Blue Train (Deluxe Edition)

[Late]

Now Coltrane's Blue Train fits on two discs. 

[mandrill]

It's a Blue Gravy Train edition.

[felser]

Per CDJapan:  " Includes six unreleased takes of "Blue Train" and "Moment's Notice."  Pass.

[Late]

2 hours ago, felser said:

"Includes six unreleased takes of "Blue Train" and "Moment's Notice."  Pass.

As well as the :06 studio chatter clip "Coltrane Sneezes."

Plus "Coltrane Sneezes (alt.#1)" and "Coltrane Sneezes (alt.#2)."

Must have been Lee Morgan's after shave.

[Pim]

3 hours ago, Late said:

As well as the :06 studio chatter clip "Coltrane Sneezes."

Plus "Coltrane Sneezes (alt.#1)" and "Coltrane Sneezes (alt.#2)."

Must have been Lee Morgan's after shave.

Hahaha this made me laugh!

[JSngry]

How lon has THIS Trane been gone?

[jazzbo]

I have a handful of UHQCDs pressed in Japan this year and last and it may be system dependent but they sound really good on my system. So at least the discs should sound good. Probably decent alternates too. 

[JSngry]

Fwiw, what I think are ALL the outtakes have been circulating for a while, and I can tell you that imo, I'd pay a fair price (but not more) for this, and then be done with it.

The real drag is Curtis Fuller, he's not got that much to say over and over. But Trane, yeah, and to a lesser extent, Lee. The main problem is with the ensembles.

But that CD Japan price, plus shipping, that's more than I'd be willing to pay. Between US $20-25 though, all-inclusive, yeah.

[jazzbo]

I'm with you. Over the years I've cooled to much of Mr. Fuller's playing. I do business with cdjapan all the time and get "points" that translate to a lot of the shipping cost going away so it doesn't seem that expensive to me. especially as it's UHQCD. I too have the material from "elsewhere" (via a saint).

If this had come out in the US (like the Miles, Monk, Bu, Brownie of a few years ago) it would be about 25. . . . Not sure if it's coming out in the US though. Probably. It's Coltrane on Blue Note, corn fed animal to take to market.

[Rooster_Ties]

2 hours ago, JSngry said:

The real drag is Curtis Fuller, he's not got that much to say over and over. But Trane, yeah, and to a lesser extent, Lee. The main problem is with the ensembles.

A "darn good" date, sure - but nowhere near the semi-magnum-opus it's been marketed to be over the years.  And yeah, the ensembles are way more sloppy than one could ever imagine, considering its street-cred.  And Curtis has always seemed to be phoning it in here.

How did this album become such a revered cash cow for Blue Note?  Was it just the title track being hummable as all get-out, and the cover being as iconic as hell?  If so, a killer combo, indeed.

I don't know that it reached Sidewinder-esque sales back in its day, but I'm betting sales of Blue Train after 1980 probably matched (or eclipsed?) Sidewinder even.  I think I may have even seen copies for sale at Starbucks 10-15 years ago (but never Sidewinder).  As a result, to this day, I'm convinced that there are probably a couple thousand Gen Xers out there who've only ever owned 5 jazz CD's (or less), and two of them are Kind of Blue and Blue Train.

A good album, sure (arguably top-100, I suppose) -- but nowhere near its near "top-10 jazz albums of all time" perceived status by more than a handful of people.  But an absolute feat of marketing, I'll give it that.

[JSngry]

2 hours ago, Rooster_Ties said:

How did this album become such a revered cash cow for Blue Note?  Was it just the title track being hummable as all get-out, and the cover being as iconic as hell?  If so, a killer combo, indeed.

The Title/lead tune + Moments Notice make for an endlessly repeatable/enjoyable LP side. and Lazy Bird makes it worth sticking out the second side.

[Dan Gould]

Completely disagree. As far as I am concerned Blue Train is the only desert island (or buy ASAP if I lost everything) Coltrane disc.

And by the way, KENNY DREW.

[Late]

The cachet of the album seems simple: it's Coltrane as a leader on Blue Note. It happened only once, and was well-recorded.

Coltrane alternate solos are always a good thing. I'm happy with the SHMCD, however, and will take a pass on this one.

4 hours ago, jazzbo said:

So at least the discs should sound good. Probably decent alternates too. 

Agreed.

[felser]

To me, it's more than "darn good" (the title track alone assures that), and less than "desert island".  Not sure it would even make my list of top 10 Coltrane albums (off the top of my heard, "Giant Steps", "Ole", "Plays the Blues", "Coltrane's Sound", "Africa/Brass", "Village Vangaurd". "Impressions", "Coltrane", "Live at Birdland". "Crescent", so I'm already at 10 ahead of it, not even considering Prestige recordings and "A Love Supreme" and beyond).

[xybert]

13 hours ago, Rooster_Ties said:

A "darn good" date, sure - but nowhere near the semi-magnum-opus it's been marketed to be over the years.  And yeah, the ensembles are way more sloppy than one could ever imagine, considering its street-cred.  And Curtis has always seemed to be phoning it in here.

How did this album become such a revered cash cow for Blue Note?  Was it just the title track being hummable as all get-out, and the cover being as iconic as hell?  If so, a killer combo, indeed.

I don't know that it reached Sidewinder-esque sales back in its day, but I'm betting sales of Blue Train after 1980 probably matched (or eclipsed?) Sidewinder even.  I think I may have even seen copies for sale at Starbucks 10-15 years ago (but never Sidewinder).  As a result, to this day, I'm convinced that there are probably a couple thousand Gen Xers out there who've only ever owned 5 jazz CD's (or less), and two of them are Kind of Blue and Blue Train.

A good album, sure (arguably top-100, I suppose) -- but nowhere near its near "top-10 jazz albums of all time" perceived status by more than a handful of people.  But an absolute feat of marketing, I'll give it that.

Lol this was literally me. Wanted two jazz albums to tick the box of having some jazz in my collection, knew of KOB, saw BT and just thought it was a Coltrane album, looked legit and had 'blue' in the title (which i thought meant something for some unknown reason). Put me off jazz for a long time (i like both of them now but neither are favourites).

[Rooster_Ties]

8 hours ago, xybert said:

Lol this was literally me. Wanted two jazz albums to tick the box of having some jazz in my collection, knew of KOB, saw BT and just thought it was a Coltrane album, looked legit and had 'blue' in the title (which i thought meant something for some unknown reason). Put me off jazz for a long time (i like both of them now but neither are favourites).

Ha!  Exactly the anecdotal evidence I needed to 'prove' my point!

The import of KOB seems pretty darn clear, but most Coltrane fans I know wouldn't elevate Blue Train to anything other than maybe being one of his 10 most important albums.

My perspective is a little skewed, by the fact that I never really got bitten hard by the Coltrane bug (weird, I know).  I've got tons of respect and admiration for him, but I think I only own barely 20% of Trane's total recorded output -- where I'm well over 80% for Joe Henderson, for instance (and that's including all of Joe's sideman work).

I probably haven't listened to my copy of Blue Trane more than 5 times in the last 20 years.

[medjuck]

I think it was about the 15th Coltrane album I bought.  I did so because I was reading a novel (can't remember what) where the female narrator breaks up with her boyfriend and says she stayed home and listened to Blue Trane over and over again. No other suggestion in the book that she was a jazz fan. Made me think it might be interesting.   

[JSngry]

it makes for a different experience playing it on LP than on CD, plenty of records are like that, there's one side to play over and over and then there's the other side, and if Side 1 of the LP had been released as a standalone 10", there would be no doubt that it WAS one of the all-time great jazz records.

Reputations have to begin somewhere, and this album's reputation had long been in place by the time I came to it ca. 1974-75. But interestingly (perhaps), when people played it at parties or hangs, it was always Side 1.

The "Blue Train" 45 was a staple on the Recovery Room jukebox. To hear Trane blaring out of a jukebox on that solo...wow. The hipsters in the room would always sing certain phrases of certain solos, they knew that stuff well enough to do that. I even recall Walter Winn one night, you know that part of Lee's solo where it ends in a little "DE-dot" phrase, Walter Winn was just walking through the room and as he walked by our table, he looked us dead in the eye, sang those two notes in perfect sync with Lee and kept right on walking around the room.

Whatever one thinks about the album, that title cut, the head and Trane's solo is some powerful iconics.

[JSngry]

If anybody's interested in doing some homework, the Zita Carno essay(s) from 1959 are an indication of how the album began to gain cachet in critical circles as well.

http://jazzstudiesonline.org/files/jso/resources/pdf/JREV2.9.pdf

http://jazzstudiesonline.org/files/jso/resources/pdf/JREV2.10FULL.pdf

It's not so much that it's a "Great Album" as it is the first (and for a long enough while, only) Coltrane album to present him as both player and writer in a rehearsed context. In terms of polish/presentation compare it to Coltrane, a few months earlier. Blue Train was not going to me made by Prestige, not at that time, not like that. In terms of prestige (no pun intended), Blue Train got off to a head start, simple as that.

[mjazzg]

One of the first Jazz LPs I bought. The reason? Coltrane's name (I knew he was someone to hear) and the cover image. As a Jazz neophyte that cover said it all when it came to the "image" I was looking for in the music. I didn't know that BN was the label it was when I made the purchase so I'm notching this one up to Francis Wolff. I soon moved onto A Love Supreme and beyond. Now playing it for the first time in years.

[medjuck]

The great cover photo probably had something to do with its popularity too. For some reason   I was really taken by the un-cropped version where you can see more of his saxophone.  By the time I was aware of it Mosaic was sold out of the prints but I was able to find a poster on-line and then bought another Mosaic print from a different angle that must have been taken a few seconds earlier or later. Then still later Mosaic offered another, smaller, unlimited print  of the original.

 

Edited December 14, 2017 by medjuck

[felser]

Yeah, I have this on my living room wall

 

Also this

 

And a different crop of this

 

[HutchFan]

7 hours ago, medjuck said:

 

This same poster is on the wall at my house too.  

[Chuck Nessa]

Back to the record - this is probably my favorite Coltrane record - the rest of the band, especially PJJ, helped make it that way. 

[Larry Kart]

1 hour ago, Chuck Nessa said:

Back to the record - this is probably my favorite Coltrane record - the rest of the band, especially PJJ, helped make it that way. 

Me too -- certainly of that period. It never gets old. Also, or so I've always thought, there's a palpable sense of special occasion to the date that seems to have felt by all parties and then by us, too. Finally, and Chuck probably can corroborate, at the time it came out it hit most everyone who cared about the music very hard. Each time it takes me back to those initial moments.