John Coltrane – Sun Ship (VMP – Black Audiophile Vinyl)

Sun Ship is a posthumously released jazz album by tenor saxophonist John Coltrane recorded on August 26, 1965. Along with First Meditations, recorded a week later, it was one of the last recording dates for Coltrane’s “Classic Quartet” with McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison, and Elvin Jones. (Tyner left Coltrane’s group at the end of 1965 to form his own trio and to work with Tony Scott, and Jones departed in January 1966, joining Duke Ellington’s band.) The recording occurred shortly after a thirty-seven minute long performance by the quartet, with Archie Shepp added as a second tenor player, at Soldier Field in Chicago which was described by Ben Ratliff as “a famous breaking point — a Dylan-at-Newport, or a Rite of Spring,” with music that he described as “jagged and vociferous… It aggravated a great part of the crowd, prompting, according to some witnesses, a large exodus.”

Sun Ship was one of the only albums John Coltrane’s quartet recorded without sound engineer Rudy Van Gelder. According to David A. Wild’s liner notes for the 1995 reissue of the album, “the reason is lost in time, but most probably Van Gelder was booked and Coltrane refused to wait.”

Source: Wikipedia

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