My Favorite Things (Album)

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My Favorite Things
Studio album by John Coltrane

Publication
(s)

1961

Label (s) Atlantic

Format (s)

LP, CD

Genre (s)

jazz

Title (number)

4th

running time

40:42 (LP)

occupation

production

Nesuhi Ertegün

Studio (s)

Atlantic Studio, New York City

chronology
Coltrane Jazz
(1960) 		My Favorite Things Africa / Brass
(1961)

My Favorite Things is a jazz album by John Coltrane , recorded by Tom Dowd in New York City on October 21, 24 and 26, 1960 and released on Atlantic Records in March 1961 . Many jazz critics consider it one of the most important recordings of modern jazz .

Prehistory of the album

After John Coltrane had finally left Miles Davis' band after a European tour in April 1960 , he renewed his efforts to found his own formation, initially with Steve Kuhn , Steve Davis and Pete LaRoca . Finally he switched to pianist McCoy Tyner for Kuhn in the summer of 1960 and the drummer Elvin Jones for LaRoca in autumn , with whom he went into the studio three times for Atlantic in October 1960 . First the albums Giant Steps and Coltrane Jazz were created .

The album

My Favorite Things is the saxophonist's third album for Atlantic Records . When recording this album, he introduced a new quartet, consisting of pianist McCoy Tyner, drummer Elvin Jones and bassist Steve Davis.

The album belongs to modal jazz and is in a period of Coltrane's style change, which began with hard bop and went on to free jazz , which was evident in the recordings that followed in 1961 for the Impulse! Records showed even more clearly. The first track on the album is a harmonious reworking of the Broadway song " My Favorite Things " from the musical The Sound of Music , composed by Richard Rodgers (based on a text by Oscar Hammerstein ).

At the same time, this was Coltrane's first published recording with the soprano saxophone , an instrument unusual for jazz at the time. The title track "My Favorite Things" impressively shows Coltrane's new appropriation of the instrument. "With Coltrane, the three-four time [of the song] became the meter of the trance and the soprano sax, which was still unfamiliar at the time, became a kind of Arabic oboe."

The jazz critics Richard Cook and Brian Morton emphasize in this context that Coltrane's arrangement should be viewed as a radical subversion of a popular song in the Great American Songbook . In addition, Coltrane's playing on scales is seen as an integration of Eastern idioms, based on Coltrane's interest in the north Indian music of Ravi Shankar . " Coltrane added a long passage in E minor to the theme of Rodgers and Hammerstein's waltz , or after repeating the theme in E major , and improvised expansively over both parts." He also changed the chord progression of the piece. However, the piece is not played as a waltz, but rather has a 6 ⁄ 4 time with an emphasis on the dotted halves, and the sequential repetition of the motif also accommodates a modal conception.

This interpretation of the piece by Coltrane was “a milestone in several respects: it brought the saxophonist the breakthrough, it made his quartet (...) the formation of the hour, it established the soprano saxophone in modern jazz and it raised an insignificant song from a dying musical -Culture to jazz standard overnight ”. After this recording session, Coltrane played mostly modal; In the following years "My Favorite Things" became a regular part of the live program of the John Coltrane Quartet, often interpreted much more extensively and freely than this 13-minute, rather controlled played original version of the piece. The song was later recorded at least eighteen times and documented on Coltrane's albums; but this remained the only studio version that Coltrane recorded.

The other tracks on the album, the standards " Summertime ", " But Not for Me " and Cole Porter's " Everytime We Say Goodbye " composed by George Gershwin , are also influenced by the modal playing style of the Miles Davis band, with Coltrane one and a half Recorded the classic Kind of Blue years earlier .

The ballad “Everytime We Say Goodbye” is also presented by Coltrane on the soprano with soft notes in the upper registers. The Coltrane biographers Filtgen and Auserbauer point to the sensitive solo by McCoy Tyner, who "opens up new levels of the subject with flowing melodies". "Summertime" stands out from the well-known lyrical Miles Davis version from 1958, which the trumpeter recorded on the album Porgy and Bess , with its energetically pressing lecture , played at an upbeat tempo . Tyner's solo is just as powerful as Coltrane's and percussive. Filtgen and Auserbauer highlight the end of the album with “But Not For Me”; the Gershwin piece is approached at a medium-fast pace and very relaxed.

The photo on the cover, a portrait of a Coltrane playing the soprano saxophone, was taken by Lee Friedlander .

Evaluation and impact of the album

After Lewis Porter, the week in October 1960 is considered to be the most important in Coltrane's work for Atlantic . The recordings for My Favorite Things , especially the title track, brought the saxophonist widespread recognition among jazz audiences; the piece became a jazz hit in the United States. Coltrane biographer Ashley Kahn describes Coltrane's style around 1960/61, shortly before he switched to the newly founded jazz label Impulse! Records , as the most influential of modern jazz at the time ; with his harmonious changes he was perceived and revered as the leading innovator.

Richard Cook and Brian Morton, who in their The Penguin Guide to Jazz gave both the (later) complete edition The Heavyweight Champion and the original LP with the highest marks, particularly highlight the title song as the core of the Coltrane repertoire. Even Brian Priestley raises the Rough Guide Jazz album from the extensive Coltrane discography produced and mentions the modal improvisation of the title track and the sensitive ballad Everytime We Say Goodbye .

Rolling Stone magazine voted the album at number 11 in its 2013 list of The 100 Best Jazz Albums .

Discographic Notes

The album, released in March 1961, contained the first recordings of the three October sessions of the John Coltrane Quartet. The other tracks, recorded on October 21, 24 and 26, 1960, only appeared when the saxophonist was on Impulse! Records was under contract; in July 1962 the album Coltrane Plays the Blues (Atlantic 1382) and in June 1964 Coltrane's Sound (Atlantic 1419). The alternate takes of the October sessions were published after Coltrane's death under the title The Coltrane Legacy (Atlantic 1553) in April 1970 and Alternate Takes (Atlantic 1668) in January 1975. The complete recordings appeared in 1995 in the order in which they were made, including the alternate takes in the 6-CD edition The Heavyweight Champion - The Complete Atlantic Recordings .

The titles

  • John Coltrane Quartet - My Favorite Things (Atlantic 1361 (LP) / 812275350-2 (CD))
  1. My Favorite Things ( Richard Rodgers / Oscar Hammerstein ) - 1:41 PM (October 21, 1960)
  2. Everytime We Say Goodbye ( Cole Porter ) - 5:39 (October 26, 1960)
  3. Summertime ( George Gershwin ) - 11:31 (October 24, 1960)
  4. But Not for Me (Gershwin) - 9:34 (October 26, 1960)

The October sessions in chronological order

  • October 21, 1960, Atlantic Studios, NYC
  1. Village Blues (2 takes)
  2. My Favorite Things
  • October 24, 1960, Atlantic Studios, NYC
  1. Central Park West
  2. Mr. Syms
  3. Untitled Original (Exotica)
  4. Summertime
  5. Body and Soul (2 takes)
  6. Blues to Elvin (2 takes)
  7. Mr. Day
  8. Blues to You (2 takes)
  9. Blues to Bechet
  10. Satellite
  • October 26, 1960, Atlantic Studios, NYC
  1. Everytime we say goodbye
  2. 26-2
  3. But not for me
  4. Liberia
  5. The Night Has Thousand Eyes
  6. Equinox

literature

Web links

Notes and individual references

  1. ↑ Coltrane then worked as a guest musician as the two Miles Davis tracks "Teo" and "Someday My Prince Will Come" in March 1961, which appeared on the Columbia album Some Day My Prince Will Come .
  2. ↑ Cf. L. Porter, p. 16. In this formation he appeared after the European tour in early May 1960 in the New York Jazz Gallery .
  3. ↑ This was soon to be followed by bassists Reggie Workman and then Jimmy Garrison ; the latter then completed the classic John Coltrane Quartet in 1961 .
  4. ↑ Coltrane had heard Steve Lacy play the soprano saxophone (compare Steve Lacy in an interview ) and then used the instrument on a few live performances. On June 28 and July 8, 1960, he recorded a few pieces with Ornette Coleman musicians Don Cherry and Ed Blackwell , but these were later released on Atlantic . See Porter, p. 17.
  5. ^ A b Hans-Jürgen Schaal (Ed.): Jazz standards. The encyclopedia. 3rd, revised edition. Bärenreiter, Kassel u. a. 2004, ISBN 3-7618-1414-3 , p. 303.
  6. ↑ Compare also the stylistic analysis by Scott Anderson, The Evolution of My Favorite Things (Master thesis Gustavus Adolphus College, St. Peter, Minnesota 1996), which compares this version with the original and three later versions of Coltrane.
  7. ↑ Lewis Porter emphasizes as further role models Coltrane's Dizzy Gillespie explorations of Latin American music and Ahmed Abdul-Malik , bassist of Thelonious Monk in 1957, when Coltrane played in his band, which dealt with the music of the Middle East; compare Porter, p. 21. Later arrangements of African music by his friend, the percussionist Babatunde Olatunji , for whom Coltrane wrote his composition Tunji , are added.
  8. ↑ Quoted from Filtgen / Auserbauer, p. 56.
  9. ↑ 17 minutes long at the Newport Jazz Festival , 20 minutes long in Stockholm in 1961 and 26 minutes long at the Village Vanguard , which was absolutely unusual back then. Compare Schaal 2004, p. 303.
  10. ↑ Quoted from Filtgen / Auserbauer, p. 151.
  11. ↑ See Porter and Kahn.
  12. ↑ See Ashley Kahn, p. 46 f.
  13. ^ See Brian Priestley, p. 132.
  14. ↑ Rolling Stone: The 100 Best Jazz Albums . Retrieved November 16, 2016.