McCoy Tyner - He's The Cat

Enlightenment, 1973

As an college student in the late 70s, I wasn't much of a jazz fan.  I didn't dislike jazz, I just didn't know anything about it and didn't listen to it.  My record collection at the time was probably less than 100 albums, and exactly none of them were jazz albums.  

Instead, the records spinning in my dorm room were (among others) the Allman Brothers, Bruce Springsteen, The Band, Joni Mitchell, Elvis Costello, David Bromberg, The Who, Devo, and Leon Russell.  And because my roommate was a fan, I also got a steady diet of Led Zeppelin.  (I came to appreciate Led Zeppelin somewhat more later, but at the time I mostly just tolerated them.)  

At some point in my college career (things are a little hazy), I picked up my first jazz album.  Even though I don't remember when it was, I do remember what it was: McCoy Tyner's 1973 double album titled Enlightenment (above), recorded live on July 7, 1973 at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland.

Tyner ca. 1964

To be honest, when I bought the album I don't think that I even knew who McCoy Tyner was.  But one sunny day the university bookstore set up racks of used records for sale outside the student union, so I stopped to have a look.  I'm not sure what attracted me to Enlightenment.  It may have just been curiosity or the great cover photo of Tyner on stage at the Montreux Festival dripping with sweat.  Whatever the reason, I decided to give it a try. 

As it turned out, I managed to pick a pretty out there selection to start my jazz journey.  Some 40 years and more than 5,000 jazz LPs later (including 43 by McCoy Tyner), Enlightenment remains a sentimental favorite, but there are many other Tyner albums that I like better now.  I didn't know it at the time, but Enlightenment accurately reflects the two divergent styles that dominate Tyner's music.  The first is a John Coltrane-inspired, free form approach that is heavily percussive, atonal, and, frankly, hard to listen to.  The other strain features Tyner's amazing virtuosity in a more traditional, straight-ahead bop style, although usually with a twist or two.

Live at Montreux, 1973

The first track on the album, "Enlightenment Suite, Part 1," is an amalgam of Tyner's two styles.  The song leads off with a long crescendo of pounding piano chords on top of a wailing soprano sax by Azar Lawrence and shimmering cymbals played by drummer Alphonse Mouzon.  

After about a minute, when the discordant tension is nearly unbearable, Mouzon and bassist Juini Booth (left) drive the song forward until it resolves into a beautiful melodic theme that features incredible improvisations by Tyner and Lawrence.  The two swirl and soar around each other for about ten minutes.  Holy guacamole, I had never heard anything like it.  It gave me goosebumps.  Pace lovers of rock 'n' roll (of which I'm one), but this is music and musicianship on a completely different level.  After one listen, I was hooked.  [Click to hear the album track.  There is a video of the entire Montreux performance here that's worth watching to see the intensity and interplay of the band and to realize just how hard these guys are working, but the sound isn't as good.]

About half of the Coltrane albums that Tyner played on

Back in my dorm, being blown away by Enlightenment, I knew nothing about Tyner's place in the jazz world or that in the first half of the 1960s, while still in his early 20s, Tyner had anchored a string of classic John Coltrane albums that included Olé, Coltrane's Sound, Live At The Village Vanguard, Impressions, John Coltrane And Johnny Hartman, Live At Birdland, My Favorite Things, Ballads, Crescent, and A Love Supreme.  [If Tyner had retired at 25, he would still be in the Pantheon of jazz legends.]  And of course I had no idea that Enlightenment was already Tyner's 12th album as a leader at the tender age of 34.

The great Bud Powell

Tyner was born in Philadelphia in December, 1938.  He grew up in a city that was one of the true fountainheads of modern jazz, with established stars such as as Dizzy Gillespie, Red Garland, Benny Golson, Stan Getz, Gerry Mulligan, and Billie Holliday.  Tyner began taking piano lessons at 13, and as a young pianist, he couldn't help but be influenced by the wealth of jazz talent produced by his native city.  The great pianist Bud Powell, while not from Philadelphia, came to stay at his brother's apartment in West Philly for a brief period in 1954, when Tyner was 15.  Powell's apartment was just around the corner from the Tyner family.  Since there was no piano in the apartment, he would walk over to the Tyners' house to play their piano.  To a young, aspiring jazz pianist like Tyner, it must have felt like having Mozart stop by.  So it's no wonder that Tyner credits Bud Powell as one of his primary influences.

McCoy Tyner and John Coltrane

In addition to the established stars, in the mid 1950s Philadelphia was bursting at the seams with future jazz greats, including Albert Heath, Archie Shepp, Jimmy Smith, Philly Joe Jones, Lee Morgan, Reggie Workman, Jimmy Garrison, Kenny Barron, and Ray Bryant.  While Tyner crossed paths and played with many of these musicians, the most consequential "Philly" jazzman for him turned out to be a transplant from North Carolina named John Coltrane.

In a 2008 interview with Downbeat writer Bill Milkowski, Tyner says that he met Coltrane for the first time in October of 1956 when he (Tyner) was playing in a band led by Cal Massey at a club called the Red Rooster in Philadelphia.  At the time, Coltrane was with the Miles Davis group.  Tyner goes on to say, "But we really got acquainted with each other when he left Miles’ band the first time [in April, 1957, when Miles fired him because of his heroin addiction], and returned to Philly to live with his mother [to kick his habit].  I used to go by there and play with John.  She had an upright piano, and we’d play together at his home.  And he’d also come by my place and play with me. My piano was in my mother’s beauty shop [which was the Tyner family living room].  So, we used to have jam sessions at her beauty shop with John and guys from the neighborhood. He was 12 years older than me, so he was like a big brother to me.”

Tyner, Coltrane, Garrison, and Jones

Coltrane was clearly impressed with Tyner's ability and took the younger musician under his wing.  He promised Tyner that when he formed his own band some day, he would include Tyner on piano.  Three years later, Coltrane kept his promise.  In 1960, after Coltrane had left Miles for good, he put together his own group with Tyner on piano.  It wasn't an entirely linear process, as a few musicians came and went.  But the core members of Coltrane's legendary quartet, until it broke up in 1965, were McCoy Tyner on piano, John Coltrane on tenor and soprano sax, Jimmy Garrison on bass, and Elvin Jones on drums.  

In an interview with NPR correspondent Nate Chinen in 1997, Tyner spoke candidly about the lasting impact of that experience even after he had left the group.  "I was so immersed in the music when I was with John.  The influence was so great, and the roles we all played in that group were so powerful; you couldn't divorce yourself from it just because you weren't physically there. For a while there, all the horn players that were with me wanted to sound like John. So I deliberately started using alto sax instead of tenor, and other instruments, because I wanted to kind of try something different."

The early Blue Note years

While still part of Coltrane's quartet, Tyner launched what would become an incredibly successful and prolific solo career, recording five albums for Impulse Records (Coltrane's label) from 1963-65.  After leaving Coltrane's group, he also switched labels, and from 1967-72 recorded his next five albums for Blue Note:  The Real McCoy, Tender Moments, Time For Tyner, Expansions, and Extensions (above).  While Coltrane's influence is easy to hear in almost all of Tyner's music, nearly all these early solo works were much more mainstream bebop than free jazz.  It may have been just the harsh reality of the market -- free jazz may have been professionally satisfying, but it didn't sell -- and Tyner and his labels naturally wanted to make a profit.  The exceptions are Tyner's last two albums for Blue Note, Expansions and Extensions, which give away the game in their titles.  On these two albums Tyner starts to carve out his own creative space, combining elements of bebop, free jazz, modal music, and increasingly drawing on African and other international influences.  

Sahara

In 1972, Tyner once again switched labels, signing with Milestone Records, a division of the Fantasy group.  His first Milestone album was 1972's Sahara, which continues the probing experimentation of his last two Blue Note releases.  The cover photo of Sahara (left) is telling, if somewhat incongruous. It shows Tyner sitting alone on a wooden crate in a field of rubble playing a Japanese koto.  It seems to say:  "We're tearing down all the old structures of jazz and building something new."  It wasn't immediately clear what the "something new" would be, but apparently it would involve a koto.  Sahara is the last album before the release of 1973's Enlightment, and there is no question that the Montreux concert and Sahara are of a piece.  Although none of the songs overlap, Enlightenment feels like Sahara on steroids, with the added excitement and urgency of a live show. 

Sama Layuca, 1974

For the next 35 years, the only thing predictable about Tyner's output was its unpredictability.  No doubt to the detriment of his bank account -- since his audience never knew what to expect next -- Tyner's output zigged and zagged from free form to bop to big band to an assortment of small group ensembles with an ever-changing mix of styles, instruments and influences.  As pianist Brian Auger wrote in the liner notes to Tyner's 1974 release Sama Layuca (a decidedly free-form work), "Tyner is one of those rare musicians who pursues without hesitation his chosen path, without regard for whether that seems the road to personal success or gain."  Which is a polite way of saying, "This album is some weird shit and probably won't sell many copies."

Big Band, 1991

Even though I'm an avid fan, there are a number of Tyner albums (like Expansions and Sama Layuca) that I just can't abide.  I feel the same way about the later works by Miles Davis and John Coltrane.  I can appreciate that, like Miles and Coltrane, Tyner wanted to continue to evolve musically and stretch the creative boundaries of jazz.  And I can even stipulate that avant-garde and modal music were important contributions to jazz that opened up new pathways for countless other musicians.  But I don't have to listen to it.  Luckily for me, McCoy Tyner (not to mention Miles and Trane) produced so many great albums that it's easy enough to skip the ones I don't like.  And in Tyner's case, he continued to produce outstanding and accessible traditional jazz (including wonderful big band albums) up until the end of this career.

Tyner died in 2020 at the age of 81, leaving a 60 plus-year legacy as a performer and jazz iconoclast.  I'll give the last word to bassist Avery Sharpe, who often played in Tyner's trio in the 2000s.  “People always talk about McCoy’s power and the whole thing that he created with Trane, but McCoy had an incredible sense of calm.  He could play behind singers, he could play behind anybody, because he was really very sensitive . . . But at the same time, he could just run everybody off the stage if you want to bring the energy level up . . . I’ve been in all-star situations where cats have egos, but they’ll all look over at McCoy and go, ‘He’s the cat. We’re all great players, but he’s the cat.’”

Enjoy the music!