Ballads

By the time Ballads was recorded in 1961–62, John Coltrane had released Giant Steps and was developing what would become his most extreme and searching work. The critics who found his playing harsh had been vocal. Ballads was, in part, a response: an album of standards played straight, with no angular harmonics or extended technique, demonstrating that he could play with as much warmth and clarity as anyone required.

Choosing Ballads over A Love Supreme or Giant Steps says something about where a listener’s relationship with the music sits. This is the Coltrane album for people who have moved past the canonical ones — the record that proves he could make prettiness look effortless when he wanted to, before the sheets of sound returned. The playing is unhurried in a way that his more celebrated records rarely allow themselves to be.