ohn Coltrane recorded My Favorite Things over a three-day period in October 1960. It was one of a half-dozen records that he made for the Atlantic label during the brief time between his stint at Prestige and his mature period with Impulse! Records. It helped launch Coltrane to general popularity. His recordings for Atlantic were a dramatic improvement over those for Prestige, as he was playing with his own band, as opposed to a group of sidemen assembled by the label. He had assembled much of his most famous quartet: McCoy Tyner on piano, Elvin Jones on drums and Steve Davis (later replaced by Jimmy Garrison) on bass.

My Favorite Things was also Coltrane's first recording using the soprano saxophone, and his modal rendition of the title song on soprano became a radio hit. The Richard Rogers composition comes off sounding a bit insipid in the Julie Andrews version from The Sound of Music soundtrack, but Coltrane turned it into a jazz classic. The balance of the album picks up where Giant Steps left off and is filled with clues as to where Coltrane was headed in the coming explosion of creativity of the Impulse! recordings. The contribution of the other members are strong, the group synergy carrying this album to the top echelon of Coltrane releases.

However, My Favorite Things is not the best-sounding recording Coltrane made for Atlantic (or Blue Note or Impulse!). For serious jazz fans, however, that lack of sonic perfection has not prevented it from being universally considered one of Coltrane’s finest achievements. Atlantic’s Tom Dowd and Phil Iehle did excellent work recording Coltrane, and their house sound for Atlantic is consistent. They achieved a better sound on Giant Steps, recorded in 1959, but ended up with a less dynamic, somewhat muffled sound during the October 1960 sessions. Unlike Blue Note, where Rudy Van Gelder by this time had switched to recording in stereo only, folding the channels for mono releases, Dowd continued to run both mono and stereo decks, resulting in two distinct original masters. Dowd’s microphone placement, however, favors mono, and that applies in spades to My Favorite Things, where Coltrane appears in one channel and the rest of the band in the other.

In part because of the inferior sound, My Favorite Things has never been a reissue favorite like Giant Steps, which has had countless reiterations from legitimate labels as well as pirated versions cut from CD. ORG Music issued a stereo LP remastered by Bernie Grundman in 2013, but it retained the awkward stereo soundstage of the original, and the cover sported an inferior reproduction of the Lee Friedlander cover art. A CD boxed set of Coltrane’s Atlantic titles was released in 2016 that did not include My Favorite Things, as the mono master tape was thought to have perished in the 2008 fire at the Universal lot where so many master tapes were stored. However, like many titles thought lost, the mono master tape was located. The tape was restored to the record company’s archive on June 2, 2019, listed as being in “fair” condition. Later that year, Warner Music Japan offered the first reissue of that restored mono master tape of My Favorite Things on a UHQCD with MQA processing [Warners WPCR-18248]. In 2021, Electric Recording Company (ERC) released an expensive limited-edition mono vinyl reissue. In addition, there have been a few releases of the stereo tape, mostly in Europe, on labels with fanciful names like Waxtime and Not Now Music. The provenance of those releases is suspect, and they are likely dubs made from CD or other media.

Fortunately, Atlantic has now released this two-LP version, one disc in mono, from the mono tape, and the other in stereo. The records were pressed in Germany, are flat and quiet. Kevin Gray, the mastering engineer for both versions, has a significant amount of experience working with Atlantic master tapes. I have a couple dozen examples in my own record collection, with results ranging from achieving parity with the original to significant improvement over it. However, there is nothing he could do to rearrange the microphones that distort the stereo imaging, so for My Favorite Things, the mono disc remains much more convincing. With most Atlantic reissues, the further into the 1960s you go, the greater the improvements Kevin Gray has been able to achieve. That rule of thumb applies here. There are no remarkable improvements here over the sound of an original pressing, but the reissue comes close. Unlike with the ERC mono reissue, which I owned, the tonal balance remains true to the original's. The UHQCD disc is very, very good, but compared to the original and to this reissue, the level of Steve Davis's bass has been boosted and consequently brought forward in the mix. Kevin Gray’s version stays close to the original, and although there is some evidence of tape degradation, it is negligible. In other words, this is as close as you are going to get to an original mono LP without spending hundreds of dollars to acquire one.

The packaging is utilitarian. Rather than a deluxe foldout cover to hold both LPs, Atlantic opted for a lightweight slipcover that holds both discs and a booklet containing several photos of the artists; several pages of quotations from Coltrane, other jazz artists and critics about the album; and an essay from jazz critic Ben Ratliff. In addition, interspersed throughout are photographs of bits and pieces of ephemera -- mastering notes from the session and a picture of the corner of the box that holds the master tape. I would have loved to see more of this material, as it contains valuable information about the sessions, but the editor of the booklet chose to offer only tantalizing morsels. The jacket cover is labeled “Stereo,” but a sticker on the shrink wrap identifies the package as a 60th-anniversary release with both mono and stereo discs.