The Album
Recorded on February 7, 1958 at Van Gelder Studio in Hackensack, New Jersey, Soultrane captured John Coltrane at a pivotal moment - freshly returned to the Miles Davis fold after kicking heroin, playing with the quartet-turned-trio-plus-Trane lineup of Red Garland, Paul Chambers and Arthur Taylor that had backed him on his prior Prestige dates. The album is built almost entirely on standards and jazz staples rather than originals, letting Coltrane stretch his emerging "sheets of sound" approach across familiar changes, most dramatically on the extended workout of Tadd Dameron's "Good Bait." Liner notes by Ira Gitler, who is often credited with coining the "sheets of sound" phrase around this period, frame the record as a showcase of Coltrane's harmonic density and relentless self-critical drive to improve. "Theme For Ernie," a Fred Lacey tune dedicated to the recently deceased saxophonist Ernie Henry, gives the album a note of elegy amid the otherwise driving program. Soultrane arrived during Coltrane's prolific 1955-1958 run as a prominent sideman and emerging leader on Prestige, just before his stint with Thelonious Monk and his eventual signing to Atlantic, and it stands as one of the key documents of his transition from promising tenor man to a fully formed and increasingly exploratory voice. It remains a touchstone of hard-bop tenor playing and is widely regarded by critics and historians as one of the strongest of Coltrane's Prestige-era leader dates.