Following last year’s surprise, Both Directions At Once: The Lost Album, Impulse! has unearthed some more previously unreleased John Coltrane material, which they’ll be dropping September 27th as a new album entitled Blue World.
The audio stems from a June 1964 session which took place at Van Gelder Studios, in between the recording of Crescent and A Love Supreme, with Coltrane’s Classic Quartet of McCoy Tyner on piano, Jimmy Garrison on bass, and Elvin Jones on drums.
The music was commissioned by French-Canadian filmmaker Gilles Groulx for his 1964 motion picture Le chat dans le sac (The Cat in the Bag), which garnered him the Grand Prix at the 1964 Montreal International Film Festival.
A fervent admirer of Coltrane, Groulx convinced the tenor player to revisit and record some of his earlier works for the movie, taking the master mixed by Rudy Van Gelder with him to Canada, but only using ten of the thirty-seven minutes of recorded material in his film.
Blue World has now been mastered from its original analog tape and features two takes of “Naima”, three takes of “Village Blues”, and one take each of “Blue World”, “Like Sonny”, and “Traneing In”.
Watch the abstract video for the lead single, “Blue World”, below and make sure to pre-order your copy of the album, available on vinyl, CD, and MP3.
And for context, you can also watch Le chat dans le sac in its entirety with English sub-titles on the National Film Board of Canada’s website.
Blue World, the new lost album by saxophonist John Coltrane is coming September 27 to Impulse! Records.