It’s a good month for studio-recorded Coltrane, the Phoenix album combining his Prestige outings Mating Call and The Cats, originally led respectively by Dameron and Flanagan. The quartet with Tadd is especially interesting, partly because of the leader’s six new compositions (four of them later covered by Chet Baker, including ‘Mating Call’ and ‘On A Misty Night’). Trane is more cogent than on some of the Miles tracks done just five weeks before, and Dameron himself solos at greater length than elsewhere. The Flanagan is a more average blowing session (from just before Trane’s, er, sabbatical in Philadelphia) but there are fine originals and a fine Detroit rhythm-section of Burrell, Watkins and Hayes.

As to the combination of the 1962 Coltrane with the ‘bonus’ of Giant Steps – wow! Both earth-shaking in their own way, the earlier album shows the post-sabbatical period of intense harmonic exploration with still discernible roots in bebop. ‘Naima’, despite its obvious restraint, is the clearest signpost towards pedal-points triumphing over underlying chord-sequences, which was largely in place by the later album (as was the quartet line-up, though the packaging is incorrect in claiming this was Trane’s first for Impulse). The modalisation of ‘Out Of This World’ and ‘The Inch Worm’, both in waltz-time, is balanced by the changes of ‘Soul Eyes’ and that magical moment in ‘Tunji’ when Tyner goes into a long-metre blues, revealing the basis of the previous tenor solo. Heard here without any subsequently issued extra takes and alternate versions, these contrasting albums are the best introduction to the fundamentals of Trane. For those who think they know them backwards, it’s still “wow!”