You could hardly go wrong compiling any non-Prestige Coltrane and calling it Four Classic Albums. Here, if the personnel details didn't give it away already, are Blue Note's Blue Train, Atlantic's Plays The Blues and Olé, and the Impulse! Africa/Brass. Of course, none of the subsequent additional material from these sessions is included, and the first- and last-named sets (both engineered by Rudy Van Gelder) perhaps miss the sound perfection of reissues on the original labels. But suffice it to say, Blue Train is justifiably regarded as a summation of Trane's relationship to hard-bop, while the 1960 Plays The Blues (done the same week as the first ‘Favorite Things’) uses the infinitely variable 12-bar form to shine the spotlight on his expanding solo style. In addition, the adventurous Africa/Brass and the lesser-known but almost simultaneous sextet date Olé use the implications of the soloing to take the McCoy/Elvin-based accompaniment into appropriately modal and multi-rhythmic territory. Anyone who doesn't know these albums by heart already has an opportunity to remedy their misfortune.