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LOS ANGELES – John Coltrane, the legendary saxophonist, composer, and cultural icon, would have celebrated his 100th birthday later this year (September 23, 1926). A few days after his historic centennial, Rhino will release Coltrane 100, the first comprehensive, cross-label career retrospective ever assembled for the jazz heavyweight.
Coltrane 100 – Selections from 1951-1967 will be released as a deluxe 6LP audiophile vinyl boxed set on October 2 from Rhino.com and the artist’s official store. Pre-Order Here. A curated version, Coltrane 100 – Highlights from 1957-1964, will be available the same day on 2LP and CD.
Both configurations are remastered by legendary audio engineer Bernie Grundman and feature a new essay by renowned Coltrane scholar Ben Ratliff. The flagship 6LP box set is pressed on 180-gram vinyl at Optimal in Germany and housed in a slipcase with a 12-page booklet. Purchases made via Rhino.com and select independent retailers will include an exclusive, limited-edition 12x12 typography poster featuring the album’s striking centennial artwork.
This landmark release untangles the complex web of Coltrane’s recorded legacy, uniting historic masterworks licensed from Prestige, Blue Note, Atlantic, Columbia, and Impulse! into one cohesive audio narrative that spans from his first professional recordings in 1951 through his final boundary-pushing creative sessions in 1967.
The collection’s expansive, 23-song track list charts one of the most astonishing evolutionary arcs in modern music. It documents Coltrane’s foundational years as an elite sideman and co-conspirator—capturing his work alongside Dizzy Gillespie (“We Love To Boogie”), Miles Davis (“Two Bass Hit,” “If I Were A Bell,” “Milestones,” and the timeless “So What”), Thelonious Monk (“Well You Needn’t,” “Trinkle, Tinkle”), and Duke Ellington (“In A Sentimental Mood”). It also tracks his explosive ascension as a bandleader with his paradigm-shifting solo work, including “Blue Train,” “Giant Steps,” the modal majesty of “My Favorite Things,” his breathtaking live performance of “India” (with Eric Dolphy), and the spiritual apex of his career, “A Love Supreme, Pt. 1 – Acknowledgement.”
Ratliff ponders, in the introduction to his essay in the set’s liner notes:
[Coltrane] was known for his humility...would it be a strange sort of humility to have had such a loud and commanding voice on his instrument, to begin a solo at full force, as he often did? Listening gives one access to the interior of people and things in a way that seeing does not...would it have been a strange sort of humility to make the insides of his instrument, its metal and reeds and moving parts, as well as the insides of his body, his breath and stamina and sometimes his faltering? He played past the expected end-posts of musical ideas and spilled over the sides of them.
This audio release leads a wider celebration of Coltrane’s centennial, starting tonight with an event hosted by The Record Club at Public Records, a sonically immersive music venue in Brooklyn. Coltrane’s birthday week (September 21-25) includes Pitchblack Playback immersive listening sessions in select cities.
The live tributes begin with the Ravi Coltrane Quartet playing a special run at the Blue Note in Los Angeles from September 22–24. On his birthday, September 23, the celebration hits both coasts, beginning at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center, where they will present a book panel for Coltrane: A Visual Celebration of the Legend. Meanwhile in L.A., the Hollywood Bowl is staging the historic Coltrane 100: Legacy symphony performance featuring Grammy-nominated alto saxophonist Lakecia Benjamin.
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