Interesting thoughts. I definitely didn't hear any issue with Flanagan's solo until it was pointed out to me. Now i kind of can't un-hear it as stumbling/halting... i'm all for going against the narratives though. It get's on my nerves when listeners project failings on musicians... sometimes it's warranted, but sometimes i think people project and/or jump to a conclusion and then that becomes the convenient narrative.
Not that I’m saying Flanagan couldn’t have turned out a more “impressive” solo if he’d had the opportunity to shed on it for a while. As it is though I think he does a pretty stellar job of bringing out the more melodic possibilities in the changes. Granted the tune is difficult, but if anything I’d say it just goes to illustrate how ace these guys are that they produced such a classic off the cuff in a number of takes.
That's a good piece, and it's right, "Giant Step" isn't 12 tone music, and it's not atonal music. It's music where maybe the tone centers/key moves a lot and quickly if you choose to look at it that way. But it's not music without key. In fact, it's music very much devoted to traditional ideas of key and harmony, and it's music that uses harmony as it's structural foundation, which is the heart and soul of tonal music -- chord movement through key relationships between chords (what led Schoenberg to develop 12 tone and serial composition was the fact that he didn't know how to organize music in free atonality in the absence of the idea that V resolves to I or whatever, so he felt like he had to develop a different organizing system for music without key). So much of Coltrane's music of the time is an exploration of chord substitutions, it's often chord substitutions over one of the most fundamental tonal harmony resolutions -- the ii-V-I chord progression -- and it often moves through a cycle based on the key relationships suggested by interval relationships. In a way, to me, it's like the ultimate extension, the final stopping point, of the bebop -- which was also devoted to running through chord substitutions over basic tonal harmony patterns. Trane came up pretty much in the bebop idiom and after years of playing in it, arrived at this intricate, personal approach to it, an approach which grew from but remained firmly rooted in bebop's primary obsessions -- harmony -- and primary stylistic elements -- fast swinging combo jazz performance where soloists run through chord substitution-organized solos over changes. Giant Steps maybe the ultimate expression in that development. Coltrane started moving on from that point more to other ideas, as did a lot of the jazz world as free jazz, and other kinds of new thing jazz that looked to approach the music without harmony as it's organizing material.
I think Hentoff’s liner notes got it right; Flanagan’s solo makes use of space. It is halting, but not because he was struggling. Otherwise, I think that video is very good.
I remember reading that Trane brought in sheet music for "Giant Steps" to the studio, but it had no tempo stated, so Flanagan was caught off guard when they started. He does a good job imo. It's easy to sit a criticize recorded music 60 years after the fact and not taking into account the situation. How many piano players would manage a coherent solo flying by his pants on a tune he had never heard, a difficult tune at that tempo? Those guys were all super pros.
Good interview here with Cedar Walton who was originally supposed to be the pianist on the session and who says on his sessions with Coltrane on the tune he declined to solo because the song was "too hard." Cedar Walton on "Giant Steps" Flanagan must have been interviewed at some point over his long career about that famous session. I didn't see something on a quick Google search but it's gotta be out there. He also returned to the material in his career. BTW, watching Barry Harris work through the song with students gives you a sense of how tricky this is for a pianist looking for a way to solo linearly and melodically through it vs. just running eighth note arpeggios through the changes.
Yeah, like I said, overall I like the video, but I would like it more if that part was left out or some other approach was used to illustrate the difficulty. Ultimately, the idea I put out there about the end of the 3rd chorus and the following 4th chorus is just speculation on my part for fun, but the point that the narrator makes an incorrect statement and selectively edits in a different part of the tune that better fits the narrative being put forth is not speculation and is the real point of my post.
I've thought for decades that Flanagan was struggling, and joked about it (not unkindly) with colleagues who independently felt the same way. So it's a long-held opinion -- and one I stand by: that solo isn't up to his standards, and understandably so. It's tentative and doesn't "flow". But if it's true that he was basically sight-reading (or playing at a tempo far beyond what he'd been led to expect), it's a testament to his abilities that he was able to do as much as he did. Didn't he re-record "Giant Steps" on a solo album of his own, and nail it? And yeah, "Giant Steps" is emphatically not 12-tone. Similar symmetrical structures with mediant modulations (if you can call them modulations!) are all over the music of Franck, Liszt, and Stravinsky among others, and can even be found in Schubert. Plus there's "Have You Met Miss Jones?", of course.
Does anyone know what the reception to Giant Steps was at the time it came out, seemingly on the heels of Kind Of Blue?
Down Beat (1960) - 5 Stars - Excellent - "...[Coltrane] has managed to combine all the swing of Pres with the virility of Hawkins and added to it a highly individual, personal sound as well as a complex and logical, and therefore fascinating, mind...tag this LP as one of the important ones..."
Surprisingly, this thread doesn’t seem to get as much activity as I would have thought. For the sake of continuing the discussion, and because I personally enjoy such discussions, I will, good-naturedly, disagree and continue to argue the side that Flanagan turns out a killing solo. First of all, referring back to the point at 1:30 in the video that I brought up before. The narrator is trying to establish the idea that the changes are difficult and states that you can hear this the moment that Flanagan starts his solo, the level on the music comes up and we hear the section starting at about the 11th bar of his third chorus (sorry, I’d list some track run times but I only have the LP handy) and up to around the start of his 4th chorus. Why is this selection from the end cued up and not an actual selection from the beginning? It’s because, excluding one brief phrase in the 7th & 8th bars where his tone is less than full and is a little clipped, the entire first chorus is completely solid. (It would pretty much unravel the nicely packaged story that was presented, and it’s not as nice and dramatic of a story to present to the viewer that “you can hear how hard the changes are in this 4 second excerpt from near the end of 3 choruses worth of a standup solo”). JC is wrapping his solo over the first 2 bars of TF’s 1st chorus, but TF’s first 4 bars (bars 3-6) follow the changes perfectly with fullness of tone and conviction. The little blip mentioned in bars 7&8 actually would’ve been a great phrase end that anticipates the upcoming Bb7 chord by ornamenting it with both the #9 and the b9 (C# and Cb), if it weren’t for the clipped nature of the execution (giving you that tentative feeling). The rest of the first chorus, bars 9-16, are flawless and TF’s perfectly on top of the changes. Particularly cool in this section is the more melodic sounding bit (as opposed to just running arpeggios of the changes) in bars 11-13 and the chorus’s ultra-hip closing phrase over the ii-V-I in Eb during bars 14 & 15. The 2nd chorus again, aside from another brief little 2 bar blip in bars 5&6 where again the notes are on the changes but less than full in tone, is very solid and with it. Of particular interest in this chorus is another nicely executed kind of falling melodic bit around bars 8-12 over the ii-V-Is in Eb and G. Here he wraps this chorus with an even hipper closing statement with a pickup in bar 13 over the B to the ii-V-I in Eb in 14-15. This closing lick over that ii-V-I here is totally shed worthy for getting up in all the keys. Again, the 3rd chorus is solid against the changes up until the part near the end, in bars 12-16, which was excerpted in the video and which I described in my first post. It starts with another cool little melodic bit that’s a little sing-songy, toggling back and forth on the Root and 5th of the B in bar 1. Ironically, just before the section that was highlighted in the video as an example of TF’s struggle, he had just churned out a pretty blazing 5 bars arpeggiating and running scales over the changes 7-11. After that, the 4th chorus is pretty much chording over the changes. Did he give up here and just phone the rest in? Maybe. After the performance on the first 3 choruses I’m not convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that this is actually the case. Being presented with these changes on the spot and faced with this tempo, I don’t doubt that he was struggling. While I’ve been listening to this tune for decades myself and am long familiar with the commonly expressed notion that he is struggling on the solo, I’ve never bought into the notion that it actually sounds like he is really struggling or that it sounds like anything other than a top notch cat going to town on it.
I checked the liner notes to The Heavyweight Champion, and it states indeed that Flanagan was given a lead sheet in preparation for the session, but he assumed the tune was slow or medium tempo and got quite a shock when Trane called it off at breakneck speed!
Here's the full Down Beat review, from the March 31, 1960 issue, penned by Ralph J. Gleason: There seems to exist some feeling that John Coltrane, while granting him his importance as a major tenor influence, is a harsh-sounding player to whom it is difficult to listen. This LP, if it does nothing else, should dispel that idea quickly. There are times here when Coltrane is remarkably soft, lyrical and just plain pretty. For instance on "Naima," which is an original as are all the tunes in this LP, JC starts out calling the title lost on his horn (it's his wife's name, by the way), in a hauntingly beautiful passage. Then again at the end of the same tune, JC cries wistfully and poignantly on the horn. In "Syeeda's Song Flute" there's a throw-away phrase just before Tommy Flanagan's piano solo that is exquisite in its beauty. Of course the usual Coltrane forceful playing is present all over the album. The title song (which has echoes of "Tune Up") is an example of this and so is "Countdown," which has a particularly intriguing tenor and drum duet in the front of the tune, as well as a great, soaring ending. Paul Chambers works particularly well with Coltrane, and on the final track there is some hard digging by PC, which is the kind of thing you put the arm back to over and over. It is no wonder that JC is making such an impression on tenor players. He manages to combine all the wing of Pres with the virility of Hawkins and added to it a highly individual, personal sound as well as a complex and logical, and therefore fascinating, mind. You can tag this LP as one of the important ones.
Penguin Guide to Jazz 3rd Edition review, Richard Cook and Brian Morton. **** A fresh start - almost a debut album - and perhaps Coltrane's most playable, memorable and best sustained record. The tunes are uniformly marvellous, riffs or steps or even melodies which have all - except for 'Spiral' - become integral parts of the modern jazz book. Coltrane's tone has lost some of its remorselessness, and it gives the ballad 'Naima' a movingly simple lyrical intent. It's almost like an interlude on Coltrane's journey, this record, a summing up of past achievements in sparser, easier forms, before the great steps forward of the the next few years. 'Giant Steps' itself has a sunny quality which its rising theme embodies; 'Mr P.C.' is a blowing blues which is idiomatic enough to have become the most frequently blown blues in the repertory. 'Syeeda's Song Flute' explores the possibilities of a single long line. There is very able support from Flanagan, Chambers and Taylor.
I'm taking the next album somewhat out of my usual order. While it was finished at the session on October 21, 1960--the same one that produced "My Favorite Things"--it was almost entirely recorded in 1959. John Coltrane Coltrane Jazz Recorded November 24 and December 2, 1959 and October 21, 1960. With John Coltrane (ts) and: Nov. 24 and Dec. 2, 1959: Wynton Kelly (p), Paul Chambers (b), Jimmy Cobb (dr); Oct. 21, 1960: McCoy Tyner (p), Steve Davis (b), Elvin Jones (dr), on "Village Blues" only. 1. Little Old Lady (Carmichael/Adams) 2. Village Blues 3. My Shining Hour (Arlen/Mercer) 4. Fifth House 5. Harmonique 6. Like Sonny 7. I'll Wait and Pray (Treadwell/Valentine) 8. Some Other Blues All compositions by Coltrane except where otherwise noted. As you can see, Coltrane entered the studio in November and December, 1959, with his bandmates from the Miles Davis Sextet rhythm section. The Dec. 2 date also produced "Naima," which completed Giant Steps, as discussed upthread. By October of 1960, Trane had settled on McCoy Tyner on piano and had just recently hired Elvin Jones on drums. Recording with Steve Davis, the Oct. 21, 1960, date marks the first session of the early version of the John Coltrane Quartet. It would not be the first time Trane entered the studio with Tyner, and ultimately Davis would be replaced by Reggie Workman and then by Jimmy Garrison to complete the Classic Quartet, but I'm getting ahead of myself. More on that to come.
I can't describe the record better than Zita Carno did in her liner notes, so I'm turning it over to her: I once mentioned in an article I wrote for Jazz Review something to the effect that John Coltrane is always into things -- always coming up with something unexpected and startling. Shortly after that, I found out just how true this statement really is. I recall an occasion when I dropped by to visit with Trane, late in 1959. I found him practicing, with the tape recorder going. The sounds coming out of that tenor of his were beyond belief -- he seemed to be playing two notes at once, what string players call double-stops. Not that little trick some reedmen use of humming or singing a note and playing another one above or below it, but real honest-to-goodness notes and on occasion he could get three at a time. That was when I found out about the harmonics of a tenor saxophone. Trane told me he'd learned how to do them from some tenor man in Philly, had been working on them for some time, and "only now I'm starting to get them." He explained how they were done -- something about a certain way of tightening up the embouchure and certain fingerings -- but I couldn't quite grasp it, since I'm not a tenor saxophonist and don't know very much about the mechanics of the instrument. However, that didn't stop me from listening, making a comment here and there, and learning something. The point I'm trying to make is that this constant experimentation, this never-ending probing into new things and new ways to do older things, is characteristic of Trane. This applies not only to his playing, but also to his writing -- to his whole way of thinking. He runs up on something new, works around with it till he gets what he wants, and incorporates it into his overall conception. His previous Atlantic album, Giant Steps, offers ample proof of this; take, for example, the characteristic up-a-minor-third-down-a-fifth progression of the title tune, the use of pedal-tones on "Spiral" and "Naima." All these are the products of endless experimentation and working-out, and Trane isn't finished yet. Coltrane Jazz (and I couldn't think of a more apt description of what he does!) was recorded immediately after Giant Steps, with the exception of one track ("Village Blues," recorded later), and in many ways represents a continuation of the ideas and concepts presented in the preceding record. The five Coltrane originals on this album could almost -- note the almost -- be called "more of the same," inasmuch as two of the tunes make good use of the pedal-tone and/or the ostinato bass (actually three, because "Harmonique" has a B-flat running through the bass line almost constantly) and one has the characteristic "Giant Steps" changes in the bridge. But somehow, the treatment is different. There's something else in there. Even the three standards (and notice that Trane manages to pick the seldom-done ones to record) sound different.
A few more highlights from Carno's notes: "My Shining Hour" is done here as a bright-tempoed swinger, with Trane blowing in his usual warm, straightforward fashion. I have noticed for a long time that even at a fast tempo his playing has in it a remarkable lyricism at once thoughtful and intense -- this is one of the most salient features of his style. "Fifth House" is one of Trane's most powerful lines, and a tune which offers another puzzle to the listener. It is based on the "Countdown" changes superimposed part of the way on a pedal C and G -- yet one gets an idea that this tune may be based on a standard; the way the phrases move hints at this. "Harmonique" gets its title from the harmonics Trane plays on the theme. A deliberate and down-to-earth blues in 3/4 time, it has an almost Monkish humor in its wide skips, which find Trane jumping from a low note to a high harmonic and in the accentuation of the first beat by the bass. It is also a bit reminiscent of another 3/4 blues I've heard him play -- McCoy Tyner's "The Believer." Trane fools some more with the harmonics at the start of his solo, then goes right into his "typical Coltrane blues stuff." "Like Sonny" is so called, says Coltrane, because he once heard Sonny Rollins play the little figure on which the tune is built, and he liked it so much he decided to use it in one of his own lines. I've always called it his impression of Sonny. Either way, it's an attractive little theme, Latin-flavored at the beginning, then going into straight swinging. "I'll Wait and Pray" -- again, a seldom-done standard -- is the only ballad of the set, and it gives Trane a chance to demonstrate his wonderful way with a ballad. Soloing all the way, he blows with warmth and intensity, making effective use of his expressive high register, while the rhythm section backs him up sensitively. (Note the harmonic he plays at the end of this one.)
I don't know, but my best guess is Odean Pope. They were close in Philly, and when Trane joined Miles the first time, he recommended Pope as his replacement in Jimmy Smith's band. Pope is known for his ability to play multi phonic tones. Both saxophonists studied with legendary Philly pianist Hasaan ibn Ali.
We've closed out 1959. Consider the albums recorded that pivotal year: in January, Trane makes his first recording for Atlantic with Bags & Trane; Horace Silver begins recording with his famous quintet featuring Junior Cook and Blue Mitchell; in February, Mingus records Blues and Roots. He would also record Ah Um and Mingus Dynasty in 1959; Jackie McLean begins recording a decade's worth of classic records for Blue Note. He would soon introduce a number of young players interested in the "new thing," including Tony Williams, Bobby Hutcherson, and Grachan Moncur III; the Wynton Kelly Trio begins recording as a separate unit; Monk records his historic Orchestra at Town Hall, among other, small combo records; Dave Brubeck records Time Out; Trane records Giant Steps; Bill Evans begins recording with his most famous trio, featuring Scott LaFaro and Paul Motian, in which each instrument is equal and effectively improvises simultaneously; and, perhaps most significantly, Ornette Coleman records The Shape of Jazz to Come and arrives in NYC in November, 1959.
Also Joao Gilberto records Chega de Saudade, practically inventing bossa nova. Del Close & John Brent release How to Speak Hip. Meanwhile, Second City is founded. Del Close joins the organization the next year, also spends time with The Committee in San Francisco in the '60s, invents some improv techniques, and coaches many comedians who would become famous on SNL and other TV shows. And a whole lot of other great albums came out, but those two also were particularly auspicious events.
Interesting since I've read a few times that it was Monk who taught Trane to play multiphonics. I've thought it would be difficult for a piano player to teach a woodwind player since it's experimentation into tilting the mouthpiece up and down, in and out, placing the tongue, placing the fingers etc etc.
Monk taught Trane a lot about harmony, but I don’t see how he could teach him an experimental saxophone technique, as you say. And of course, Zita Carno wrote her liner notes after speaking with Trane.
