John Coltrane's Secret Club Recordings, Taped 60 Years Ago, Are Out at Last

Frank Tiberi spent four years following John Coltrane from club to club with a tape recorder in his coat. On Friday, the recordings he made finally came out.

The Tiberi Tapes, released by Impulse! Records, hold 11 tracks recorded between 1960 and 1964 in clubs in Philadelphia and New York. The set runs about three hours.

Tiberi was a saxophonist himself, and a longtime professor at Berklee College of Music. He taped the shows to study how Coltrane played. He carried a portable reel-to-reel recorder into the clubs, the microphone hidden in the sleeve of his overcoat, and kept the tapes for himself. Over the years he let a few fellow musicians hear them. Everyone else knew them only by reputation.

What is on the tapes

The recordings catch Coltrane working through his best-known material in front of a crowd. The set opens with two versions of “Giant Steps,” played at different speeds. “Impressions,” “Good Bait” and “Resolution” are on it too.

The sound is rough. Tiberi recorded on consumer equipment in crowded rooms. Impulse! spent two years cleaning and repairing the tapes, and the hiss and room noise are still part of the record. The label put it this way: “The technology that captured those moments was imperfect. The music was anything but.”

Coltrane was born on September 23, 1926. The release is part of Coltrane 100, a year of events marking what would have been his 100th birthday. He died in 1967, at 40.

The standard set comes as a four-LP box, a three-CD set, and digital. A complete edition holds more than 100 performances and nearly 26 hours of music on a USB drive. It is limited to 750 hand-numbered copies and ships in early 2027.

A reissue of Miles Davis & John Coltrane — The Complete Columbia Recordings 1955-1961 also came out Friday.