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****AMG "With Ballads Coltrane looksinto the warmer side of things,a path he would take with bothJohnny Hartman and with DukeEllington. Here he lays out forMcCoy Tyner mostly, and theresults positively shimmer attimes. He's not aggressive.Instead he's introspective andat times even predictable,but that is precisely Ballads'draw." (Sam Samuelson) Besides achieving a very personal andcharacteristic sound, John Coltrane opened theway to free jazz, allowing himself to play long andcomplex improvisations that increasingly strayedfrom the tunes in which they were based. However,even though he forced himself to continuallymove further away from traditional melodies andconventional music structures, he always found time(even during his final years) to record some ballads.On these recordings he showed another of his manyfacets, which was perhaps less revolutionary, butequally personal: his sensitivity and his capacity tocreate an intimate mood, reinventing the simplestmelodies and transforming them into jazz tunes.This becomes clear with his readings of such songsas "My Favorite Things", "Inchworm" and even thetraditional "Greensleeves" (although the version ofthe latter tune contained here was recorded duringthe Ballads sessions, it wasn't included in the finalalbum and was issued as a 45rpm single) . In 1962,Coltrane recorded his famous album dedicatedexclusively to ballads (which is presented here), andthe following year he accompanied the celebratedsinger Johnny Hartman for a whole LP with hisquartet. By the time he recorded Ballads, Coltranehad already delved into freer and longer solos andcompositions, and as a result he had his devotedfollowers as well as his detractors.