McCoy Tyner and the Thrill of Discovery

On jazz connections and the pianist's sixties stint on Impulse!

The initial subject matter of the below essay was a look at McCoy Tyner’s first album as a leader, Inception, recorded in January 1962 and released on Impulse!. As I wrote it, it kind of morphed into something a little more meandering but I also hope perhaps a little more interesting than what I had first planned. Tyner was one of the first jazz musicians who really shook me and like so many, I first heard of him through his work with John Coltrane, particularly the music he made with the tenor saxophonist from October 1960 to May 1961.

I hope you enjoy what I have written and will share your thoughts as well!

Until next time, may good listening be with you all!

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McCoy Tyner and the Thrill of Discovery
By: Robert C. Gilbert

Using the word holy to describe the music of the John Coltrane Quartet is hardly an original thing to do. And yet, when it is played at the right time and in the right place, it can slowly, almost without knowing it, induce a state of bliss so transcendent that it’s hard not to call it anything else but that. Perhaps some additional leeway is afforded here as when I think of Coltrane’s music as being holy, I’m not necessarily thinking of A Love Supreme or ‘Dear Lord’ or ‘Alabama’—deeply spiritual works though they all are. Instead, I’m primarily thinking of the early months of the Quartet just after McCoy Tyner and Elvin Jones joined, and Steve Davis and then Reggie Workman held down the bass chair.

The group’s first two concentrated periods of recording—three sessions in October 1960 and three sessions in May 1961—yielded five albums and also marked Coltrane’s transition from Atlantic to his final recording home, Impulse!. It was during this time that he put on tape his most well-known recording, his transformation of ‘My Favourite Things,’ Olé Coltrane, his final straight-ahead recording with an expanded front line and Africa/Brass, his exhilarating expansion of the Quartet’s sound to a small big band.

These records operate on two different, seemingly contradictory, planes. One is exploratory, focused on trying to reach a sonic nirvana. The other is accessibility, employing motifs, harmonic suspensions and tightly coiled energy to make the music quickly understandable to the novice jazz listener as well as satisfying to the long-time jazz buff. In effect, this collection of music is both governed by a musical language that seems to transcend the theme-solo-theme structure while also making it highly logical. Take, for example, how Tyner’s solo on ‘Olé’ seemingly dissolves into the lengthy dialogue between Workman and Art Davis.

That not only suggests a way to implicitly hand the soloist baton from musician to musician but also implies that an ensemble becomes a collective instrument, everyone’s energies profoundly aligned. Now, that’s a romantic way to describe what happens. Another would be to suggest that it’s tentativeness instead at work here with everyone staying within a clearly defined boundary, particularly in how Jones keeps the breadth of his sound fairly constrained or how Coltrane never breaks into full cry. But, whatever constrictions there are only furthers the exhilaration here as well as on, foe example, the very cool ‘Equinox,’ recorded in October 1960 and only released in 1966. In a sense, to hear it is to discover the fundamentals of jazz. At least, that’s what it feels to me.

That thought is no doubt one I have because these early recordings of the Coltrane Quartet formed my first substantial exposure to him and his group’s music. It was all so gloriously new to me as undoubtedly what the Quartet was playing was new to the members of the group. Regardless of what personal connection I have to this music, it’s often the earliest documents of a new way of making music that most strongly endure. In other words, when the new rules are being created rather than being adhered to, if you like.

But what turned me on the most with this music was hearing McCoy Tyner. The steadiness of his comping behind Coltrane. The way his solos progressed from crystalline single lines to those hypnotic chordal patterns to the reassurance of a motif that signaled the shift from one mode to a new one or the conclusion of his statement. It was an approach markedly different from other sideman appearances he made at the time—he was all of 21 when he joined Coltrane’s band—such as on Freddie Hubbard’s dynamic debut as a leader, Open Sesame, where he plays like a spritelier and slightly more adventurous Wynton Kelly.

Of course, how Tyner played on something like ‘Song for the Underground Railroad,’ an outtake from the Africa/Brass sessions and my favourite Coltrane recording, would evolve as would the sound of the Quartet, from the legendary recordings from the Village Vanguard in early November 1961—by that time, Jimmy Garrison was in the process of supplanting Workman—to the dissolution of the group as 1965 wound down.

During those years, Tyner was also recording as a leader on Impulse!. What is most interesting about the six albums he made for the label is their varied nature—each has its own character. Nights of Ballad and Blues is a trio recording with old bandmate Steve Davis and Lex Humphries on drums and is pitched towards mass appeal. A live set from the 1963 Newport Jazz Festival is informal. Today and Tomorrow switches from a trio with Garrison and Albert “Tootie” Heath on drums—dig an almost-modal take on ‘A Night in Tunisia’—and a sextet with a jaw-dropping frontline of Thad Jones on trumpet, Frank Strozier on alto saxophone and John Gilmore on tenor saxophone that only hints at the possibilities of such a combination. The opening ‘Contemporary Focus,’ for example, points toward the expanded sound palette of Tyner’s 1967 album Tender Moments, his second album after moving from Impulse! to Blue Note.

The three remaining three LPs are essentially trio sessions. Reaching Fourth, recorded in the fall of 1962, has Tyner playing with bassist Henry Grimes and drummer Roy Haynes, who was on call for the Coltrane Quartet whenever Jones was unavailable. No surprise then with Haynes at the kit that the brisk tracks are wound deliriously tight. Haynes’ clipped hi-hat-and-snare work on the title track in particular makes it a high point of Tyner’s sixties stint on Impulse!. Inception and McCoy Tyner Plays Ellington bookend it.

They are also notable as they document the pianist with his mates in the Coltrane rhythm section. The latter, recorded the same week as A Love Supreme, is with Garrison and Jones (Willie Rodriguez and Johnny Pacheco provide not-exactly-necessary percussion on four of the album’s seven tracks). It’s one of the strictly-trio cuts, ‘Mr. Gentle and Mr. Cool,’ an Ellington feature for Ray Nance and Shorty Baker, that stands out. The theme is very hummable. The harmonic shift in the B section is full of possibilities for the solo.

After playing the theme, Tyner, Garrison and Jones cast a Coltrane shade on Ellingtonia. The beat gets heavier. Jones thickens it on the toms on the middle eight. Tyner’s three solo choruses have him lightly climbing up and down the keyboard and also playing dense clusters of chords. Garrison favours strumming the strings for his one solo chorus.

A brisk run-through on ‘It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing)’—not released until 1978—has Jones playing those instantly recognizable polyrhythms as well as a relentless swing on the ride cymbal. These recordings not only call back to the first days of the Coltrane Quartet but also reveal the effect of subsequent years. The music is a little less polite. Everyone has emerged as a mater of their instrument.

Inception was recorded at the start of 1962. It’s not only my favourite of his Impulse! albums but also, in my opinion, the best artistically with Reaching Fourth a close second. With the pianist are Jones and Art Davis, while never officially a member of the Coltrane Quartet, he was called on often enough as a second bassist to be considered part of the fold.

There’s a symmetry to the program. Three up-tempo pieces, each based on a different form, all written by Tyner. Three ballad- to mid-tempo pieces, two being well-known standards and the other the fourth original written by the pianist for the album.

The title track, which starts the album, is full of quirks even as it is mostly a tune that provides an engaging structure for the soloist. A lickety-split run up the keyboard and a brief response by Jones is played before the theme. A four-bar riff is added so that the exchanges between Tyner and Jones become a cycle between one instance of four bars and then two instances of eight bards after Tyner’s improvisation. During it, he is bursting with ideas, filling in all the spaces but never in a gratuitous manner. When he switches to chords, he also switches from laying into the beat to laying away from it.

On ‘Blues for Gwen,’ named after Tyner’s sister, he is even more precocious, improvising straight through. What is even more notable is that as Tyner is playing aggressively, there is still room for space and more than once, he ruminates on a shimmering trill.

‘Effendi,’ probably the best-known of the numbers Tyner wrote for Inception, is a modal piece with a twist. There’s only one A section before the switch to a new mode on the B and then a return to the A. Here is Art Davis’ finest moment on the album, a two-chorus solo in which he goes outside of the harmony, plays the bass like a guitar on the B and throughout, sounds like he is playing free even as he adheres to ‘Effendi’’s 24-bar form.

The other Tyner original is ‘Sunset,’ dedicated to his then-wife Aisha, and the lyrical highlight of Inception. It starts off rubato and then resolves into a romantic chordal climb echoed by Davis and given extra momentum by Jones’ brushwork.

Inception’s two standards are another study in contrasts. The melody of ‘There Is No Greater Love’ unfolds in a light, decorative way in which each member of the trio weaves around each other similar to the approach of the classic Oscar Peterson Trio with Ray Brown and Ed Thigpen. ‘Speak Love’ has Jones back in Coltrane mode, playing a rhythmic dialogue between the ride and using cross-sticks with Tyner employing a pedal point to unspool the famous Kurt Weill melody. It’s a propulsive way to end the album, one that is pretty special to me.

It was natural for me to start collecting Tyner’s albums after immersing myself in the music of Coltrane. Inception was the first one I bought. It’s the kind of discovery path that jazz best inculcates, especially back in the late nineties when I first got seriously into jazz and one still had to actively seek out the music one wanted to hear.

It’s a process I am also remined of as I dig into Haunted Heart, the recent release of everything—both masters and alternate takes—that Bill Evans, Scott LaFaro and Paul Motian recorded in the studio between 1959 and 1961 for Riverside Records. In this case, Miles Davis brought me to Evans. My first purchase of his music was Portrait in Jazz. That’s real music discovery. Here, I’d also use the word holy to describe it.

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