My Favorite Things (album)
| My Favorite Things | ||||
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| Studio album by John Coltrane | ||||
| Released | March 1961 | |||
| Recorded | October 21, 24, 26, 1960 | |||
| Genre | Modal jazz | |||
| Length | 40:42 | |||
| Label | Atlantic | |||
| Producer | Nesuhi Ertegün | |||
| John Coltrane chronology | ||||
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| Professional ratings | |
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| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic |
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| The Penguin Guide to Jazz | |
| The Rolling Stone Jazz Record Guide | |
My Favorite Things is the seventh studio album by jazz musician John Coltrane, released in 1961 on Atlantic Records, catalogue SD-1361. It was the first album to feature Coltrane playing soprano saxophone. An edited version of the title song became a hit single that gained popularity in 1961 on radio. The record became a major commercial success. In 1998, the album received the Grammy Hall of Fame award.
In March 1960, while on tour in Europe, Miles Davis purchased a soprano saxophone for Coltrane. With the exception of Steve Lacy's late 1950s work with the pianist Cecil Taylor, the instrument had become little used in jazz at that time. Intrigued by its capabilities, Coltrane began playing it at his summer club dates.
After leaving the Davis band, Coltrane, for his first regular bookings at New York's Jazz Gallery in the summer of 1960, assembled the first version of the John Coltrane Quartet. The line-up settled by autumn to McCoy Tyner on piano, Steve Davis on bass, and Elvin Jones on drums. Sessions the week before Halloween at Atlantic Studios yielded the track "Village Blues" for Coltrane Jazz and the entirety of this album along with the tracks that Atlantic would later assemble into Coltrane Plays the Blues and Coltrane's Sound.
Released a mere month after Coltrane Jazz, unlike his first two albums for Atlantic, this one contains no original compositions, instead jazz versions of four pop standards. The album was also the first to quite clearly mark Coltrane's change from bebop to modal jazz, which was slowly becoming apparent in some of his previous releases. The famous track is a modal rendition of the Rodgers and Hammerstein song "My Favorite Things" from The Sound of Music. The melody is heard numerous times throughout, but instead of playing solos over the written chord changes, both Tyner and Coltrane take extended solos over vamps of the two tonic chords, E minor and E major, played in waltz time. In the documentary The World According to John Coltrane, narrator Ed Wheeler remarks on the impact that this song's popularity had on Coltrane's career:
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