The Africa/Brass Sessions, Volume 2

The Africa/Brass Sessions, Vol. 2 is a posthumous compilation album by American jazz saxophonist and composer John Coltrane, released in 1974 by Impulse Records. It compiles outtakes from the same 1961 sessions that produced his Africa/Brass album. "Song of the Underground Railroad" and "Greensleeves" were recorded on May 23, while "Africa" was recorded on June 4. On October 10, 1995, Impulse incorporated the tracks issued here into a two-disc set entitled The Complete Africa/Brass Sessions.

Background

After a successful series of albums for Atlantic Records, Coltrane signed to the developing, more jazz-oriented Impulse! Records. He assembled a 17-piece orchestra and started to record a series of sessions called Africa/Brass with musicians such as trumpeters Booker Little and Freddie Hubbard, trombonist Julian Priester, bassists Paul Chambers and Reggie Workman, reed player Eric Dolphy, pianist McCoy Tyner, and drummer Elvin Jones. The Africa/Brass Sessions, Volume 2 compiled music from the second installment of the sessions in 1961.

Critical reception

In The Village Voice, Robert Christgau wrote that he "gave up listening" to the rest of Coltrane's posthumous albums but still listens to The Africa/Brass Sessions, Volume 2 "all the time". In a retrospective review, AllMusic's Lindsay Planer praised Coltrane's command of his orchestra and his own playing: "The amazing virtuosity in Coltrane's solos had begun to show signs of the future direction his later avant-garde sides would take." Revisiting his preference of Vol. 2 over the original Africa/Brass, Christgau wrote in 2020 that "the dollops of massed horns that give the album its name contrast far more dynamically against the forward-looking 'Song of the Underground Railroad' than the original album's generic 'Blues Minor.' And while I admit that Elvin Jones is more spectacular on the 1961 'Greensleeves,' the world is a better place with two of 'em."