John Coltrane – My Favorite Things (2xLP, Mono, Rhino Reserve)

John Coltrane's My Favorite Things marked a real turning point when it appeared in March 1961: it was the first album to document Coltrane on soprano saxophone, and it helped carry his music to a broader audience through an edited radio hit of the title track. Built around songs by Rodgers and Hammerstein, Gershwin, and Cole Porter, the record shows how decisively Coltrane could reshape familiar material through modal improvisation and a new sense of space.

Recorded in October 1960 with the first John Coltrane Quartet - McCoy Tyner on piano, Steve Davis on bass, and Elvin Jones on drums - the album turns just four standards into something expansive and searching. The 14-minute title performance remains the centre of gravity, with Coltrane's soprano leading a hypnotic waltz that he would revisit in concert for the rest of his career. Elsewhere, Summertime and Everytime We Say Goodbye show the same quartet balancing lyricism with restless forward motion.

The album's long afterlife is well documented: My Favorite Things entered the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1998 and was certified Gold in 2018. This Rhino Reserve edition makes sense, then, not as routine catalogue maintenance but as a return to one of the key early statements in Coltrane's move toward the modal language that would define so much of his later work.

Features

• LP, 180g, Stereo, Rhino Reserve
• AAA cut from the original analog master tape by Matthew Lutthans at The Mastering Lab
• Pressed at Fidelity Record Pressing