A two-CD “distillation” of performances by John Coltrane and Red Garland (from its Amazon.com Web page)
This morning as I was perusing my electronic mail, I found that Pandora was trying to persuade me to follow their John Coltrane Radio connection. Ironically, the link was not particularly successful, particularly since it was trying (without success) to direct me to a Sonny Rollins album! Fortunately, I already have a generous supply of Coltrane CDs, including the sixteen of them collected in the box set of Prestige recordings. The good news is that there is still an Amazon.com Web page for this collection; but the bad news is that the price is $235, accounting for sixteen CDs.
I have to confess that I have a particular fondness for those CDs that bring Coltrane together with pianist Red Garland. I suppose that is because I had an opportunity to listen to Garland leading a piano trio on one of my business trips to New York. This was relatively late in his life. At one point, he apologized for a lengthy verbal introduction, confessing that he was trying to remember what he would next be playing!
Sadly, Pandora does not seem to be have as much concern for Garland as it has for other sources. Perhaps it thinks that only names like Coltrane, Oscar Peterson, and Charlie Parker will attract attention. Nevertheless, an Amazon search for Garland yields a generous number of hits. So maybe it is just a matter of enough writers coming up with articles about Garland to give him a level of attention that parallels Coltrane!
