Africa/Brass (album)

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Professional reviews
Africa/Brass

Studio album by John Coltrane
Released	1961
Recorded	May-June 1961
Genre	Jazz
Length	33:29
Label	Impulse! Records
Producer(s)	Bob Thiele
All Music Guide [1]
John Coltrane chronology
Coltrane Jazz (1961)	Africa/Brass (1961)	Olé Coltrane (1961)

Africa/Brass is a 1961 album by John Coltrane, his first for the new Impulse! label. It features Coltrane's five-piece working band (which at the time included two bassists - Reggie Workman and Art Davis), backed by a fifteen-piece brass band including, among others, trumpeters Freddie Hubbard and Booker Little, and bass clarinetist Eric Dolphy. The brass arrangements were originally credited to Dolphy, but in the years since the album was released it has emerged that they were, in fact, primarily the work of pianist McCoy Tyner (misspelled "Turner" on the original issue). Tyner wrote out the arrangement for the English traditional song, "Greensleeves"; for the two original pieces, "Africa" and "Blues Minor", Dolphy and Coltrane adapted Tyner's piano voicings for the orchestra.

A second LP, culled from the same sessions, was released in 1974. It was titled Africa/Brass Sessions, Volume 2. It featured a version of the slavery-era spiritual-cum-code-tune, "Follow the Drinking Gourd" (retitled "Song of the Underground Railroad") as well as alternate takes of "Greensleeves" and "Africa". There also exist outtakes from the sessions - a version of Cal Massey's "The Damned Don't Cry", and additional alternate versions of "Africa" and "Greensleeves".

Both albums have since been combined onto one compact disc. As well, all extant takes (including both albums, and the three outtakes) from the sessions have been compiled in order of recording on the double-CD collection, The Complete Africa/Brass Sessions.