My iPod is apparently having a love affair with Ken Burns. I only have two discs from the series (both free promos) and it managed to select both of them in three days. I'm not sure I have the heart to tell it there is no more Ken Burns left after this.
As with Billie Holiday, the Ken Burns compilation of John Coltrane's career highlights is not comprehensive, but adequate. Because it is able to cross labels (except Blue Note, apparently), it offers up a diverse selection of material, from his first stint with Miles Davis ("'Round Midnight") to his avant-garde final recordings ("Jupiter"). All of the recordings except the first one are performed under his name, so the collection naturally skews to the 1960's output, as Coltrane's status as bandleader was still developing in the prior decade. There's only so much you can squeeze on to a single disc, especially when 30 minutes are devoted to two tracks ("My Favorite Things" and "Chasing the Trane") and many tracks run closer to ten minutes than five.
Half of the album still enjoys unique representation in my library, so I can forgive the exclusion of material off of "Blue Train" which is already safely in my possession. I'm not really sure if there are any other discs in this series I would make an effort to acquire since either I already have ample content by the artist or I would rather pick up some of their key albums. As I said, these Ken Burns things were free to me, so it wasn't hard to make the decision to grab them, especially considering the generally-awful selection of free stuff we poor Borders wage slaves were offered back in the day.
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