I love Blue Train, but would have to put Giant Steps, Ole’, Africa Brass, Crescent, A Love Supreme, and maybe My Favorite Things ahead of it. Maybe. That said, Blue Train doesn’t even crack my top 20 Blue Notes either
Just put on the Blue train Stereo: WOW, just WOW. Joe and Kevin did a amazing job with this classic. Coltrane’s sax is great but how that trumpet from mr. Morgan came in, damn! Time to say goodbye to my 78 Dutch stereo version.
I had to respond to this. You wrote, decent chance there is no such thing as a Tone Poet series without Blue Train and a decent chance the series wouldn't last as long as it otherwise would without this particular Blue Train release filling the Blue Note coffers for a little while longer... You might want to familiarize yourself with this series a bit more. Before "Blue Train" was announced as a Tone Poet, Joe had already chosen titles for the next couple years and beyond. A good post from you until you added that to the content of it.
Naah, I've read that a few times, but no. When I started out to check out jazz more thoroughly about thirteen years ago, I couldn't get into Trane. I bought a copy of Blue Train and didn't play it often. Yes, I liked the opening of Blue Train, and I liked I'm Old Fashioned, but the rest was too much uptempo bop soloing for me. Too little pauses, too much going on, my ears weren't ready to appreciate the soloing yet. Even on the slower Blue Train, the soloist revert to doubling up the speed. Everything is in major keys, and I prefer the sound of minor keys. I also checked out Giant Steps, where I had the same trouble with the title track, Countdown and Mr. P.C. I also casually listened once to the tune My Favorite Things and of a live performance of Impressions on YouTube, which I liked more, I heard more sense of purpose in the music. A few years later, I discovered Equinox and that was when I said "I'm in". This is the side of Trane I still love most. I'm still at the beginning of my Trane journey, but now Crescent is my favorite, although I don't play it often, to keep it fresh forever. Blue Train is cool because it's a one off of Trane doing a Blue Note album, and everybody is in top form and killing it.
That, and the fact that for people like me, there are a handful of titles I like more than Blue Train in the Tone poet Series Etc., Now He Sings, and Passing Ships for example. I would even assume that most people who have been collecting tone poets all along already had the music matters, AP, or clean early press of Blue Train and didnt need it
Yeah, and I consider every single title from the first Classic Series Run a better representation of Blue Note (although not all would make my personal top 20)
That is what is great about Blue Note and why the Tone Poet series works. There is about 400+ Great titles in the discography. Its insane. I lean heavy in the 4100 series for favorites, but the early Hard Bop is the Blue Note sound and is still some of my favorite music to listen to.
I think your ranking is fair. I don't necessarily agree with it, but I understand it. I put Blue Train a bit higher - not quite Love Supreme level, but I don't have too far off. I've always been a fan of Giant Steps (jazz education in undergrad basically forces you to listen to Giant Steps), I think why Blue Train is so appealing to me is that its right at that moment just before Coltrane skyrockets into another dimension - Blue Train still has some "earthiness" to it which I appreciate.
I think you are spot on with this ranking. I've always been mildly perplexed by the reputation of Blue Train. May have at least something to do with the fact that it's on the Blue Note label. It is certainly good, but IMO over-rated. Not because it is in any way "bad" but because it is held in such incredibly high esteem, and is so well known. Higher than a number of his Impulses which, like you, I think are better. I'll probably grab the mono TP at some point, but not in a huge rush.
Coltrane is my favorite jazz artist. I could never rank his records in a particular order. Could do it by upper, middle, and lower tier. But my head would explode trying to do just so. I can most always find something I like with all of his records. I have "Ole" on tap for later which I would consider upper tier. I chose that because of the above mention from @Crush87, and I would also consider "Blue Train" an upper tier. With that said there are other Tone Poet titles in the series I like more though. I found it quite interesting that Kevin said BT is his favorite Blue Note release. I wonder if he meant to say, favorite Blue Note title from Coltrane...kidding there. would be cool to see a list of some of his favorite BN records.
Maybe I'm just a fanboy, but I tend to agree with how Blue Note was marketing this Blue Train release: I'd rank it as Coltrane's first masterpiece. For me it doesn't reach the heights of most of what came after in his body of work, but it feels like a major step forward in the context of his work recorded around the same time. So yeah, a heavily contextualized masterpiece...
My point was much broader than that. I'm not saying that this release of BT is what motivated the TP in the proximate sense. I know that's not true. What motivated TP in the proximate sense was the recent success of AP/MMJ/etc. I'm saying that without the very large profile of BT -- significantly larger than any other BN release -- the legacy of BN as a whole would not be what it is, the cultural profile of BN would not be what it is, the economic impact of BN would not be what it was. Without BT, BN might be just another smallish independent label that was fairly successful for a few years in the '50s before being bought out by a soulless corporation who screwed everything up. Most of those labels don't get lavish reissue series 60 years later that contain dozens and dozens of releases. I.e., the point is that without the cultural impact and overall success of BT, it's a real possibility that the lesser-knowns would not be getting these represses. Coltrane has subsidized the entire label, throughout a significant chunk of its history, through BT. It's a little bit of a controversial argument, I realize, but I think it might be true. BT is still the only BN to ever go Gold, right? Certainly it's worth bringing these things up in any conversation about "best", because otherwise we're just talking about subjective favoritism. We gotta remember: we're all weirdos here. We care about things like creasing in the inner spine of Stoughton jackets on deluxe represses of instrument jazz records from the 1950s. We're obsessing over the subtle differences between remasters created by the same remastering engineer, all released within in the recent past, several of which were even pressed at the same pressing plant! We're talking about whether Kevin Gray changing power cables in 2014 (or whenever) had a noticeable impact on the sound of his BT remaster in 2022. That's not what keeps the lights on for BN. We are dedicated buyers, it's true, but we are also a pain in the ass: we hunt for sales, we return things a lot, we complain about things a lot. What keeps the lights on are the big crossover hits that bring the normies into the fold, especially if they turn normies into repeat customers. And, for BN, BT is the most important of those. That's why they're making such a huge deal out of it. Look at the energy in the vinyl community with these TP releases over the past week or two. They are on every YouTube channel, every forum, every Instagram feed. Everyone has to have an opinion on this release, even though the bigger complaints anyone can come up with is "it's not my very most favorite Coltrane record". No other Tone Poet has that kind of impact, not even close, and that really matters: for the series, for the label, for the entire jazz and vinyl audiophile communities. Longwinded way to say: Tone Poet doesn't happen without the lasting legacy of Blue Note and the recent success of other audiophile Blue Note reissue series, and Blue Train was integral to establishing both of those two things. So it's very easy for me to imagine no Tone Poet with no BT; it's easy for me to imagine BN folding much earlier, and being largely forgotten, with no BT. Bethlehem never had a BT. Argo never had a BT. BN did. Who are we talking about in 2022?
I'm not sure that Blue Train rises to the level of enabling the survival of Blue Note Records. To me there are like 50 albums on that label that are better than Blue Train. Just IMHO!
The way I see it, Blue Train is an essential BN title and an essential Coltrane album. Where it ranks vs other BN or other Coltrane works is certainly a fun way to procrastinate at work but regardless if your even a moderate fan of either, it’s gotta be in your collection.
I appreciate what you are trying to say and this will be the last I respond to this. If you meant this, that's what you should have said instead of saying what you did about the Tone Poet series and BT. The Tone Poet series came to be because Don wanted his records to sound as good as the MMJ ones and brought Joe on board. Joe's idea at first was not about the heavy hitters/not MMJ previous titles, but to bring jazz fans records that never got much or any love since their initial release. Blue Note has lasted as long as it has because of their awesome catalog, not just a record like BT. Sorry, but there was no other way to read into your original post. Once again I respect what you are saying and hope you understand where I'm coming from as well. Look forward to more of your posts on this thread!
I am a huge fan of both, but I'm likely not buying the tone poet. i bought the CD back in high school. it never really grabbed me. listened again recently, same result. It's certainly pleasant.
@scotti I know that -- despite lurking for a long time -- I haven't posted in these forums a whole lot, so you wouldn't have any way to know this, but I have respect for your taste/knowledge and very much appreciate the work you've done answering questions and getting information for the community, particularly as it pertains to TP and BNC. I've got a lot to learn from you, sincerely. So please don't take it as a sign of major disrespect when I say that: there is definitely another way to read my comment, which is that it was about more fundamental importance of BT to the BN legacy (and its economic value both as an ongoing concern and during its original heyday). The question I was responding to was not limited to the current run of TP; it was a broader, more fundamental question and I provided a broader, more fundamental answer to it. You clearly are friends with the current BN people (which I'm envious of), so it makes sense that that is where your mind would go first, but I wasn't talking about them at any point until I directly addressed your inference that I was. If that wasn't clear then accept my apologies for being unclear, but please don't pretend that you can divine "no other way to read into" my comment when you're putting words into my mouth. Surely you have a better imagination than that.
Prestige/BN,Columbia era CT and Miles up till about 1962-3 for me. But happy there has been all eras reissued and has brought many more into Jazz, one example hits all this home for me is "Katanga". Never seen it and never heard it prior and all I've introduced this reissue to, bought a copy. That's the whole point, correct?
