John Coltrane
Coltrane for Lovers

Have you ever watched where the smoke rings go as they lazily drift from your mouth after those first bitter puffs of a cigarette that's reached its end?
Have you ever found yourself completely drunk, talking to the Jack Daniels label while it stubbornly stays mute despite your alcohol-fueled monologue of sincerity?
And what do your half-closed eyes, like the shutters of a venue that are halfway down, watch, with only the spectacle of the staff sweeping away the last broken glasses on the side?
I know, you can't answer; it's normal, and that's how it should be.

There are mental and psychic states that can't seem to anchor themselves to our memory, to our past, except by clinging to flashes, images, insignificant details (a missing tooth in a smile, the alabaster ring of the bartender, the right angle formed by two cigarette butts in the ashtray) that, through small associations of ideas, help us fix moments, instances of life or particular and unique atmospheres that would otherwise be easily forgotten in the distance separating one drink from the last - which, as we know, is always sworn to be the last...

This album is just that and doesn't set out to be anything more. You take it and listen to it like a tranquilizer for the soul, a soft and pleasantly intense record that ferries us to quiet and intangible worlds like the September mist that envelops our most unconfessed secrets.
A melancholic and fragile album, candid and disarming, that gathers some of the most romantic and melancholic ballads among the best ever heard in the realm of cool jazz.
This CD stands out for the productive and never predictable collaboration of Johnny Hartman and Duke Ellington that, with Hartman's mellow and heartfelt singing and the enchanting and superior touch of Duke's piano, offer us moments of immense physical and spiritual intensity while the allure of the seven notes coming from that damned wild sax leaves us no respite and carves deep grooves like roots into the folds of our now unstable and exposed emotions.

An album that fundamentally speaks to us, shakes us, whispers to us, and goes straight to our soul; 11 tracks created to comfort us and that allure us in all those romantic and/or melancholic moments we might encounter in various phases of our lives, whether they be nights of love, an abandonment, or even the end of a broken dream. 11 tracks that let us glimpse here and there the end of the smoke ring, make us hear the response of the bottle's label, or enjoy the virtuosity of the broom gathering the shards. Those moments that we would never remember "after," those moments that aren't made of numbers, names, song titles—one title is as good as another (to hell with the titles and the little words only good for putting something on the back of covers!)

Remembering the titles makes no sense in "those moments" that last the time of one last sip of whiskey, and I tell you now, it won't be the last drink of the night.