Among the most acclaimed and influential artists in jazz, John Coltrane was also one of the most stylistically diverse, moving from traditional sounds to the furthest edges of the avant-garde in a career that was tragically cut short when he succumbed to cancer at the age of 40. This volume in the Verve Ultimate Cool series devoted to Coltrane's work might raise the eyebrows of fans who will note that Coltrane never recorded for Verve Records; instead, this is primarily drawn from Coltrane's recordings for the Impulse! label, and leans to his more accessible works, ignoring more challenging albums like Meditations and Selflessness, and curiously includes nothing from 1965's A Love Supreme, widely regarded as the saxophone giant's greatest work. But even at his most mainstream, Coltrane's playing was invariably imaginative, intelligent, and emotionally resonant, and that's certainly the case with these 12 selections, which find him drawing slow, beautiful lines out of standards like "Lush Life" and "What's New," or exploring his musical space on "Alabama" and "Theme for Ernie." Given its fairly rigid musical outlook and the fact it's limited to Coltrane's music of the '60s, Verve Ultimate Cool: John Coltrane isn't much as an introduction to his body of work or an overview of a wide-ranging career as a creative trailblazer. But if nothing else, this set shows just how pleasurable Coltrane's music can be, and 52 minutes with one of the true giants of American music in the 20th century is certainly time well spent.
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