Blue Train (album)
| Blue Train | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Studio album by John Coltrane | ||||
| Released | 1958 | |||
| Recorded | September 15, 1957 Van Gelder Studio, Hackensack |
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| Genre | Hard bop | |||
| Length | 42:50 | |||
| Label |
Blue Note BLP 1577 |
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| Producer | Alfred Lion | |||
| John Coltrane chronology | ||||
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| Professional ratings | |
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| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic |
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| The Penguin Guide to Jazz | |
| The Rolling Stone Jazz Record Guide | |
Blue Train is a studio album by John Coltrane, released in 1958 on Blue Note Records, catalogue BLP 1577. Recorded at the Van Gelder Studio in Hackensack, New Jersey, it is the only Blue Note recording by Coltrane as the leader on the session. It has been certified a gold record by the RIAA.
The album was recorded in the midst of Coltrane's residency at the Five Spot as a member of the Thelonious Monk quartet. The personnel include Coltrane's Miles Davis bandmates, Paul Chambers on bass and Philly Joe Jones on drums, both of whom had worked before with pianist Kenny Drew. Both trumpeter Lee Morgan and trombonist Curtis Fuller were up-and-coming jazz musicians, and both would be members of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, working together on several of Blakey's albums.
All of the compositions were written by Coltrane, with the exception of the standard "I'm Old Fashioned". The title track is a long, rhythmically variegated blues with a sentimental [quasi minor; in fact based on major chords with flat tenth, or raised ninth] theme that gradually shows the major key during Coltrane's first chorus. "Locomotion" is also a blues riff tune, in forty-four-bar form. During a 1960 interview, Coltrane described Blue Train as his favorite album of his own up to that point.
John Coltrane's next major album, Giant Steps, recorded in 1959, would break new melodic and harmonic ground in jazz, whereas Blue Train adheres to the hard bop style of the era. Two of its songs – "Moment's Notice" and "Lazy Bird" – demonstrate Coltrane's first recorded use of Coltrane changes, which he would later expand upon on Giant Steps. Musicologist Lewis Porter has also demonstrated a harmonic relationship between Coltrane's "Lazy Bird" and Tadd Dameron's "Lady Bird".
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