this fine set from april, 1957 has two baritone saxophone players joining up with coltrane's tenor. cecil payne and pepper adams deliver fine performances on an album that is quite conventional when compared with what was soon to come from john coltrane. nevertheless, mr trane hits many a moment of intensity here, and fans of his later work should enjoy this release just fine. the excellent piano man mal waldron is on board, too. it's a session that is well worth having.

a fairly fascinating Coltrane album on the Prestige label. what's most interesting to hear on Dakar is the line up of 3 saxes...Coltrane on tenor (natch') and Cecil Payne and Pepper Adams on baritone. there are plenty of cool moments (the delightful title track and the smooth careen of Route 4). this is certainly not the ultimate Coltrane disc and not the best of the Prestige output (my money's on the stellar Black Pearls album for that honour) but this is a great album full of solid playing and memorable performances.

All of Coltrane's Prestige catalog, while not so much influenced by the Eastern sounds that would later envelop his music, is wonderful. You get to hear Trane in a more traditional setting somewhere between his work with Miles (in fact he was still with Miles when this stuff was recorded) and his first steps (ha pun not intended) away from more traditional tunes on the Atlantic label. Now, there are 11 CDs that make up this catalog (Trane as a leader on Prestige). You do the math. If you buy 'em separately you are going to pay around $125.00. You can get the Fearless Leader box set right here on Amazon for half that price PLUS you get a great guide to all the music Trane recorded as a leader for Prestige, a complete "session-ography", nice picks of all the CD covers including some of those that went through some changes over the year, 45 rpm single covers and so on. It's a very nice package. Buy this if you must but I recommend you save your pennies for a few weeks until you can afford to buy Fearless Leader.Fearless Leader

I'm relatively new to jazz and bought this album on a whim. I was not disappointed, this is a terrific CD. One listen to the songs on this CD and I was hooked on Coltrane. WOW! I don't know enough to tell you where this album fits into the rest of Coltrane's work or the jazz universe more generally, if you want to know these details you'll have to do more searching on the internet. I can tell you though that all six songs (about 40 minutes total) on this album are outstanding and you'll be listening to them over and over. Highly recommended.

Heard this album once and never turned back. The sheer intensity, the swing, the drive and the musicality of all the tracks opened up and whole new world of music.