Wonderful album here with Milt Jackson and Coltrane on Atlantic. The rest of the group consists of Hank Jones on piano, Paul Chambers on double bass and Connie Kay on drums.
The music is classy and the combination of Bags and Trane really works superbly. Is this the only time Trane recorded with a vibraphonist? Can’t think of any other album with that setting. Please correct me if I’m mistaken.
The sound on this session is not top tier. I put on Donald Byrds “The Cat Walk” on Blue Note straight after and what a striking difference. Such amazing punch, power and a clear distinctive sound. The sound of Philly Joe Jones drums knocks you out compared to the meager, closed in and tinny sound of Connie Kays drums. Not overly impressive session from him overall. I think this is very interesting, how big the difference is between different titles on different labels with different sound engineers. You wonder sometimes what some of them were doing.
At the moment I’m searching high and low for original mono pressings within my very tight budget. It’s very stimulating to explore and discover titles on several labels which I haven’t given much attention to before, like Verve, Mercury, Mode, Dawn and so on. Plenty of less expensive stuff there to try and find.
