At publication, The John Coltrane Reference contained as much information as we could collect about the various issues and reissues of recordings in which Coltrane participated. That aspect of discographical research has become more and more problematic in recent years, with the proliferation of formats and the globalization of the music industry. It is increasingly difficult to keep up with the variety and quantity of reissues of Coltrane's recordings. Most of these are simply repackagings of recordings leased from various labels, products aimed at casual listeners rather than the serious jazz scholars and students who were the intended audience of the Reference.

Our approach in collecting issue information for the Reference was to attempt to acquire the issue (or a reliable taped copy) and compare it, track by track, with known material, identifying each track and noting variations. That optimal approach is especially impractical with multi-CD boxed set reissues, for economic and logistic reasons. None of us can afford to acquire the same music over and over again, simply to identify it, and the information we glean is of relatively little value for jazz scholars and students.

This Reissues section is our attempt at a solution. It lists reissues with no previously unreleased content, including large boxed set compilations and exact equivalents of earlier issues. The information has been compiled from various sources, and the tracks have been identified mostly through titles and timings; we have not attempted to compare each track physically with a known issue. We have also listed these reissues in a short-hand format, rather than attempt the page-by-page emendation approach of the Updates section. This section is a lower priority in our research, so we also don't claim to be current or complete. However, the Reissues section does allow us to keep up after a fashion with the flood of reissued Coltrane recordings.

The John Coltrane Reference portion of wildmusic-jazz is divided into a set of pages dealing with the book itself and a larger set of pages containing updates to the book. Updates for both the Chronology and the Discography are listed in chronological order, with updates for each year collected on a separate page. There's one exception--updates to Appendix B (Interviews) are listed on a separate Interview page.

In 2011 we decided to modify how we listed the vast number of reissues. These are now listed with a one-line entry in the Updates section; the link takes the reader to a page with details about the reissue. The site is perpetually under construction, and older reissue entries may still only appear in the Update section.

The information is collected by release rather than separately by session. The entries are posted on separate pages, grouped alphabetically by label name. The format of each entry varies depending on the type of release and available information. Reissue information previously posted in the Updates section will eventually be integrated into this section. Some box set releases which combine new material with reissues may be listed in both places.

Reissues posted here are listed in the Album Title index and are noted in the Updates section with a link to the entry. Reissue postings are not listed individually in the index. The table below shows the available reissue pages. There is also a link below to a table showing reissue postings by label name. The information collected here is almost completely the result of research by my good friend and colleague Wolf Schmaler, to whom we all owe much thanks for his ongoing labors.

Navigation: To see if a particular reissue is listed, use the table below to find the label name and see if it's listed. The link will take you to the page where that information is listed. Entries on those pages are sorted by label name and by catalogue number. As noted, this section is continually under construction and some reissues may only be listed in the Updates page. If you are looking for a reissue of a specific session, you can go to the Update page for that date and see what is listed. See the Updates page for details.