A New Coltrane Studio Recording. Really.

I was taking a break from work earlier and, as I am wont to do, I opened up my iPad to The New York Times to find out what latest assault on our democracy is being inflicted by our president and his cohorts and, lo and behold, I was greeted, to my great surprise, right at the top of the page, by a picture of none other than John Coltrane. Now this, of course, piqued my interest and the story that accompanied the photo piqued my interest even more, as I’m sure it will for most of you out there in Jazz Collector land. The article is titled Lost John Coltrane Recording From 1963 Will be Released at last and the crux of it is that there is actually a NEW studio recording from the classic Coltrane Quartet that was recorded by Impulse in 1963 and somehow, someway, was never released. It’s hard to believe such a thing was possible, given Coltrane’s importance, popularity and the reality that a record company would never lose an opportunity to make money, but it seemed to have happened nonetheless. According to the article, which you should all read, the recording was in the possession of Coltrane’s first wife, who we know as Naima, and was recently discovered by her family. Huh? It doesn’t seem to make any sense, but there it is.

Anyway, the record is being released as “Both Directions at Once: The Lost Album” on June 29. There will be two versions, a single CD set as well as an expanded “deluxe” edition with seven “alternate” takes, although, since the record was never released, I’m not sure who decided (and how) which was the real take and which was the alternate. I did a quick search and didn’t see any indication that the record will be released on vinyl, but I hope it will be at some point. The search did yield the additional information, not included in The Times story, that the liner notes have been written by none other than Sonny Rollins. This is crazy, isn’t it? Was there any word of a studio Impulse recording that was never released? I follow Coltrane pretty closely and have all of his albums, yet I never heard about this. This is pretty damn exciting, I have to say, and I can’t wait to get the CD, deluxe edition of course, and listen to it and talk about it here.