McCoy Tyner
*On this date in 1938, McCoy Tyner was born. He was a Black jazz pianist and composer.
Alfred McCoy Tyner was born in Philadelphia as the oldest of three children. He was the older brother of Jarvis Tyner, former executive vice chairman of the Communist Party USA. He was encouraged to study piano by his mother, began studying the piano at age 13, and within two years, music had become the focal point in his life. When he was 17, he converted to Islam through the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community and changed his name to Sulieman Saud.
His neighbors in Philadelphia included musicians Richie Powell and Bud Powell. In 1960, Tyner joined the Jazztet led by Benny Golson and Art Farmer. Six months later, he joined the quartet of John Coltrane, which included Jimmy Garrison and Elvin Jones. He worked with the band during its extended run at the Jazz Gallery, replacing Steve Kuhn (Coltrane had known Tyner for a while in Philadelphia and performed one of the pianist's compositions, "The Believer," as early as 1958). He played on Coltrane's My Favorite Things for Atlantic Records.
The band toured almost non-stop between 1961 and 1965, recording Live albums! Live at the Village Vanguard, Ballads, Live at Birdland, Crescent, A Love Supreme, and The John Coltrane Quartet Plays for Impulse records. While in Coltrane's group, he recorded albums as a leader in a piano trio. He also appeared as a sideman on many Blue Note albums of the 1960s, although he was often credited as "etc." on the cover of these albums to respect his contract with Impulse! Records. His involvement with Coltrane came to an end in 1965. Coltrane's music was becoming much more atonal and freer; he had also augmented his quartet with percussion players who threatened to drown out both Tyner and Jones: "I didn't see myself making any contribution to that music... All I could hear was a lot of noise. I didn't have any feeling for the music, and when I don't have feelings, I don't play".
In 1966, Tyner rehearsed with a new trio and embarked on a career as a bandleader. After leaving Coltrane's group, Tyner produced a series of post-bop albums released by Blue Note from 1967 to 1970. These included The Real McCoy (1967), Tender Moments (1967), Time for Tyner (1968), Expansions (1968), and Extensions (1970). He signed with Milestone and recorded Sahara (1972), Enlightenment (1973), and Fly with the Wind (1976), which included flutist Hubert Laws, drummer Billy Cobham, and a string orchestra. Tyner is considered one of the most influential jazz pianists of the 20th century.
Although he was a member of Coltrane's group, he was never overshadowed by Coltrane. He complimented and inspired Coltrane's open approach. His style of piano is comparable to Coltrane's maximalist style on saxophone. Tyner and Coltrane used similar scales, chordal structures, melodic phrasings, and rhythms. Tyner, who was left-handed, played with a low bass left hand in which he raised his arm high above the keyboard for an emphatic attack. His right-hand soloing was detached and staccato. His melodic vocabulary was rich, ranging from raw blues to complexly superimposed pentatonic scales; his approach to chord voicing (most characteristically by fourths) has influenced contemporary jazz pianists, such as Chick Corea.
2005 Tyner was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Music from Berklee College of Music at the Sala dei Notari during the Umbria Jazz Festival. He was a judge for many annual Independent Music Awards (IMAs) to support independent artists' careers. His music for Blue Note and Milestone often took the music of the Coltrane quartet as a starting point. Tyner also incorporated African and East Asian elements in his music. On Sahara, he played koto in addition to piano, flute, and percussion. These albums have been cited as innovative jazz from the 1970s that was neither fusion nor free jazz. On Trident Records (1975), Tyner played the harpsichord and celeste, rarely heard in jazz.
During the 1980s and 1990s, Tyner worked in a trio that included Avery Sharpe on bass and Louis Hayes, then Aaron Scott on drums. He made solo albums for Blue Note records, starting with Revelations (1988) and culminating in Soliloquy (1991). After signing with Telarc Records, he recorded with several trios, including Charnett Moffett on bass and Al Foster on drums. 2008, he toured with a quartet of Gary Bartz, Gerald L. Cannon, and Eric Kamau Gravatt. In 2019, The New York Times Magazine listed McCoy Tyner among hundreds of artists whose material was reportedly destroyed in the 2008 Universal fire. On March 6, 2020, Tyner died at his home in northern New Jersey at 81.
