The Classic Quartet: Complete Impulse! Studio Recordings [Box] by John Coltrane Quartet

The reissuing of music is an interesting phenomenon. Some reissues are vital, reintroducing lost music into the marketplace for a new generation. Some are enhanced versions of enduring classics. Others, though, are attempts to cash in on a label's most popular artists, designed to get people to repurchase music they already own. This boxed set falls into that last category.

John Coltrane is one of the giants of modern jazz. He is one of the most imitated and influential artists ever to pick up the saxophone. The music on these CDs is essential--it just happens to have been presented better in its original context.

The professed approach of this set is to present all the studio recordings of the classic Quartet of Coltrane, pianist McCoy Tyner, drummer Elvin Jones and bassist Jimmy Garrison. That sounds good in theory, but it doesn't work out that well in practice. Several of the original Coltrane albums--Impressions seems a good example--featured a mix of live and studio recordings and it would not be uncommon for a track or two to feature an additional musician or group thereof. According to the logic of this set, then, you only get about half of Impressions and you get a handful of orphan tracks like "Alabama" from the Live at Birdland album, the balance of which is not included because it's live. Stranger, while the tracks featuring the quartet augmented by other musicians are omitted, several tracks featuring Roy Haynes instead of Jones on drums or Art Davis instead of Garison on bass are included--Haynes & Davis are two of my favorites, but they weren't in the classic quartet. So, not only do they have their own arbitrary definition of what constitutes "complete," they can't even stick to it once they've established it.

I sold most of my record collection six years ago when I moved. This seemed like a reasonable alternative to repurchasing the records--the complete recordings, it claimed, plus bonus tracks. But, for the reasons I listed above, it is maddeningly incomplete. Where's Eric Dolphy? When you hear the tracks from Impressions you expect the ones that featured him. And you expect to hear the live stuff. As for the bonus tracks, a few are good, but they scraped the bottom of the barrel for some of them. A false start of "Bessie's Blues?" Nobody needs that.

There are very few people I would recommend this to. If you want an introduction to Coltrane, it's better to hear this music in its original context. If you are a fan and have the original records, there's not enough new here to justify the $90 or so price. Even the obsessive collectors I know, I'd probably tell them to explore Albert Ayler or someone else they didn't know. I guess if they were really rich, then go ahead. It's an ok selection for someone in my situation, but it's still ultimately unsatisfying.