John Coltrane & The Red Garland Trio & Quintet - Four Classic Albums (2020)

AVID Jazz continues with its Four Classic Albums series with a finely re-mastered 2CD release from John Coltrane with The Red Garland Trio & Quintet complete with original artwork, liner notes and personnel details. For this set, our fourth featuring John Coltrane and second featuring The Red Garland Trio & Quintet we have selected four more albums that bring together, arguably the greatest ever tenor sax player and one of perhaps the greatest unsung giants of jazz piano. Given the massive drawing power of the name John Coltrane we have cheated a little by placing his name first on this release as we genuinely feel it will lead more jazz fans to discover the genius of Red Garland who was actually the leader on three of our releases. 'John Coltrane with The Red Garland Trio', 'The Red Garland Quintet featuring John Coltrane & Donald Byrd: Soul Junction', 'The Red Garland Quintet with John Coltrane & Donald Byrd: High Pressure' and 'The Red Garland Quintet with John Coltrane: Dig It!' As the story of John Coltrane is pretty well known we thought we would just focus a little more on Red Garland on this occasion. A word about Red Garland... How many jazz pianists can say that they went a few rounds with the legendary Sugar Ray Robinson? Well certainly our next artist can! Red Garland began his career as a boxer, fighting over 30 bouts including an exhibition match with the aforesaid legend! Calming things down a little, Red began his musical career on the alto sax and clarinet before moving to the piano. In the period directly after the Second World War, Red Garland appeared to be playing with just about everybody who was anybody in the jazz world including Billy Eckstine, Coleman Hawkins, Roy Eldridge, Charlie Parker and Lester Young. Actually the more we check out Red's resume the more staggering it becomes when you start to consider that he hadn't even met Miles and Trane yet!! And thus Garland's career continued until Red was invited to play on the legendary recordings by The Miles Davis Quintet (recently released by Avid - AMSC1376) and John Coltrane joins his Trio and Quintet alongside the likes of Paul Chambers, Arthur Taylor, George Joyner and Donald Byrd. We strongly urge you to listen to this release and you will discover a great pianist in Red Garland alongside some classic early Coltrane playing with a fine band of jazz brothers. And don't forget our other Red Garland release (AMSC1280). Check out:- John Coltrane (AMSC1023,1115 & 1230); Miles Davis (AMSC1081 & 1348); Miles Davis Quintet (AMSC1376); The Red Garland Trio (AMSC1280); Paul Chambers (AMSC1324), 4 x Classic Drummers (featuring Art Taylor) (AMSC1297); 4 x Classic Bassists (featuring Paul Chambers) (AMSC1301).