| Crescent | |
| Type: | studio |
| Artist: | John Coltrane |
| Cover: | John Coltrane - Crescent.jpg |
| Alt: | A slanted photograph of Coltrane playing saxophone in a blue suit facing the left. The top left corner of the cover features the title of the album in red script with by the words "John Coltrane Quartet" in yellow beneath it and "Featuring McCoy Tyner/Jimmy Garrison/Elvin Jones" underneath that in blue. |
| Released: | July 1964[1] |
| Recorded: | April 27 and June 1, 1964 |
| Studio: | Van Gelder (Englewood Cliffs) |
| Genre: | Avant-garde jazz, post-bop, modal jazz |
| Label: | Impulse! A-66 |
| Producer: | Bob Thiele |
| Prev Title: | Coltrane's Sound |
| Prev Year: | 1964 |
| Next Title: | A Love Supreme |
| Next Year: | 1965 |
Crescent is a studio album by the jazz musician and composer John Coltrane. It was released in July 1964 through the label Impulse!. Alongside Coltrane on tenor saxophone, the album features McCoy Tyner (piano), Jimmy Garrison (double bass) and Elvin Jones (drums) playing original Coltrane compositions.
Coltrane does not solo at all on side two of the original LP; the ballad "Lonnie's Lament" instead features a long bass solo by Garrison. The album's closing track is an improvisational feature for Jones (with sparse melodic accompaniment from Coltrane's tenor sax and Garrison's bass at the song's beginning and end): Coltrane continued to explore drum/saxophone duets in live performances with this group and on subsequent recordings such as the posthumously released Interstellar Space (with Rashied Ali).
An earlier version of "Lonnie's Lament" appears on Afro-Blue Impressions, and an almost hour-long version of "Crescent" was recorded on Live in Japan. The entire album was collected on . Coltrane later recorded the song "After the Crescent", which appeared on 1978's To the Beat of a Different Drum.
The title track was later covered by Alice Coltrane for 2004's Translinear Light and McCoy Tyner on his 1991 album Soliloquy. Tyner recorded it again live for the albums and Live at Sweet Basil. Guitarist Steve Lukather is the soloist on the version recorded for the 2005 tribute album A Guitar Supreme.[2] The SFJAZZ Collective covered four of the songs on their SFJAZZ Collective 2, with Nicholas Payton and Joshua Redman soloing on the title track.[3]
Garrison's widow recalled that this album along with A Love Supreme were the two he listened to the most.
All songs composed by John Coltrane and published by Jowcol Music (BMI)
Side one
Side two
John Coltrane Quartet
Technical personnel
Compact Disc release
Notes
Bibliography