Here it is; the album that introduced John Coltrane's soprano to the wider world. Besides this reason to be cheerful, My Favorite Things is a landmark in other ways; the first album to be issued from his motherlode October 1960 sessions for Atlantic; the first to show the outlines of what would shortly become the ‘classic’ Quartet. Listened to now, it's also far less controversial than it once seemed, the lengthy title-track – which would eventually be transformed into something akin to a tribal rite – an expansive display of Coltrane's lyricism. And it's an album with spot-on programming, the A-side all soprano, the B- a fulsome display of Trane's tenor on the brink of new emotional discoveries (Evan Parker, in particular, loves this side, famously once praising, “that approach, where it's not clear whether [they're] playing changes or scales”). It's also one of Trane's most swinging albums, never more so than when Elvin Jones strikes out under the leader on the coda of ‘But Not For Me’. In sum, a total classic, yet, as ever with labels like AJC, there's a modicum of needless dicking around. Two live bonus tracks from 1962 upset the balance of the original LP and I've no idea why they've used a totally unrelated cover shot of Coltrane taken by Lee Tanner, printed back-to-front. Hey ho…