Happy 55th: John Coltrane, Olé Coltrane

55 years ago today, John Coltrane recorded his ninth studio album and the last one he would record for Atlantic Records.

When Coltrane entered the studio to record Olé Coltrane, he did so after he’d already had his first recording session for his new label, Impulse! Records, but he still owed Atlantic Records another album, so back into A&R Studios he went, taking with him the other four members of his quintet – drummer Elvin Jones, bassist Reggie Workman, pianist McCoy Tyner, and flautist / saxophonist Eric Dolphy – along with bassist Art Davis and trumpeter Freddie Hubbard, both of whom had worked with Coltrane on his previous album, Africa/Brass. (Dolphy is actually listed as George Lane in the original credits so as to avoid any legal wrangling with Prestige Records, to which Dolphy was contracted at the time.)

There are all of three songs on Olé Coltrane – “Olé” (18 minutes, 17 seconds), “Dahomey Dance” (10 minutes, 53 seconds), and “Aisha” (7 minutes, 40 seconds) – but you can’t judge a jazz album by its number of tracks. As John Ballon wrote of the album on AllAboutJazz.com, “Olé Coltrane successfully navigates the line between Trane's sonically challenging later years and his earlier accessibility; a magnificent milestone in Trane's artistic growth, this is an essential recording for any collection.”