Three performances (two original compositions and one jazz standard) were chosen for the album. "Spiritual", played by a quintet featuring Coltrane on tenor and soprano saxophones (the album credits only list the soprano; however, Coltrane acknowledged playing both instruments on the piece in a 1966 interview) and Eric Dolphy on bass clarinet, is possibly an adaptation of "Nobody Knows de Trouble I See" published in "The Book of American Negro Spirituals" by James Weldon Johnson. Coltrane stated: "It's a piece we'd been working with for some time because I wanted to make sure before we recorded it that we would be able to get the original emotional essence of the spiritual." "Softly, as in a Morning Sunrise", a pop standard, is played by a quartet with Coltrane again on soprano sax. Coltrane stated that the piece "seems to me to round out the two originals, and I especially like the swinging by Jones..."