’d take the original over the new reissue, though I’m not selling the original (mine’s a second label, red/black, but otherwise a first pressing). That’s how good this is.” — Music = 10/11; Sound = 10/11 — Michael Fremer, AnalogPlanet.com. To read Fremer’s full review, click here.

Released in 1964, Crescent is one of sax master John Coltrane’s finest albums, featuring the talents of McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison and Elvin Jones. During 1964 John Coltrane spent the least amount of time in the recording studio of his entire solo career. It wasn’t until April 27 that ‘Trane, along with Tyner, Garrison and Jones went to the familiar surroundings of Rudy Van Gelder’s Englewood Cliff’s studio to begin work on the album that came to be called, Crescent.

They recorded all the tracks that appear on Crescent, along with “Songs Of Praise,” but not the final versions of the album’s five tracks. From that first day’s recording the ones that make the final cut are, “Lonnie’s Lament,” “The Drum Thing” and “Wise One.” The first two of these three tracks make up all of side two of the album and on “Lonnie’s Lament” Coltrane does not solo at all, instead it features a long bass solo by Garrison.

Garrison’s widow recalled that this album along with A Love Supreme, which was released a year later in 1965, were the two that her husband listened to the most.