Soultrane

The album is a showcase for Coltrane's late-1950s "sheets of sound" style, the term itself coined by critic Ira Gitler in the album's liner notes. Also featured is a long reading of Billy Eckstine's ballad standard "I Want to Talk About You", which Coltrane would revisit often, including a version on the album Live at Birdland. Among the other tracks are "Good Bait" by Tadd Dameron, and Fred Lacey's "Theme for Ernie". "You Say You Care" is from the Broadway production of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.

The album closes with a frenetic version of Irving Berlin's "Russian Lullaby". Producer Bob Weinstock relates Coltrane's humorous interpretation:

We were doing a session and we were hung for a tune and I said, "Trane, why don't you think up some old standard?" He said, "OK I got it.["]...and they played "Russian Lullaby" at a real fast tempo. At the end I asked, "Trane, what was the name of that tune?" And he said, "Rushin' Lullaby". I cracked up.

Soultrane takes its title from a song on a 1956 album by Tadd Dameron featuring Coltrane, Mating Call. "Soultrane" does not appear on this Soultrane, and none of the five tunes on Soultrane is an original by Coltrane. The song "Theme for Ernie" was featured on the soundtrack for the 2005 film Hollywoodland.

• John Coltrane, tenor saxophone
• Red Garland, piano
• Paul Chambers, bass
• Art Taylor, drums

Production

• Rudy Van Gelder, engineering, remastering
• Shigeo Miyamoto, engineering, mastering
• Alan Yoshida, Steve Hoffman, mastering
• Del Costello, Bob Weinstock, production
• Kazue Sugimoto, supervision
• Akira Taguchi, supervision
• Ira Gitler, liner notes