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For me, it was Live At Birdland. I had all the common starter albums: Blue Train, Giant Steps, My Favorite Things, A Love Supreme. I liked them all a lot, in their different ways. Blue Train has those nifty compositions and those amazing blues rundowns.
Giant Steps has those trademark "I am way better than you at saxophone" solos on "Countdown" and "Giant Steps," but also the richly beautiful "Naima." My Favorite Things' title track is all unsettling and ruminative. And A Love Supreme is its own universe, a fortress, an idea greater than we are — it's deep. I was sold by the time I got to Live At Birdland. But this was the record which let me fully see John Coltrane as an actual human being creating human music, and not a detached, mythic freak of nature from canonical history.
It had to do somewhat with the live component; three of the songs were actually put to tape in concert at the club Birdland, including the tour de force cadenza on "I Want To Talk About You." These guys weren't a studio phenomenon; they did it night after night for years on end. It also has to do with the band: This is the work of Coltrane's "classic quartet" at full stride (McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison, Elvin Jones), and it reminds you what it means to have a working unit which knows the language it has created for itself. (The studio version of "My Favorite Things" and this take on "Afro Blue" both feature soprano sax in a waltz feel, but much more how rousingly alive is this group? I mean, Elvin on that, yeesh.)
complete on >> http://www.npr.org/blogs/ablogsupreme/2010/09/23/130086030/what-s-the-first-john-coltrane-album-you-fell-in-love-with?sc=nl&cc=jn-20100926
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