GIANT STEPS - JOHN COLTRANE - ORIGINAL ATLANTIC DG STEREO LP AWESOME FIDELITY -

$

199

Original stereo deep groove pressing Giant Steps by John Coltrane.   vinyl would be near mint except for small scratch which makes random soft and hard tics for about a minute on second song side one.  rest of record plays near mint with awesome fidelity,  better experience than mono version imo.  Cover is vg++ with beautiful front laminated cover,  no edge wear.  slightly dinged corners,  name written upper left corner back cover.  no splits.  labels are excellent with name written on one label. see pictures.  Has original inner sleeve also.    this lp provides an awesome listening experience due to its a first pressing and the pure recording technique used by Tom Dowd, who used no eq on the instruments I understand.     shipping overseas is with tracking and insurance and costs 49 dollars.  domestic shipping is 10 dollars with insurance. thanks.  please see my other listings for fine jazz .  

History will undoubtedly enshrine this disc as a watershed the likes of which may never truly be appreciated. Giant Steps bore the double-edged sword of furthering the cause of the music as well as delivering it to an increasingly mainstream audience. Although this was John Coltrane's debut for Atlantic, he was concurrently performing and recording with Miles Davis. Within the space of less than three weeks, Coltrane would complete his work with Davis and company on another genre-defining disc, Kind of Blue, before commencing his efforts on this one. Coltrane (tenor sax) is flanked by essentially two different trios. Recording commenced in early May of 1959 with a pair of sessions that featured Tommy Flanagan (piano) and Art Taylor (drums), as well as Paul Chambers -- who was the only bandmember other than Coltrane to have performed on every date. When recording resumed in December of that year, Wynton Kelly (piano) and Jimmy Cobb (drums) were instated -- replicating the lineup featured on Kind of Blue, sans Miles Davis of course. At the heart of these recordings, however, is the laser-beam focus of Coltrane's tenor solos. All seven pieces issued on the original Giant Steps are likewise Coltrane compositions. He was, in essence, beginning to rewrite the jazz canon with material that would be centered on solos -- the 180-degree antithesis of the art form up to that point. These arrangements would create a place for the solo to become infinitely more compelling. This would culminate in a frenetic performance style that noted jazz journalist Ira Gitler accurately dubbed "sheets of sound." Coltrane's polytonal torrents extricate the amicable and otherwise cordial solos that had begun decaying the very exigency of the genre -- turning it into the equivalent of easy listening. He wastes no time as the disc's title track immediately indicates a progression from which there would be no looking back. Line upon line of highly cerebral improvisation snake between the melody and solos, practically fusing the two. The resolute intensity of "Countdown" does more to modernize jazz in 141 seconds than many artists do in their entire careers. Tellingly, the contrasting and ultimately pastoral "Naima" was the last tune to be recorded, and is the only track on the original long-player to feature the Kind of Blue quartet. What is lost in tempo is more than recouped in intrinsic melodic beauty.

As Tom recalls, "When Atlantic Records vacated the space that doubled as our office/recording studio, I expanded the 'office' space to make a larger recording chamber. I built Atlantic's first stereo console so that we could record stereo and monophonically simultaneously. Because of the size of the room we were limited as to how large a group we could record comfortably. Among the groups that 'fit' the room perfectly was John Coltrane's Quartet."

"John would show up an hour early, take out his horn and start running scales. He would stand in a corner, facing the wall, play for a few minutes, stop, change reeds and start again. This is the same way classical musicians practice before a recital. After a while he would settle on the mouth piece and reed that felt most comfortable to him and now he would start to work on 'runs' that he wanted to use during the session. I would watch him play the same passage over and over again, changing his breathing, his fingering, experimenting with minute phrasing permutations. Once in a while he would go back to a mouth piece that he abandoned earlier. He never lost control, every step had a reason and almost everything he played would be acceptable to everybody but him. Until he felt comfortable that he had exhausted all the possibilities he would continue to play the various permutations."

"As I observed him playing I could not detect any of the joints of his hands or fingers. He didn't seem to have any bones, he played with 'feathers.' His technique involved complete confidence, control and composure. When a session was over, he was as much at ease as someone walking through the park, listening to the birds singing, the children playing. Stereo discs had not yet been introduced to the public but we would play the tape recording back that way to give ourselves a rush. John is gone, the rush is still there."

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