It took the name John Coltrane, who may have died in 1967 but whose influence still shapes the sound of jazz today, 51 years to appear among the Top 40 charting albums on the all-genre Billboard 200 in 2018 with Both Directions AtOnce: The Lost Album – which also posthumously and simultaneously earned him his fourth Number One spot on the Billboard Jazz Albums chart. The enormous publicity the album received, not only for its notoriety as a previously ‘undiscovered’ treasure, but for the remarkable sales it was notching up, was unprecedented for an album that had been recorded 55 years ago (in 2018), so it is hardly surprising that Universal wanted to piggy-back this success with something similar. 1963: New Directions is a three CD set, with CD1 a rehash of the extended Both Directions At Once material (all 14 tracks, albeit differently sequenced with 13 of the tracks on CD1 with the 14th opening CD2).

The day after Both Directions At Once was recorded on 6 March, the Coltrane quartet was joined by vocalist Johnny Hartman on John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman which is included on CD2 in its entirety. Then came a session on 29 April with Roy Haynes on drums yielding ‘After the Rain’ that appeared on Coltrane’s famous Impressions album (that also included two extended tracks recorded live at the Village Vanguard in 1961). The other track recorded that day, ‘Dear Old Stockholm’, appeared on the obscure compilation, The Definitive Jazz Scene, released in early 1965. The three tracks recorded on 7 July 1963 at the Newport Jazz Festival, again with Haynes, appeared most recently on Impulse! as part of 2007’s My Favourite Things: Coltrane at Newport that documented his 1963 and 1965 appearances. The final five tracks with Elvin Jones back in the drum chair previously appeared in 1996 on John Coltrane: Live at Birdland as part of the 20 Bit Super Mapping series of Coltrane releases. It comprises ‘The Promise’, ‘I Want to Talk About You’ and ‘Afro Blue’ live from Birdland on 8 October and ‘Your Lady’ and ‘Alabama’ from Rudy Van Gelder’s studio on 18 November (the 20 Bit Super Mapping Birdland release from 1996 also included the mysterious ‘Vilia’ as a bonus track, an un-lost track from The Lost Album).

Marketed with the blurb, “Pivotal Year, Pivotal Tracks: Every Coltrane Impulse! track from 1963, in the order they were recorded”, is fair enough, until another lost album comes along, but there’s no discernible difference in sound quality between this new release and the albums referred to in the text. Many collectors will have these tracks already, so do check. Otherwise, here is the ultimate summation of a crucial year in Coltrane’s career.