The last time this was reissued was in Rhino's no-frills Original Album Series box (Jazzwise 158), complete with miniaturised liner-notes, which made the Top 10 reissues of last year. Being comparatively low-key compared to Coltrane's other current material for Atlantic, it's good to see Plays The Blues singled out by the public-domain Essential Jazz Classics label, which offers Joe Goldberg's original notes as well as one of those discography-focussed EJC bonus essays by pseudonymous writers you never heard of, in this case ‘Albert Hold’. You also get some bonus blues, including two that sound a little out of place except for Trane's solos, from his Atlantic debut Bags & Trane with Milt Jackson et al. A further 12-bar came from the same 1960 sessions as Plays The Blues, namely ‘Village Blues’, which was on Coltrane Jazz, along with ‘Some Other Blues’ featuring Wynton Kelly. But it beats me as to why the remaining addition is ‘Exotica’ (based on ‘I Can't Get Started’) and not the marvellous ‘Equinox’, a genuine blues and one of the most impressive of the period. Or is Coltrane's Sound, on which it appeared, also an Essential Jazz candidate?