Coltrane Time – Cecil Taylor

Artist: Cecil Taylor

Year: 1959

Genre: Hard Bop

Grade: B+

Cecil Taylor’s collaboration with John Coltrane isn’t the experimental freak out you’d expect. In fact, it’s quite tame. Taylor stabs at clusters of chords in the background, but the rest of the quintet — save for bassist Chuck Israels — is unwilling to follow his lead. In fact, trumpeter Kenny Dorham feuded with Taylor over the direction his music was taking. As a result, Coltrane Time (also available as Stereo Drive) errs on the safer side of traditional hard bop.

For fans of Taylor and Coltrane (and Dorham), this album is a slight disappointment. The collaboration would have been much more interesting in 1966, post-Unit Structures and post-Ascension. It’s the great avant-garde album that never was.