Soultrane

This article is about the 1958 John Coltrane jazz album. For the 1957 Tadd Dameron jazz tune, see Mating Call.

Not to be confused with Soul Train or Soul train (disambiguation).

Soultrane
Studio album by John Coltrane
Released	October 1958 (1958-10)[1]
Recorded	February 7, 1958
Studio	Van Gelder, Hackensack, New Jersey
Genre	Jazz hard bop
Length	39:56
Label	Prestige
Producer	Bob Weinstock
John Coltrane chronology
John Coltrane with the Red Garland Trio (1958) Soultrane (1958) Giant Steps (1960)

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[2]
The Encyclopedia of Popular Music	[6]
Tom Hull	A−[5]
The Penguin Guide to Jazz	[3]
The Rolling Stone Jazz Record Guide	[4]

Soultrane is a studio album by the jazz musician John Coltrane. It was released in 1958 through Prestige Records, with catalogue no. 7142. It was recorded at the studio of Rudy Van Gelder in Hackensack, New Jersey, three days after a Columbia Records session for Miles Davis and the Milestones album.

Content

The album is a showcase for Coltrane's late-1950s "sheets of sound" style, the term itself coined by critic Ira Gitler in the album's liner notes. Also featured is a long reading of Billy Eckstine's ballad standard "I Want to Talk About You", which Coltrane would revisit often, including a version on the album Live at Birdland. Among the other tracks are "Good Bait" by Tadd Dameron, and Fred Lacey's "Theme for Ernie". "You Say You Care" is from the Broadway production of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.

The album closes with a frenetic version of Irving Berlin's "Russian Lullaby". Producer Bob Weinstock relates Coltrane's humorous interpretation:

We were doing a session and we were hung for a tune and I said, "Trane, why don't you think up some old standard?" He said, "OK I got it.["]...and they played "Russian Lullaby" at a real fast tempo. At the end I asked, "Trane, what was the name of that tune?" And he said, "Rushin' Lullaby". I cracked up.^[7]

Soultrane takes its title from a song on a 1956 album by Tadd Dameron featuring Coltrane, Mating Call. "Soultrane" does not appear on this Soultrane, and none of the five tunes on Soultrane is an original by Coltrane. The song "Theme for Ernie" was featured on the soundtrack for the 2005 film Hollywoodland.

Track listing

Side one

No.	Title	Writer(s)	Length
1.	"Good Bait"	Tadd Dameron Count Basie	12:08
2.	"I Want to Talk about You"	Billy Eckstine	10:53
Total length:			23:01

Side two

No.	Title	Writer(s)	Length
1.	"You Say You Care"	Leo Robin Jule Styne	6:16
2.	"Theme for Ernie"	Fred Lacey	4:57
3.	"Russian Lullaby"	Irving Berlin	5:33
Total length:			16:46

Personnel

• John Coltrane – tenor saxophone
• Red Garland – piano
• Paul Chambers – bass
• Art Taylor – drums

Production

• Rudy Van Gelder – engineering, remastering
• Shigeo Miyamoto – engineering, mastering
• Alan Yoshida, Steve Hoffman – mastering
• Del Costello, Bob Weinstock – production
• Kazue Sugimoto – supervision
• Akira Taguchi – supervision
• Ira Gitler – liner notes

References

1. Billboard Oct 27, 1958
2. Soultrane at AllMusic
3. Cook, Richard; Morton, Brian (2008). The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings (9th ed.). Penguin. p. 285. ISBN 978-0-141-03401-0.
4. Swenson, J., ed. (1985). The Rolling Stone Jazz Record Guide. USA: Random House/Rolling Stone. p. 48. ISBN 0-394-72643-X.
5. Hull, Tom (n.d.). "Essential Jazz Albums of the 1950s". tomhull.com. Retrieved March 12, 2020.
6. Larkin, Colin (2007). The Encyclopedia of Popular Music (4th ed.). Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0195313734.
7. Porter, Lewis (1999). "John Coltrane: His Life and Music". Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press. p. 253. ISBN 0-472-10161-7.