In advance of the Coltrane 100 celebrations there are tunes of praise for him, plus a touch of the man himself, more great UK jazz and jazz with a blues influence – or maybe it’s the other way round? You’ll also find two featured guests not usually found on Cosmic Jazz.
1. Clifford Jordan – John Coltrane from Glass Bead Games
Our praises begin with Clifford Jordan’s wonderful self-titled tribute to John Coltrane from his superb Glass Bead Games double album – one of Neil’s undoubted favourites from the Strata East label. Writing for All About Jazz, Samuel Chell enthused To call the playing ‘remarkable’ is to do it an injustice: rather, it’s exemplary as a record of one instance of tapping into and then realizing the potential of the vast energy field that is human consciousness. Praise indeed. The album is interestingly named after Herman Hesse’s novel The Glass Bead Game, with its alternative title of Magister Ludi – Latin for ‘master of the game’ – a direct acknowledgement to jazz masters with the album including other named tribute tracks to Paul Robeson, Cal Massey and Eddie Harris. John Coltrane opens with a solo chorus by composer bassist Bill Lee and includes a vocal chant by Jordan, drummer Billy Higgins and Lee that leaves an impression almost as great as Coltrane’s own spoken chorus on A Love Supreme, along with musical influences from several of Coltrane’s landmark 1960s recordings.
2. Terry Callier – Can’t Catch The Trane (original demo) from I Just Can’t Help Myself/Life Lessons: The Best Of Terry Callier
Terry Callier possessed a rich baritone that he deploys to great effect here on this vocal tribute to one of his heroes. It comes from his third and final album for the Cadet label and is full of richly-detailed arrangements as well as thoughtful political and social messages. Can’t Catch the Trane is one of the highlights of this impressive 1973 set along with a sensitive reading of Duke Ellington’s Satin Doll and the epic album closer Alley-Wind Song. I Just Can’t Help Myself has been reissued on vinyl and the demo versions of Can’t Catch the Trane and other titles are available on the excellent 2005 budget compilation Life Lessons: The Best of Terry Callier. It’s alto saxophonist Don Myrick (who featured in the Phenix Horns for Earth, Wind & Fire) on this perfect demo version. For those unfamilar with Callier’s work, a great place to start is with his excellent 1998 comeback album Timepeace, issued on Gilles Peterson’s Talkin’ Loud label. You can track down a copy here on Discogs but first listen to the wonderful Keep Your Heart Right.
3. Brian Jackson feat. Rahsaan Patterson Lady Day & John Coltrane from EP Two/Now More Than Ever
No apologies for more music from Brian Jackson’s new album Now More Thank Ever, which has just appeared on BBE Records following the ‘teaser’ releases of some tracks in EP format. This time, our obvious choice is the inspiring Lady Day & John Coltrane, one of Gil Scott Heron’s most famous compositions. Most of this new release is another tribute – this time to the memory of Brian Jackson’s former musical partner who together gave us many memorable albums including Winter in America (1974) and It’s Your World and From South Africa to South Carolina (both 1975). Gil was the brother I never had and I was the brother he never had, said Jackson in a 2022 Guardian newspaper interview. We had so much in common: both only children who were raised by our mothers and estranged from our fathers. Our mothers pushed us to succeed academically and we both enrolled at Lincoln [University] because Langston Hughes went there. Rahsaan Patterson has, by the way, collaborated with artists such as Lalah Hathaway, Earth, Wind & Fire and Ledisi (who ends this show).
4. John Coltrane – Stellar Regions from Stellar Regions
And now we come to the master – the icon whose centenary will be celebrated on 23 September this year. Here at CJ we’re getting in early, featuring several programmes that will include tributes to this giant of jazz. We begin with one of Coltrane’s later recordings, drawn largely from tapes discovered in 1994 by Alice Coltrane who plays piano throughout and who titled eight of the tracks featured. The album features Rashied Ali on drums and Jimmy Garrison on bass. Garrison had actually left Coltrane’s group in 1966 but he came back for these recordings the following year. Stellar Regions is actually an early version of Venus which appears on the duo album Interstellar Space with with Ali on drums and Coltrane on tenor sax recorded just a week after these tunes. D avid Wild’s album liner notes are worth quoting in some detail: These recordings all have a similar aura. Among Coltrane’s final phrases, they are almost the last notes to be captured on tape, performances thus haunted by our foreknowledge that what will follow them is silence. More importantly and perhaps even more compelling, they represent a suggestion of the evolution his music would have taken had his life not been cut so short, a tantalizing glimpse of an unrealized future… these eight compositions, a day’s work from mid-February of 1967, stand alone as fully formed masterworks, explorations of the “late Coltrane” idiom. That makes clear the driving force that was pushing Coltrane forwards – for just a few months later in July 1967 he would be dead from liver cancer.
5. Ruby Rushton – Walk To Rubio’s from Legacy
We started 2026 with a track from Ruby Rushton’s latest album – their fifth. This UK band is led by sax and flute player Edward Cawthorne – aka Tenderlonius – with Nick Walters on trumpet and flugelhorn, Aidan Shepherd on piano, Fender Rhodes and synths and Tim Carnegie on drums, with all band members making percussion contributions. All Ruby Rushton records are released on their own 22a independent record label. Oli Reeves in his notes to the vinyl album release states that This is a band still evolving. Trademark catchy riffs and heavy grooves are still there but are now heightened by a level of maturity and a sense of belonging that hadn’t been encountered previously. And this is why Ruby Rushton deserves more recognition amidst the ongoing surge of new British jazz artists. If you don’t know their music, check out their Bandcamp site and buy the records.
6. Camilla George – Mami Wata from Isang
And so we turn to another British saxophonist, Camilla George. She studied at London’s Trinity College of Music, where Jean Toussaint was a tutor and then she played with Courtney Pine’s Tomorrow’s Warriors big band. George plays alto sax and identifies Kenny Garrett as an important influence, which explains the addition of his tune Ms Baja featuring effective scatting from Zara Macfarlane. Her debut album Isang appeared in 2017 and was much praised at the time with critic John Fordham noting the saxophonist’s nimbleness, light sound and bursts of raw emotion recalling the 50s cool school as well as the Coltrane quartet. High praise indeed. Other than Ms Baja, the compositions on Isang are all her own and the band includes one of our favourite keyboard players on the UK scene – the always impressive Sarah Tandy. Second album The People Could Fly appeared in 2018 and was followed in 2022 by the even more diverse Ibio-Ibio in 2022 which included Daniel Casimir on bass, Shirley Tetteh on guitar, Winston Clifford on drums plus Senegalese kora player Kadialy Kouyate, acclaimed US drummer Daru Jones and Birmingham’s finest MC Lady Sanity.
7. Ezra Collective feat. Olivia Dean – No One’s Watching Me from Dance, No One’s Watching
Since becoming the first jazz act to win a Mercury prize for their 2022 album Where I’m Meant to Be, London-based quintet Ezra Collective have cemented their place as one of the UK’s most exciting improvisatory groups. Sibling rhythm section Femi and TJ Koleoso hold it all together over the album’s nineteen tracks, exploring Afrobeat syncopation, highlife grooves and Latin clave with the more laid back dance elements on God Gave Me Feet for Dancing – with vocalist Yasmin Lacy – and our choice – No One’s Watching Me – with vocalist of the moment Olivia Dean, fresh from her own album and chart success.
8. Joel Ross – nublues from nublues
We first featured Joel Ross on Cosmic Jazz at the height of the Covid pandemic in 2020 following the release of KingMaker, his first album on Blue Note, and we caught up with him earlier this year exploring his gospel-influenced 2026 release simply titled Gospel Music. Before this was the excellent album nublues and we return to this outing with the title track. There are covers of Thelonious Monk’s Evidence and Coltrane’s Equinox and Central Park West, sitting alongside seven original pieces. The title track is an absolute showcase for Ross’s talent – something that Neil can verify, having seen him in 2023 performing in an all-star group with drummer Makaya McCraven alongside guitarist Matt Gold, electric bassist Junius Paul and trumpeter Marquis Hill.
9. Ledisi – If I Never Get To Heaven from For Dinah
At the beginning of the year, we profiled vocalist Ledisi and her tribute album For Dinah. Best known as an R&B singer, Ledisi is an excellent jazz vocalist too. In an Echoes magazine interview in 2025, Ledisi identified Dinah Washington as an under-appreciated artist, drawing attention to her influence on Aretha Franklin and Quincy Jones, noting too that There are only five people on my wall at home: my mom, my great aunt, Mahalia Jackson, Nina Simone and Dinah. This Dinah Washington original may have the same title as ‘The Tennessee Plowboy’ Johnny Arnold’s country number from 1950 but is a much more spirited number – and Ledisi does indeed do it justice. She’s supported on this track by Christian McBride on bass, McClenty Hunter on drums and Michael King on piano. Highly recommended.