Featured Album | Alternative Liner Notes

055 | John Coltrane | My Favourite Things | Atlantic ATL 5022 | 1961

In a strange way, the title song from ‘My Favourite Things’, feels like hearing an excitable boy with a brand new toy.  This is the first album to feature Coltrane’s soprano saxophone, a gift from Miles Davis, and he seemed determined to make it sing.  There’s a certain amount of joy in this melody, familiar to those who had caught the latest Rogers and Hammerstein production on Broadway, and again to the millions who saw ‘the Sound of Music’ at the flicks four years later.  In just a little under fourteen minutes, Coltrane manages to transform a song that was apparently created on the spot by a nun to ward off fear in the kids she was charged with looking after when she wasn’t whirling a dervish on the mountain slopes above Saltzberg, to something wildly experimental, taking the song to new heights, higher than the mountains of Austria and way up into the stratosphere.  Modern jazz hadn’t heard anything of the like before, as Coltrane took us on an adventurous musical journey into the very essence of the Richard Rogers melody, performed with supreme confidence.  Though there are three other pieces of music on this album, it’s difficult to get past the title song, in fact had the album featured the title cut alone, it would have already done its job sufficiently well.  Having said that, “Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye”, “Summertime” and “But Not For Me”, make up a worthy support act, each a showcase not only for Coltrane, but also for his hand-picked collaborators, McCoy Tyner on piano, Steve Davis on bass and the ever reliable Elvin Jones on drums.  Coltrane’s reading of this fine melody is essential listening for anyone who appreciates music, and not just jazz.  Magnificent.                

Playlist:

LTD – Dexter Gordon Quartet (Manhattan Symphonie)

My Favourite Things – John Coltrane (My Favourite Things)

Nagasaki – Kenny Davern & Bob Wilbur (Soprano Summit)

Binky’s Beam – John McLaughlin (Extrapolation)

Manhattan – Ella Fitzgerald (Big Sixteen)

Kathy’s Waltz – Dave Brubeck Quartet (Time Out)

Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye – John Coltrane (My Favourite Things)

Trav’lin’ Light – Ben Webster & Joe Zawinul (Trav’lin’ Light)