John Coltrane and "My Favorite Things"
By Josh Berrett
John Coltrane was always exploring, endlessly studying and practicing, and showing a deep devotion to his craft. His was a life marked by a spiritual quest reaching for the transcendental.
In the words of Lewis Porter, a pre-eminent Coltrane authority who I happen to count among my most cherished friends and colleagues:
“One of the major musicians of the twentieth century, John Coltrane
reshaped the way jazz is perceived. A tenor and soprano saxophonist
and a significant composer, he demonstrated how world music, classical
music, and classical theory could all be incorporated into powerful
blues-based jazz.”
“My Favorite Things” was Coltrane’s magnificent obsession during roughly the final seven years of his tragically short life; he was to die of liver cancer on July 17, 1967, just two months shy of his 41st birthday. His first recording of the song, a studio version on Atlantic Records, dates from October 21, 1960; his last, a radio broadcast from Harlem, NY, is dated April 23, 1967. In between, there are a total of 37 performances, all recorded live whether on university campuses, at major venues in the U.S. like Newport, the Village Vanguard, the Half Note, or in countries like France, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, and Japan.
All these performances featured him on soprano saxophone, an instrument he had begun using for the first time around February 1959 after having pushed the upper limits of the tenor saxophone for years “as if yearning for an extended range.” As a result, he was able to imbue the melody with a brighter, more piercing quality, aligning with the original tune’s lyrical exuberance while also communicating a haunting resonance. At the same time, he was challenging himself on a basic technical level. The soprano saxophone is a transposing instrument pitched in B-flat, and so given that Coltrane was committed to have the piece sound in the original E-centered key, he had to learn to play it fluently in the awkward key of G-flat.
The form of “My Favorite Things” departs from the standard Broadway template of AABA. Instead, it follows the pattern of AAA’B, where the three A’s all dwell on the happy things like “raindrops on roses and whiskers in kittens,” with A marking the shift from E minor to E major.
The concluding B portion contains the core message that “when the dog bites, when the bee stings,” simply remembering one’s favorite things will ensure that one will not “feel so bad.”
Coltrane had a great deal to say about the piece, singling it out at one point as “my favorite piece of all those I have recorded.” He added:
“This waltz is fantastic: when you play slowly, it has an element of
gospel---; when you play it quickly, it possesses other undeniable
qualities. It’s very interesting to discover terrain that renews itself
according to the impulse that you give it.”
More than anything else, Coltrane’s “terrain” involves a stretching out of the sense of time. In the process, he minimizes what I characterized in my prior post as “a buoyant, bouncy feel” with the jump from the pitches of E up to B, down to F# and E, then down to the B below, and up again to E and F#. He achieves this principally by prolonging the two primary chords that support the A portions in E minor, “lengthening the time span of minor versus major.” The E -minor B portion is not only left for the very end of the performance; it also prolongs a brooding quality by not resolving in the relative major key of G, as in the original.
Yet the jumps of the original melody with their fifths—like from the pitch of E up to B—or fourths like from B up to E, or B down to F# --belong very comfortably in the sound world of modal jazz and its revival of medieval church modes or scales. This is where Miles Davis was a decisive influence on Coltrane. And mixed in as well is a rich assortment of scales culled from exercise books and other sources Coltrane is known to have studied, not to mention North Indian ragas inspired by the recordings of, and personal contact with, Ravi Shankar. It’s not surprising that Coltrane named his second son Ravi. Last, but not least, crucial to John Coltrane’s signature sound in many of the renditions of “My Favorite Things” was his core quartet consisting of himself, pianist McCoy Tyner, bassist Jimmy Garrison and drummer Elvin Joines. Theirs was also a very special spiritual bond. For Tyner, Coltrane’s presence showed that “God still speaks to man” and sends us “messengers.” Elvin Jones said: “I believe that he was an angel.”
Below is a link (audio only) to his first and only formal studio recording, on the Atlantic label, dated Oct. 21, 1960. The song is “stretched” to just under 14 minutes.
Immensely valuable is the following TV clip shot at Comblain-La - Tour, Belgium on Aug. 1, 1965. Running close to 21 minutes, it is perhaps best heard as a form of trance music, given its hypnotic repetition. The close-ups of Tyner and Coltrane are truly special. At the close, we are left with an ecstatic Coltrane feverishly fingering his soprano saxophone in a series of trills, tremolos, and a lot more.
Copyright 2024 by Josh Berrett for Ageless Mind Project. All Rights Reserved.
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