According to Coltrane biographer
Ashley Kahn,
Four for Trane "was a direct result of Coltrane’s intervention, and his faith in the young tenor saxophonist from Philadelphia." Shepp recalled his efforts to get a recording date with Impulse!: "I had spent months trying to get Bob [Thiele] on the phone and he never answered the phone. Every time I'd call, his secretary, Lillian, whom I got to know very well, but at that point I hated her because she said, 'Well he's gone out to lunch,' or 'He's gone home and he's not coming back.' I was living in a fifth-floor walk-up and I'd save a dollar a day just to make ten calls. I'd run down and put a dime in the phone in the drugstore. This went on for months... So this one night I sat in with Trane at the Half Note. I got up enough courage to ask if he would intercede. So John gave me a look — the first time he really sort of looked at me in a very critical way, very questioning. He said, 'You know, a lot of people think I'm easy.' Then he took a very hard look at me. I said, 'Well, John, you can be sure I'm not trying to take advantage. I need this.' He knew I loved him. It wasn't about just trying to get off easy. So he looked at me and he says, 'Well, I'll see what I can do...' The next day I called Thiele's office and lo and behold the secretary says, 'Well, he's not in now but he will be back at three o'clock and he's waiting for your call.' So when I did talk to him, the first thing he said is, 'You guys are avant-garde. I know you're into your own thing. If you do this recording you're going to have to record all of John's music.' I had just been waiting for the chance to do that. I loved Trane's music and I had my own ideas about how to work with it. That became the
Four for Trane date..." Regarding the recording session, Shepp said: "When we did the
Four for Trane date, it went down almost take by take, because we had rehearsed nightly for months. After the third song, Bob, who had been really terribly rude at the beginning, smoking his pipe like a chimney, he brightened up a bit, sat down and said, 'I've got to call John and tell him this stuff is great.' He said, 'John, you got to come out and hear this!' Well, Coltrane already knew. He had been listening to this stuff for the last couple of years because the avant-garde was all around New York... John was very gracious. He drove out from his home in Long Island to Englewood, at about eleven o'clock at night. I assumed he got out of his bed, because when we took that photo they put on the album cover [he was] with no socks, you know." ==Reception==