the song was recorded by coltrane in 1960, but released ten years later by atlantic records on an album entitled "the coltrane legacy" with a rhythm section composed of mccoy tyner on piano, steve davis on bass, and elvin jones on drums. the composition itself is a contrafact of charlie parker's tune "confirmation", with harmonic alterations to the original chord changes used by coltrane in a number of his composition—this harmonic modification is commonly known as coltrane changes—most notably used in coltrane's "giant steps". "26-2" is one of several contrafacts by coltrane, others including "countdown" (from the album "giant steps" — a contrafact of miles davis's "tune up", and "satellite" from the album "coltrane's sound" — based upon the chord progression of "how high the moon)". coltrane plays the first statement of the melody on tenor saxophone, and switches to soprano saxophone for the last statement of the melody on the recorded version.