Four For Trane became one of the classic, iconic albums of the post-bop era. The explanation is three-fold. First, the material. Rather than follow Coltrane’s lead into the most extreme of his free-blowing anthems, Shepp selected three songs from the Giant Steps album, and one from Coltrane Plays The Blues (although “Cousin Mary,” from the former release, is also a twelve-bar blues). This is significant because it illuminates the two sides of Archie Shepp’s conceptual perspective – an urgency to affirmatively affect the conditions of racial respect and equality in society through radical artistic (music and the written word) endeavors, counterbalanced by a devotion to the traditional expressions (especially the blues and gospel roots learned from his parents) of the African American community.