The best known of the Coltrane Atlantic releases remains Giant Steps, and any jazz fan has the opening bars of the title song burned into their memory. The album, most famous perhaps for showcasing Coltrane’s “sheets of sound”, emphasized electrifying solo performances and included only Coltrane compositions. Each song is exquisite—from the title song, leading into ‘Cousin Mary’ – probably two of Coltrane’s best-known compositions – and on through ‘Naima’, one of his most beautiful ballads. While Coltrane’s continuous, lightning quick flow of ideas had been labeled “sheets of sound” in a review of his earlier album Soultrane (Prestige 7142), this was the recording that best and most famously demonstrated what Coltrane was capable of. It’s the only Coltrane album that Atlantic released with the black (for mono) or green (for stereo) labels, as the company switched label styles at this time, changing to its new ‘bullseye’ or ‘ring’ type label midway through the first run of the LP. Consequently, very few and only the earliest copies of Giant Steps were released with the solid color labels and, as a result, the price of a black label mono copy of Giant Steps is astronomical.
As with all the Coltrane Atlantic titles, mono is the best way to hear Giant Steps and early pressings are still the best sounding. I’ve compared black label versions to the bullseye pressing and find them to be broadly equal. In fact, there is only a slight loss of instrumental body even listening to later 1960s label versions. In 2016 Atlantic reissued Giant Stepsalong with four of the other eight original Coltrane Atlantic releases, plus The Coltrane Legacy, in mono on both vinyl (Atlantic/Rhino Records 0081227946401)and CD (Atlantic 0081227946418), as The Atlantic Years—In Mono: The vinyl reissues were cut by John Webber at Air Studios, although I’m not sure whether the records came from the digital masters or separate, analogue tapes. Either way, this set is now out of print and used copies sell for many times the original cost.
It’s widely assumed that the six titles included in the box sets are those that survived the 2008 fire at Hollywood Universal Studios. Universal Music Group, one of the three media conglomerates that controls most of the world’s recorded music, stored many of its master tapes in a poorly protected warehouse on a back lot, and much of that treasure trove was destroyed by fire. Universal misled the public about the extent of the loss, a tragedy finally made public in a series of New York Times articles in 2019. However, record reissue companies figured it out quickly—they no longer had access to master tapes for many in-demand labels like Chess and Impulse! Some but not all of the Atlantic master tapes were lost. Often, all that remained were those tapes out for remastering at various facilities when the fire struck.
The mono boxes, in either vinyl or CD, were a no brainer—if not the absolute best sounding version of every disc, they came in a close second at an extremely fair price. Of course, now that they are out of print, the prices on the used market are less attractive, but still way lower than a set of individual pressings in good condition.
