Raindrops And Roses Sound Of Music

[Otilia Mojarro]

Jonesplays four hits on two different cymbals as McCoy plays the portentous intro, and the curtain opens: Tyner comps, Jones percolates and simmers, never coming to a boil, and bassist Steve Davis twangs his fifths and octaves, over and over.

Last month, I wrote two posts that examined Billy Hart\u2019s recordings as a leader in some detail. Soon after, Ethan Iverson published an excerpt from Hart\u2019s forthcoming memoir. Something Billy said in that excerpt leaped out at me: \u201CColtrane is my reason.\u201D

Lewis Porter\u2019s great series of articles on A Love Supreme got me happily listening to that seminal album with a new understanding. Thanks to Porter\u2019s incredible work, A Love Supreme now seems less a once-in-a-lifetime gift from the gods, and instead the product of excellence and effort. The album, as Porter shows, was carefully composed and fully conceived by John Coltrane, yet purposefully open to his band member\u2019s individuality. What seemed beyond human was shown by Porter to be fully human.

Meanwhile, Harmony Holiday\u2019s essay on Andr\u00E8 3000\u2019s flute album and meditation on Bisan Owda both went right inside me. It\u2019s easy to wonder if there\u2019s room for our favorite things\u2014 music, drumming, jazz, community\u2014 these days. I read her and I find out. Coltrane might be one of Holiday\u2019s touchstones, so effortlessly does she create a Coltrane-esque intensity in her work.

\u201CMy Favorite Things\u201D entered the jazz repertoire as soon as The Sound of Music opened on Broadway in November 1959. Benny Goodman was first to record an arrangement, a sort of chamber jazz setting that moves to a swinging 4/4.

John Coltrane\u2019s arrangement discarded the original form and changes, replacing them with just two chords, while centering and elevating the song\u2019s melody. Most importantly, Coltrane seems enchanted by the rhythm of \u201CMy Favorite Things\u201D, and kept the song in 3/4.

Trane alone seems to have understood the possibilities of 3/4. After all, he had Elvin Jones in his band. His original recording of \u201CMy Favorite Things\u201D for Atlantic Records with Jones, pianist McCoy Tyner, and bassist Steve Davis, became a radio hit, a popular piece of music unlike anything else heard in 1960.

As played by John Coltrane, Elvin Jones, McCoy Tyner, and Steve Davis, \u201CMy Favorite Things\u201D is a wealth of contradictions: major and minor; a drone and a kaleidoscope of melody and harmony; a waltz that suggests 6/8, 4/4, and a West African percussion choir; a Broadway show tune and a mystical chant. It\u2019s both populist and idealist\u2014 the Sixties at their best\u2014 and we can still hear ourselves in it today.

Within this epochal music, \u201CMy Favorite Things\u201D is a complete outlier. Not only did it sound like nothing else in jazz, it sounded like nothing else in the group\u2019s repertoire. Unlike their voluble readings of \u201CSatellite\u201D, or \u201C26-2\u201D from the same recording sessions, \u201CMy Favorite Things\u201D just sits there, benign and static, with few dynamic changes, lots of rhythm, and an eye on the future.

Then McCoy solos, but instead of a \u2018McCoy Tyner solo\u2019, he plays through the entire arrangement again: Tyner plays four more A section melodies, and vamps in between. On the vamps, Tyner plays repeating notes and adds a few rolling triplets, more decorative and obbligato than soloistic.

Attention must be paid to Elvin Jones. In 1960, Jones was perhaps the only drummer in jazz who could have gotten Trane\u2019s arrangement of \u201CMy Favorite Things\u201D off the ground. Throughout, Elvin subtly alters his volume and density, with constant micro variations on his basic time-keeping pattern. He never once plays a dramatic fill, and rarely even leaves his ride cymbal. More to the point, on \u201CMy Favorite Things\u201D, Elvin\u2019s storied rolling triplets are, maybe for the first time, being used to their fullest musical potential: Elvin\u2019s burbling brook is gently inducing a trance.

Throughout, Tyner\u2019s and Jones\u2019 relative restraint is astonishing, and key to the success of \u201CMy Favorite Things\u201D. They didn\u2019t play like this on any other tracks they recorded with Trane in late October 1960! Though I can\u2019t imagine them talking about it, it must have been an intentional choice on Elvin\u2019s and McCoy\u2019s part to play like they do on this song.

As McCoy and Elvin churn, drawing our attention to tiny changes in the rhythm, major and minor tonality are no longer opposed, nor ranked in a hierarchy, but simply alternate and coexist. With the trance-inducing rhythms of McCoy Tyner and Elvin Jones, \u201CMy Favorite Things\u201D doesn\u2019t need to move forward in time, it doesn\u2019t use melody and harmony to create forward motion.

Rather, the music circles back on itself\u2014 the repetition of the arrangement is the point. By cycling towards and away from our favorite things, the song mirrors the experience of a meaningful existence.

One can sense an entire future universe come into existence on this one track. Obviously, a single recorded piece of music can\u2019t cause so much change, but we can hear the intimations of so much good music still to come in \u201CMy Favorite Things\u201D:

Coltrane\u2019s \u201CMy Favorite Things\u201D implies the minimalism of Steve Reich (a committed Coltrane fan, also a keen observer of Kenny Clarke!) and Phillip Glass; suggests myriad musical traditions outside the USA; connects jazz to the coming rock and psychedelic soul movements; it looks ahead to ambient music. Going backward, it\u2019s merely the latest in a long line of Broadway tunes given new life by jazz musicians, a practice going back to Louis Armstrong.

But \u201CMy Favorite Things\u201D remained in the center, and at the center of the record is the brilliance and artistry of McCoy Tyner and Elvin Jones. Together, they intuited our musical world today, obsessed with rhythm, trance, and sound.

\u201CMy Favorite Things\u201D became Coltrane\u2019s signature song. He played the tune, it seems, at every gig he did from its release until his death in 1967. This must reflect both his fondness for the song, and a gesture to the audience.

While obsessively listening to A Love Supreme and My Favorite Things for the past weeks, I started to hear, in Jones, Tyner, Coltrane, Steve Davis, and Jimmy Garrison, not just depth of feeling, seriousness of purpose, and the intensity of creation, but a humanness, even a sense of humor. Not jokes, but a wink, a light heart, a casualness, a joyful noise I\u2019d never heard before; perhaps I was getting glimpses of the men Billy Hart and so many others knew so well.

Coltrane\u2019s music is deeply serious, freighted with the spiritual and musical progress he undertook as the work of his life. But if John Coltrane\u2019s music was only as \u201Cserious\u201D as I sometimes took it to be, it would not (and could not) have touched so many people over such a distance of time and place. Coltrane, Tyner, and Jones\u2019 music communicates, with great intensity, all their favorite things, all the beauty and joy sitting next to the pain and sorrow.

Basically, I realized that Elvin Jones, McCoy Tyner, and John Coltrane loved playing music, and consequently, loved their lives. How else could they have made music like \u201CMy Favorite Things\u201D and A Love Supreme?

Your blog is so inspiring! I've never commented before, but I always look forward to seeing how you use your creative talents to make joyful memories for your family. That last picture of you and Rose is the best!

On another note, I noticed recently that Yankee Candle has a My Favorite Things collection of scents. They're fairly expensive, and I'm not quite sure how, say, "Whiskers on Kittens" transfers into a scent ? but I still think it's a fun idea: -things/favorite-things

Beautiful party! The "Sound of Music" was my guess. My three year old grand daughter Anabelle received a guitar for her birthday in November. Your little Rose is a sweetheart! I wish you lived close by, I would pay you for your beautiful cakes.

Jessica, I have to tell you that some of the moms in my homeschool group wonder whether or not you actually sleep. ; ) We have no idea how you do all of the things you do. You always have the most beautiful, thoughtful posts on your blog of such beautiful life moments. Thank you for sharing them all with us. I know I speak for all of us aforementioned moms that we are truly inspired. Happy Birthday to Rose!

Yes, the oldest two did wear their First Communion Dresses. This is actually the fourth time they were able to wear them this year! First for their First Holy Communions, then Easter, then for our Little Flowers Mother-Daughter Tea Party, and now for this birthday party! I got such a great deal on them to begin with and have definitely gotten plenty of use out of them! I hope you are able to get the stain out of your dress, that would be sweet!

Aw, thanks Barbara! And I made sure to put some lipstick on just for you! You'd never know that I had woken up (after not nearly enough sleep) feeling miserable thanks to a certain something that decided to come back after *almost* a year, right?! ? Thank goodness for coffee and make-up! lol

Thank you Charlotte! And thank you also for letting me bounce ideas off of you as I was planning, and for all of your great suggestions!! Rose LOVED her roses from Daddy, and I think he might have to start bringing the girls flowers (or balloons) on each of their birthdays!! ?

I really didn't know how this was all going to come together, but I finally decided on the theme last month (originally I was going to go with a Woodland Fairy theme, but decided to save that for when she is doing the Alphabet Path in a couple years) and had been watching for little gifts and ways to incorporate the theme for a party! I said it all "fell together" but that was only possible since I had put a little thought into it ahead of time and had some "supplies" to choose from along with the last things I bought at Michaels when Erica and I went to town/Costco.

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