Two days prior to the recording of Olé Coltrane, Coltrane had made his inaugural recording session for his new label, Impulse! Records. With one further album due for his old label Atlantic, he brought in his working quintet along with two participants in the Africa/Brass sessions, Art Davis and Freddie Hubbard. Owing to his concurrent contract with Prestige Records, Eric Dolphy was listed on the credits under the pseudonym George Lane. Coltrane's interest in the music of Spain evident in "Olé", may have been spurred by his ex-employer Miles Davis's Sketches of Spain from the previous year. The structure and melody of the modal jazz vamp "Olé" was borrowed from the Spanish folk song El Vito (maybe better known as El Quinto Regimiento from the Spanish Civil War (also known as Venga Jaleo), which was made known by Pete Seeger), while the soprano saxophone work recalled 1961's "My Favorite Things".