Two soloists, one day in the studio, five pieces: Bags & Trane is the only album Milt Jackson and John Coltrane recorded together. On this hybrid stereo SACD from the Atlantic 75 Series, Ryan K. Smith at Sterling Sound mastered the session to DSD from the original master tape.
January 1959, before the landmark sessions
Milt Jackson and John Coltrane came together at Atlantic Studios in New York on January 15, 1959. The date was under Jackson’s leadership, with Hank Jones at the piano, Paul Chambers on bass and Connie Kay at the drums; Nesuhi Ertegun produced and Tom Dowd engineered. The session comes before the Kind Of Blue recordings and before the central sessions for Giant Steps. It shows Coltrane in a different setting from his later Atlantic albums as a leader: next to a vibraphonist whose melodic language was rooted deeply in blues and bebop.
Bags & Trane did not appear until July 1961. The title puts the two familiar nicknames side by side, yet the music had been recorded on a single day more than two years earlier. Keeping that gap in mind stops you from hearing the album as a statement about where Coltrane stood in 1961. What you hear is two musicians with their own histories meeting in one particular quintet: Jackson and Kay had worked together in the Modern Jazz Quartet, while Chambers and Coltrane knew each other from Miles Davis’s circle. Existing musical relationships cross within this group.
A conversation between vibraphone and tenor
The two lead instruments set notes in motion in different ways. On the vibraphone a note begins with the stroke of the mallet and then fades; on the saxophone a note can be shaped and carried on while it sounds. That contrast makes the pairing interesting without fixing the roles in advance. Jackson can compress a line while Coltrane stretches or thickens one, and a saxophone phrase can just as easily draw a short reply from the vibraphone. The handovers between the soloists deserve as much attention as the solos themselves.
Hank Jones, Paul Chambers and Connie Kay form a complete rhythm section. The piano adds a second harmonic voice next to the vibraphone, the bass leads through the form and the drums hold the time together. Because several instruments can supply chords or harmonically clear lines, sharing out the space becomes a central question: who accompanies, who answers and who steps back for a moment is part of the arrangement as it unfolds. The five names stand for one session group across the whole album; later compilations with extra tracks do not change that recording context.
From the blues to bebop in five pieces
The original album opens with Jackson’s “Bags & Trane” and ends with his “The Late Late Blues.” In between come “Three Little Words,” “The Night We Called It A Day” and Dizzy Gillespie’s “Be-Bop.” Two Jackson originals frame the album, while the pieces in the middle make different demands on melody, timing and agility. A familiar song and a bebop composition give the improvisers two quite different starting points – and the appeal lies in following the same five musicians as the conditions change from piece to piece.
The session yielded eight tracks altogether, but the SACD keeps to the five pieces of the original album. “Stairway To The Stars,” “Blues Legacy” and “Centerpiece” came out later in other releases and appear in expanded digital and CD programmes, so it is worth checking the scope of a release before comparing tracklists or running times. Bags & Trane itself is a deliberately compact sequence: January 1959 for the recording, summer 1961 for the release – and a title that names two soloists for a record that tells the story of a quintet.
The Atlantic 75 hybrid stereo SACD
CAPA 063 SA is a hybrid stereo SACD from the Analogue Productions Atlantic 75 Series. According to the publisher, Ryan K. Smith at Sterling Sound mastered it to DSD from the original master tape. The SACD layer plays on SACD-capable players, the CD layer on any conventional CD player. The disc contains the five pieces of the original album.
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More from the series: Atlantic 75 Series
Also in another edition: Bags & Trane
More SACDs with John Coltrane: Giant Steps · My Favorite Things · Soultrane
Artist page: All titles by John Coltrane
Customer question: Buying Analogue Productions records in Europe
Musicians
Participants and documented credit status. Track references correspond to the tracklist.
- Milt JacksonvibraphoneParticipation: Album personnel
- John Coltranetenor saxophoneParticipation: Album personnel
- Hank JonespianoParticipation: Album personnel
- Paul Chambersdouble bassParticipation: Album personnel
- Connie KaydrumsParticipation: Album personnel
The same quintet on the five original tracks. The three additional session pieces are not included.
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