Ballads

During the early '60s, the contentious critical reaction to John Coltrane's music got so over-the-top that some reactionaries branded his work with Eric Dolphy as "anti-jazz". Having already recorded the exploratory AFRICA/BRASS and LIVE AT THE VILLAGE VANGUARD, Coltrane went along with producer Bob Thiele's suggestion that he do an album of BALLADS to silence nay-sayers once and for all.
BALLADS, DUKE ELLINGTON & JOHN COLTRANE and JOHN COLTRANE AND JOHNNY HARTMAN for a triptych of "traditional" recordings, italicising the saxophonist's ability to swing in a classic vein, while underscoring his sensitivity as a ballad player. He even managed to impress the moldy fig who penned the original liner notes to BALLADS.
From the gentle opening strains of "Say It (Over And Over Again)", the saxophonist imparts all the tender yearning and romantic empathy of a mature, compassionate adult. Given his predilection for technical complexities, Coltrane avoids any hint of emotional grandstanding, allowing only for subtle melodic embellishments. On "You Don't Know What Love Is" and "What's New" he displays a glorious tone, achieving a remarkably human vocal timbre in the upper registers, indulging in more pronounced harmonic variations, as the Tyner-Garrison-Jones rhythm axis subtly shifts gears to accomodate these intricacies. Without straying far from the basic themes or giving in to cheap sentiment, the saxophonist sustains a gorgeous melodic focus throughout BALLADS, marking this recital as another John Coltrane masterpiece.|

Throughout John Coltrane's discography there are a handful of decisive and controversial albums that split his listening camp into factions. Generally, these occur in his later-period works such as Om and Ascension, which push into some pretty heady blowing. As a contrast, Ballads is often criticized as too easy and as too much of a compromise between Coltrane and Impulse! (the two had just entered into the first year of label representation). Seen as an answer to critics who found his work complicated with too many notes and too thin a concept, Ballads has even been accused of being a record that Coltrane didn't want to make. These conspiracy theories (and there are more) really just get in the way of enjoying a perfectly fine album of Coltrane doing what he always did -- exploring new avenues and modes in an inexhaustible search for personal and artistic enlightenment. With Ballads he looks into the warmer side of things, a path he would take with both Johnny Hartman (on John Coltrane & Johnny Hartman) and with Duke Ellington (on Duke Ellington and John Coltrane). Here he lays out for McCoy Tyner mostly, and the results positively shimmer at times. He's not aggressive, and he's not outwardly. Instead he's introspective and at times even predictable, but that is precisely Ballads' draw. ~ Sam Samuelson