Chris, great that you’re offering this opportunity to us here!
This is „king ubu“ from you know where else… 
We’ve been discussing the yesterday that many labels in the 50s and 60s recorded their artists in much shorter intervals than they could possibly (and economically feasible) release the recordings.
This applies, for instance, to Coltrane or Jackie McLean on Prestige, or musicians such as Grant Green and Andrew Hill on Blue Note.
The legends go that McLean often just needed a fix so the summoned up some guys at RVG’s in order to get him some cash… I guess that’s another of those half-truths?
Can you shed some light? How much of this was to document music, how much of it to make sure the label would still have future releases to come, once the artists would have moved on?
Prestige and Atlantic, for instance, continued to release Coltrane albums way into the 60s, and while it was probably very hard for „Coltrane’s Sound“ to stand opposite of, say „Live at Birdland“ or „Crescent“ (which I assume came out around ’64 as well or were then rather recent releases), in hindsight, „Coltrane’s Sound“, restored to its proper place in fall 1960, is a marvellous album!
So we fans are, I guess, mostly very happy about this practice, but I guess there was more to it than just a producer who knew something important was being captured, so he took chances to document as much of it as possible?
Sorry, this got a bit lengthy, but if you can shed some light on these questions or some aspects of it, that would be much appreciated!
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"Don't play what the public want. You play what you want and let the public pick up on what you doin' -- even if it take them fifteen, twenty years." (Thelonious Monk) | Meine Sendungen auf Radio StoneFM: gypsy goes jazz, #151: Neuheiten aus dem Archiv – 09.04., 22:00 | Slow Drive to South Africa, #8: tba | No Problem Saloon, #30: tba