McCoy Tyner - Reaching Fourth
Thursday, May 29, 2008
A walking spirit, a talking spirit, to adapt the title of the opening track on new album Quartet, McCoy Tyner, the only surviving member of the great John Coltrane Quartet, a legend in jazz since the 1960s, who has contributed to the art and practice of jazz music in an incalculable way. Blessed with one of the most distinctive, original, widely copied and most rhythmical piano sounds in jazz, a veritable thunderstorm of rhythm, fire and passion, he’s back with a live album and UK concert dates.
The new record, with happy echoes of his magnum opus, 1967 Blue Note album The Real McCoy, was recorded at the west coast jazz club Yoshi’s over the final two days of 2006 in the remarkable company of Joe Lovano, Christian McBride and “Tain” Watts. Keith Shadwick finds McCoy in wonderful, relaxed form, cracking jokes and clearly enjoying himself ahead of two club dates at Ronnie Scott’s on 30 and 31 May to bring his latest British tour to a close.
McCoy Tyner remembers someone who has chronicled his career telling him he’s made some 80 albums as a leader. Considering he’s been doing it since around 1962, that means he’s been putting them out at not far short of two albums a year. That was enough, I told him, to faintly terrify me, because I’d probably only heard about 30 of them in my lifetime and currently had just 15 sitting on my shelf. McCoy’s reaction was typical of his ready sense of humour and his steadfast refusal to take himself – as opposed to his music – too seriously.
“How do you stand it!” he said, bursting into an infectious laugh. Laughter is something that occurs a great deal during a McCoy Tyner interview, because his humour and wit is so close to the surface. Such bonhomie can seriously derail an interview, so I regularly reminded myself mentally that I’d got a feature to write. Tyner is now 69 years old (he’ll be 70 in December) and has, since his teenage years, conducted an exemplary and consistently successful career in jazz. This career has recently reached a new phase where Tyner has had his own record label launched with a quartet album under his name. This was ostensibly the reason for my interview with him.
We came to the subject via a long exchange about the importance of appropriate behaviour and dress sense as a working musician. During its course he admitted that he smoked cigars. “I don’t puff all the time,” McCoy mused wryly, “but I do smoke two or three a day and then sometimes I give my throat a break and it thanks me ’cause it clears up.”
“You don’t smoke while you’re playing these days, do you?”
“No I don’t: I’ve got proper manners!”
Tyner burst into laughter at this, and we continued the joke.
“You were brought up properly?”
“I’ve got proper consideration for the public,” he protested, tongue firmly in cheek.
“You know a lot of the time, I notice the piano ivories – someone has put a cigarette on the keys and burned them: why would you want to do that? At least you could stop smoking long enough to play – you got time during the break – smoke if you want: why burn the piano down!” He chuckled at the thought of this. “I can see burning when playing the music but burning the piano? Man!”
More laughter interrupted proceedings at this point. I mused that the old-timers like Willie ‘The Lion’ Smith sometimes made it part of their professional image to play and smoke at the same time.
This is an extract from Jazzwise Issue #120 to read the full feature and receive a Free CD Subscribe Here...