John Coltrane’s Favorite Things Remembered with Goose Bumps

©Copyright 2017: Richard von Sternberg, All Rights Reserved

The John Coltrane Quartet Made New Jazz Blossom with My Favorite Things

As I write this, I realize that I am so old now that my parents grew up on Dixieland and swing era music and crooned to the love songs of the era of the Great War of the 1940’s.  I was born as the war ended and my childhood began when the baby boom exploded, affluence came in like a tide and jazz music had evolved to what they called be-bop.

Hermosa Beach as Jazz Music Epicenter

As I grew up, so did my little town of Hermosa Beach.  Jazz music has always been esoteric and a “taste” one acquires, a genre of music. Its followers have always been a minority here.  Jazz musicians from the 30’s forward have noted that their audiences were far larger in Europe than here.  During my teen years, conditions had ripened enough that jazz was readying itself for a major transformation in tempo and style and a place in society.  Jazz performers began to appear in large cities all over America: The Village Vanguard, The Jazz Workshop, Carnegie Hall, Newport, Shelly’s Manne Hole, The Jazz Gallery, and one of the most famous clubs of all, Howard Rumsey’s Lighthouse in Hermosa Beach.

In my little town of Hermosa Beach, a town of one square mile with a population of 13,000, filled with artists and reclusive types as well as Ph.D. engineers, masters of rocket science with jobs at Jet Propulsion Laboratories, North American Aircraft Company, actors with Hollywood careers, all kinds of people, a jazz night club managed to flourish, draw crowds on the weekends as the likes of John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Dave Brubeck, Shorty Rogers, and, and, and………performed.  They were magnetic performers in a magnetic venue right down from the Hermosa pier on Pier Avenue who drew enormous crowds of people from all over Los Angeles, people who came to ride the wave of a beautiful, rapidly evolving music based on soulful and masterful improvisation.

Experiencing Jazz Live Made it Irresistible

As a boy I was not allowed in, as it was, after all, a nightclub with liquor.  Luckily for me, at the end of the performers’ stage was a Dutch door that just HAD to be kept open during the humid nights of that warm, Mediterranean-like climate enjoyed by the neighbors of my youth, and I perched myself right at that Dutch door and could almost reach out and touch the performers, they were so close.  One could say that I stumbled on the jazz scene and that I probably would have missed it had the Lighthouse club not been there yet, once discovered, was gripped by it. Changed by it.

Miles Davis

I was still in junior high school when I discovered Miles Davis. Miles appeared to be arrogant and sometimes sat with his back to the audience.  I listened to his music and never thought another negative thing about him again no matter what he did or had done.  Miles was powerful with the trumpet and his arrangements of top performers, one of whom reeled me in with his originality and versatility:  John Coltrane.

The “Trane”

The first time I heard John Coltrane play, I found myself constantly worrying that the run of notes he was building on was leading to a spot he would not be able to get out of and sound like he was still with the overall theme of the music.  He reminded me of W. C. Fields, the famous comedian of the 20^th century who found a way to stand out from all other performers who juggled things like cigar boxes by appearing to drop one of the boxes and retrieve it just at the very last second, causing so much adrenalin to build up in his audience that his save would cause thunderous applauses to occur.

Something happened to jazz at the end of the be-bop era that made it open up, that made it become a spotlight ensemble for performers.  To become a star, you had to be able to transfix the crowds with your solo improvisations, to work on and off the music of the other players and keep your part of the train on the track, touching on the main theme of the piece you were playing, yet stand out brilliantly against the landscape spotlighting your individuality, your personal style and control of your instrument(s).  The one who my childhood intuition told me at the time was the master was John Coltrane.

I can hear the influence of Thelonius Monk, who Coltrane played with for a while, on his music.  In one of his more famous tunes, Little Rootie Tootie, Monk repeats his theme with strong banging on the piano keys, continually touching pairs of keys (next to each other) right to the point of making the listener wonder if he were about to stumble into cacophony, yet with his masterful touch, kept the music exciting by pushing it next door to chaos while managing to keep it tame enough to integrate into one’s soul.

While Coltrane was with Miles Davis there were rumors of irreconcilable ego sparks, but their musical compatibility was at a pinnacle of musicianship and interconnectedness one would expect to only find in thousand year old orchestras led by timeless masters of the baton.  The two of them made musical history together as long as it was possible, until Coltrane finally realized he was meant to be  his own innovator and beta-experimenter, developer of his own ensemble. 

The John Coltrane Quartet is Born

His first attempts to create a group on his own were chronicled by Wikipedia. You can Google this on line:

“Coltrane formed his first quartet for live performances in 1960 for an appearance at the Jazz Gallery in New York City. After moving through different personnel including Steve Kuhn, Pete La Roca, and Billy Higgins, the lineup stabilized in the fall with pianist McCoy Tyner, bassist Steve Davis, and drummer Elvin Jones.”

Tyner, Davis, Jones and Coltrane turned out to be the lightning flashes that lit up the night sky because they were perfect together.  Coltrane saw what he had, looked for a way to satisfy his burning desire to fly with his new-found soprano saxophone in a way only he could play it and in 1960 he surprised even himself with an arrangement of a gentle, melodious Rogers and Hammerstein Sound of Music crowd pleaser: My Favorite Things.

When I first heard his ensemble play My Favorite Things, I was too young and inexperienced to understand how deeply I was being affected by it, how much a place within me was permanently affected as I stood, riveted, catatonically put into a state that elevated, the way the Bach intended to elevate the soul with his deeply moving sacred music for the organ:  that transcendent musical state where you feel no separation between the self and the music you are listening to or performing.

I listened to a Nancy Wilson radio program about John Coltrane in which she explained that he picked My Favorite Things at a time when he was becoming fascinated with the instruments and music of India.  Perhaps from a conversation she had with him she learned that he was attempting to blend the elements of Indian music with the waltz rhythm of My Favorite Things and discovered he had found a way to launch his most amazing solos and contrast every note against the exotic and gentle background so that every part of the music supported his genius-level improvisation.

His album, My Favorite Things, broke into the market like a thunderstorm with whirlwinds in 1961.  Coltrane’s switch from the alto to the soprano saxophone – essentially announced to the world through My Favorite Things – caused, according to my professor of jazz music in college, Phil Elwood, who was the jazz critic for the San Francisco Examiner, around 20 thousand soprano saxophones to be sold in the next few days all around the world.  With one musical score, John Coltrane, known in his world as “Trane”, changed jazz music forever.

It was a collaborative endeavor with Coltrane at the helm and his three choices of accompanists, all of whom were the best at what they did, making up the John Coltrane Quartet.  It was the moment Miles Davis dreaded most as the “Trane” left his station.  (Professor Elwood told us Davis broke down and sobbed as he realized what he was losing.) 

The first time I heard the recording (not the first time I heard the ensemble play live), I heard the one error that McCoy Tyner makes in his triangular piano run of waltz patterns with one slight extended second per triangle, an error he makes when one of his fingers touches two keys at once and one of the hammers lands harder than the other on the piano strings making it sound like something was off a tiny bit, leaving you unsure whether it was intentional or not.  I got the first recording in 1960 in the middle of my teens and played it until it was mostly scratch sounds.  I shared what I found with everybody I met who enjoyed jazz music and even pointed out the micro-error made by pianist Tyner.  Professor Elwood pointed that out as well back then, and, many years later, I heard Tyner refer to the “blip” in an interview as a great unnoticed mistake.  He pointed out, with tongue in cheek, that every critic referred to that recording of My Favorite Things as a flawless performance, so he didn’t have to be disappointed in himself.

What is it about it that allowed that one mixture of sounds to be perceived in such an extraordinary way?  The first impression you get hearing it the first time is familiarity because the quartet did not try to disguise their music.  For the sake of clarification, since many people think that Julie Andrews introduced the tune to the world in a movie, here is the My Favorite Things timeline, also from Wikipedia:

“The song was first performed by Maria (played by Mary Martin) and Mother Abbess (Patricia Neway) in the original 1959 Broadway production.

Julie Andrews performed the song for the first time on the Christmas special for The Garry Moore Show in 1961, and then in the movie in 1965.”

What Happens to a Person Taken by Coltrane's Rendition of My Favorite Things?

In the quartet recording, introduction-of-the-piece honors were given to Tyner as he and his cohorts set the rhythm and prepared the ear for what was to follow.  For all those who had already heard the Rogers and Hammerstein version, it must have seemed like a look at a familiar, treasured place over its reflection on a lake where a very slight breeze is blowing, just enough to ripple the surface and make the reflection an impressionist-influenced look at the same thing.  

Two extremely beautiful, but different, scenes blended stereoscopically into a rhapsodic panorama.  Tyner, Davis and Jones, with familiarity, harmony, sweet piano patterns and crisp percussive touches slowly and seductively set the stage for the ignition of Coltrane’s first rich sound that, for those inclined toward such things, grabs you, pulls you away from EVERYTHING ELSE and lulls you into listening to the familiar, quickly ratcheting up several levels of complexity as Coltrane respectfully plays Rogers and Hammerstein adding a dash or two of his unusual approach, then lets his fingers begin to speed around his sax keys faster than a person can even think of them moving, making multiple sounds where one or two are expected, sending ping pong balls of sound ricocheting all around the room.  Just as you begin to think that the roller coaster has left the track and an embarrassing crash is about to occur, as I mentioned earlier, Coltrane is already back on the main track leaving you to “replay the tape in your head”, subconsciously “examine the evidence” to see if all of what you just heard really was “correct” and, if you perceive the genius, wonder how it was possible for any human being to do that.  In the background, Elvin Jones provides a perfect musical heartbeat, error free from beginning to end and Steve Davis fills in all the blanks with his bass in a way that is so natural it is barely noticed consciously, but, removed, would make the selection sound like stereo with one speaker missing.

If you have never heard the recording, it is available on line here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHVarQbNAwU

Please leave a comment on this blog post.  I am curious to see people’s take on Coltrane’s letting go of the ball almost until it hits the floor, then, reversing the impression leaving you in awe.

Richard von Sternberg, May 15, 2017