mccoy tyner

On different nights, the John Coltrane Quartet’s various members would take turns taking the lead, or so it seems to me on listening to their records, though it was probably a matter of accident and a listener’s perception as much as it was anyone’s plan. The European tour recordings that the Pablo label licensed in the 1970s and 1980s are a far more terrifying documentation of Elvin Jones’s power than the more restrained studio sessions from the same period. To me the 1965 sessions released in 2005 as One Down, One Up: Coltrane Live at the Half Note are the McCoy Tyner show. (Generations of saxophonists view those tapes as the pinnacle of Coltrane’s power, so again, it’s a matter of perception.) There’s an almost punk intensity to the pianist’s playing on those dates, the way he pounds out those left-hand ostinatos, the fire he lights under his bandmates on every tune. Tyner’s most important victories were harmonic and architectural, but he was also simply an unflagging source of power on the bandstand.