My Favorite Things - John Coltrane

Recorded in October 1960 and released on Atlantic Records in early 1961, My Favorite Things introduced John Coltrane's classic quartet — McCoy Tyner on piano, Steve Davis on bass, and Elvin Jones on drums — and debuted his soprano saxophone, an instrument he had taken up barely a year earlier. The four-track program consists entirely of standards, each extended into ten-to-fourteen-minute explorations. The title track, a waltz from Rodgers and Hammerstein's The Sound of Music, transforms the Broadway melody into a modal jazz vehicle, with Coltrane's soprano circling over Tyner's vamp in shifting major and minor keys. An edited version became a radio hit, an unusual achievement for a jazz record of this length and complexity, and it broadened Coltrane's audience considerably. In a 1962 interview with Jazz Hot, Coltrane called it his favorite recording, praising its gospel-like quality. "Summertime" and "But Not for Me" receive similarly expansive treatments, with the quartet's interplay already showing the telepathic cohesion that would define their work over the next five years. The album was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1998 and certified gold in 2018.