John Coltrane: Live At Birdlands (Verve Acoustic Sounds) (LP)

"Live at Birdland" was released just one year before the epochal shift that John Coltrane ushered in with "A Love Supreme." In fact, the album already foreshadowed the phase of breathtaking artistic evolution that the saxophonist would undergo during his final years with Impulse! “Live at Birdland” is hailed by many jazz critics as one of the best live albums by John Coltrane’s classic quartet. And this despite the fact that it actually contains only three tracks, which were recorded live on October 8, 1963, at the New York jazz club Birdland. The other two tracks, including the highly political classic “Alabama”—which Coltrane wrote in response to the bombing of a church in Birmingham in September 1963—were recorded a month later at Rudy Van Gelder’s studio in Englewood Cliffs. Verve Acoustic Sounds Series: mastered entirely analog from the original tapes by Ryan K. Smith at Sterling Sound; QPR pressing (180 g); sturdy tip-on gatefold sleeve (Stoughton Printing); padded inner sleeve.