My Favorite Things cover

My Favorite Things

Released

The title piece is one of the greatest transformations of unpromising source material in 20th century art. Coltrane and pianist McCoy Tyner, with Steve Davis on bass and Elvin Jones on drums, turned a blandly perky song from The Sound of Music into a nearly 14-minute Eastern/modal trance-vamp that sounded like it could go on forever. (Toward the end of his life, he’d play the piece for nearly an hour in concert.) He also performs the lovely Cole Porter ballad “Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye” and tackles two Gershwin compositions, rendering “Summertime” as an unrecognizable stream of notes and “But Not for Me” an upbeat closer.

Phil Freeman

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