McCOY TYNER
Milestone Profiles

Milestone

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McCoy Tyner will forever be rememberd for his piano work with the legendary John Coltrane Quartet, and rightfully so. His intense piano work provided a huge rush of energy on which Coltrane rode like a surfer rides the pipeline. But Tyner has been a solo artist for much longer than the time he was with Trane, and yet his recordings are criminally overlooked. Hopefully a collection such as this will pique a lot of people’s interest and get them to revisit some of his great work, much of which was done for the Milestone label.

The material included in the McCoy Tyner Milestone Profiles series covers Tyner’s recording career from 1972 through 1980. The tracks here include samplings of both Tyner’s small group work, generally a trio and sometimes a quartet, and his larger group recordings, which run the gamut from septets to eleven or more pieces. The music here is all of uniformly high quality, and it should make listeners want to seek out some of these CDs in their entirety. Many of the musicians appearing with Tyner here were playing in groups that were experimenting with electronics and other musical influences from the land of rock, soul, and funk. For example, Bennie Maupin had been working with Herbie Hancock’s Headhunters band, Stanley Clarke was playing with Chick Corea’s Return to Forever, Gary Bartz had led his own Ntu Troop, Sonny Fortune and Mtume both worked with Miles Davis in his scorching early electric bands. Yet here we get to hear them all playing pretty straight forward (though thoroughly modern) jazz music. Tyner himself never really veered into the realm of fusion and funk, and the entire concept behind the formation of Milestone Records had been to allow straight ahead jazz musicians to continue to record during the period when major labels were only interested in fusion performers.

The beauty of the larger group recordings is that show Tyner not only as the formidable pianist that he is, but also as a composer and arranger of great talent. This latter ability is seldom mentioned in overviews of Tyner’s career, but there is no question that it is a large part of the legacy he will leave. “Song For Peace,” from the Trident album, is a masterful arrangement executed by a top-notch ensemble that includes Oscar Brashear, slide Hampton, Hubert Laws, Frank Foster, and Jack DeJohnette. It’s fascinating to hear Tyner weave his piano work in and around the written arrangement, the result being an interesting and intense performance. Likewise, “Song of the New World,” from the album of the same title, is a Latin/Carribean groove that is all the better because of the widescreen arrangement that Tyner pulls off with his ensemble.

In smaller groups, Tyner is the focal point, but his bandmates are inevitably of such high quality that they are never mere backdrop. On the opener, “The Greeting,” from the album Supertrios, Tyner joins forces with Ron Carter and Tony Williams, with the results being all one might hope for. Williams is all over the track, providing his usual ball of energy, which is met and even pushed farther by Tyner’s two-fisted attack. On “Ebony Queen,” he works with Sonny Fortune, while Alphonse Mouzon, who would shortly man the unstable drum chair for Weather Report, provides energetic drumming that is a bit sleeker and less bombastic than Williams’ work. Mouzon was a frequent contributor to Tyner’s Milestone albums, and these selections leave little doubt about his abilites as a drummer and musical collaborator. .

At around an hour and ten minutes, McCoy Tyner’s Milestone Profile release provides a great introduction to this key period in the great pianist’s career. It should provoke interest in his Milestone recordings and hopefully allow newer listeners to realize that there is much more to Tyner’s career than his years with the John Coltrane quartet.