Over the past few years, I've been exploring the further reaches of hard bop (which led me to artists like Hank Mobley and Sonny Clark). I love their music, and I'm curious about jazz history, and I have a soft spot for under-appreciated genius, but I had also just listened to too much Coltrane and Miles and other, more prominent players and needed some variety. Those guys are so good, and their catalogs are so deep, that it's easy for a casual jazz fan to get sort of stuck there, making occasional forays into Dexter Gordon or Bill Evans.
But every now and then (like this afternoon), it's instructive to go back to something like Coltrane's Lush Life and be reminded that music like this is what got me into jazz in the first place. I'm not really a jazz geek, I just play one on the Internets, so someone could (and should) call me out on this, but I'm struck by how mature this album sounds for '57-'58. Coltrane is relaxed and languid, but deeply thoughtful, too--not a hint of West Coast coolness that too often shades into shallowness. And Donald Byrd's solo on the title track is my all-time favorite by anyone--it's so good that Coltrane's short final solo that follows feels like a let-down. (And I could live without I Hear A Rhapsody entirely--the album should just close with Lush Life and leave you suffused with the feelings that track inevitably evokes.)
tags: jazz john coltrane lush life
