Craft Recordings announces the latest reissues in the Original Jazz Classics series: The Red Garland Trio’s Groovy, Kenny Burrell & John Coltrane’s Kenny Burrell & John Coltrane, The John Wright Trio’s South Side Soul, and The New Miles Davis Quintet’s Miles.
Available for pre-order today, these reissues, which roll out from April to July 2024, feature lacquers cut from the original tapes (AAA) by Kevin Gray at Cohearent Audio (Kenny Burrell & John Coltrane and Groovy titles cut by Matthew Lutthans at Cohearent Audio), 180-gram vinyl pressed at RTI and tip-on jackets, replicating the original artwork. All titles will also be released digitally in 192/24 HD audio.
Original Jazz Classics was created in 1982 (under Fantasy Records) and relaunched last year, with jazz fans and critics alike praising the series’ devotion to vividly preserving and restoring seminal jazz albums, paying mind to everything from cover art to liner notes to the audio recordings themselves. Since its inception, the series has reissued 850+ hard-to-find jazz albums, among them acclaimed titles from Prestige, Galaxy, Milestone, Riverside, Debut, Contemporary, Jazzland, and Pablo. Craft Recordings will continue to grow its Original Jazz Classics series this year, with audiophile vinyl and digital reissues of even more out-of-print titles.
The Red Garland Trio – Groovy (Available April 26, 2024)
Pianist Red Garland, the former boxer out of Texas who many would argue is still underrated (see his work, too, with Miles Davis and Sonny Rollins), is joined here by drummer Art Taylor and bassist Paul Chamber. This is the trio’s third album together, released in 1957. Bouncy and dexterous Groovy, sits firmly in the bebop and hard-bop genre.
Kenny Burrell & John Coltrane – Kenny Burrell & John Coltrane (Available May 31, 2024)
Though they recorded this album in 1958 (with a release date five years later), guitarist Kenny Burrell and saxophonist John Coltrane went back as far as 1951, when they both played in Dizzy Gillespie’s band. By 1958 this recorded collaboration with Burrell — who’d go on to be anointed a Jazz Master by the National Endowment for the Arts — would end up being Coltrane’s last before he went on a spiritual music journey that would culminate in A Love Supreme.
The John Wright Trio – South Side Soul (Available June 28, 2024)
John Wright, a Chicago native — if you couldn’t already tell by his LP’s title — was a self-taught pianist as a child who later enlisted in the army, played across Europe, and proceeded to become a regular on the jazz scene. By 1960, he released this album, the celebrated South Side Soul which the Chicago Reader gushed is, “an album that swaggers hard.” A figure who’s lesser known despite his outsized talent, Wright was given the Walter Dyett Lifetime Achievement Award by the Jazz Institute of Chicago, in 2009.
The New Miles Davis Quintet – Miles (Available July 26, 2024)
The 1956 debut from Miles Davis’ Quintet came together after a record executive encouraged him to form a band. The talent Davis assembled ended up becoming a dream team: tenor-saxophonist John Coltrane, pianist Red Garland, famed bassist Paul Chambers, and Davis’ favorite drummer, Philly Joe Jones. The results are remarkable.
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