Ex-Wife Discovers 'Lost' Record by American Giant

One of America's most acclaimed musical artists has a new record coming out more than 50 years after he died, the New York Times reports. The newly revived label Impulse! says it will release Both Directions at Once: The Lost Album by the John Coltrane Quartet, a 1963 recording that lies between his youthful style and the exploratory jazz he later embraced. "Coltrane was looking back at bebop ... and the song-based lyricism of jazz he had recently explored with Duke Ellington," jazz critic John Fordham tells the Guardian. "But he was also looking forward to imagining the more intense, mantra-like, spiritually-driven music."

Coltrane recorded the session with his classic quartet (Elvin Jones, Jimmy Garrison, and McCoy Tyner) at the Van Gelder Studios in New Jersey on March 6, 1963, per a press release, but it went unreleased for unknown reasons. Then Jaunita Naima Coltrane, his first wife, stumbled on her personal copy of the recording and showed it to the label. Both Directions at Once includes two previously unknown originals, listed only as numbers, along with Coltrane's famous "Impressions" and his first recording of "Nature Boy." In the words of saxophone legend Sonny Rollins, "This is like finding a new room in the Great Pyramid." The record is set to come out on June 29. (More recording stories.)