Long-Lost John Coltrane Album To Be Released After 55 Years

As reported by The New York Times, on June 29th, a never-released album from the John Coltrane Quartet will be released, which also features bassist Jimmy Garrison, the drummer Elvin Jones, and the pianist McCoy Tyner. Recorded for Impulse! Records two years before Coltrane released his classic A Love Supreme, the upcoming release titled Both Directions At Once: The Lost Album, was recorded on a single day on March 6th, 1963 at Rudy Van Gelder Studio in New Jersey during the quartet’s two-week run at Birdland.

The history of Both Direction At Once is fascinating, given that it’s only now surfacing a half-century after its creation, given that all copies until now were assumed to be lost or destroyed. In the Times article, the family of Juanita Naima Coltrane, John’s first wife, recently found John Coltrane’s personal copy of the recording and brought it to the record company, leading to the release of this “new” album.

Both Directions At Once: The Lost Album houses seven tunes, with The New York Times noting that the album contains “a well-hewed mix that clearly suggests Coltrane had his sights on creating a full album that day” that hinted at the ambitious future works of the group. As noted by Ravi Coltrane, a saxophonist and John Coltrane’s son, who helped prep the new album for release, “In 1963, all these musicians are reaching some of the heights of their musical powers. … On this record, you do get a sense of John with one foot in the past and one foot headed toward his future.”

Both Directions At Once will be released by Impulse! as a single disc, featuring one take of each of the seven tunes recorded that day. However, Impulse! will also be offering a deluxe edition of the album, which features seven alternate takes from the session. The album contains two original tunes that are believed to be the only recordings of the songs—numbered “11383” and “11386” via the unique number system of the original producer of the album, Bob Thiele. The latter, “11386”, while it has mirrors Coltrane’s “My Favorite Things”, is believed to potentially be written by the John Coltrane Quartet’s pianist, McCoy Tyner.

As Lewis Porter, a pianist and scholar sent an advance copy of the album, explained to The New York Times, “[Tyner’s] so on top of that piece. It’s just a thought. … Where is it written that everything they played had to be by Coltrane?”

The deluxe version of Both Directions At Once also includes four renditions of the song “Impressions”, which would later be released as a live version on the similarly named album, Impressions, later that year. Notes the Times, “This March recording session marked the second and, apparently, final time Coltrane would attempt to wrangle ‘Impressions’ into a studio recording.”