One of the great names in jazz at Liverpool's Philharmonic Hall

May 2 2008 by Philip Key, Liverpool Daily Post

TO MISQUOTE the writer LP Hartley, America is a foreign country: they do things differently there.

Thus, a request for an interview with the great American jazz pianist McCoy Tyner found me given a code number and joining an “international teleconference” on the telephone.

After a lengthy introduction by an American intoning Tyner’s many accomplishments and detailing his international tour, I was finally put through to the man himself.

Happily, the 69-year-old is a down-to-earth character with an infectious laugh and as far from the corporate image as you can hope.

Tyner is truly one of the great names in jazz, a player who more or less started at the top and stayed there. Now he is heading for Liverpool and a rare concert with his trio at the Philharmonic Hall on May 27.

Tyner made his mark as a young man by playing with saxophonist John Coltrane on some of the greatest jazz albums ever committed to wax, the iconic A Love Supreme among them.

But, as he tells me, jazz was not the first music he played. Born in Philadelphia, he was encouraged to study piano by his mother.

“I had a teacher who taught me Bach, Beethoven, Chopin and all those great European composers. It was basic training that taught me how to practise.

“I also realised you had to love what you are doing. I did love playing and could not wait to get home from school to practise on my piano, so it was a labour of love.”

It was a classical training from which he got diverted, however. “I got involved in a rhythm and blues band not far from where I lived and some of them went to school with me.

“Then an older musician came by and asked if I had heard of Charlie Parker. ‘Oh yeah’, I said, so I started playing bebop music and from there it grew.”

He played initially with a band led by near-neighbour and saxophonist Benny Golson, and by the late 1950s had joined the Golson-Art Farmer Jazztet.

But he had already played with another saxophonist, John Coltrane, one of the true geniuses of jazz, whose great splurges of sound and intense performances changed the jazz world.

Tyner, who was a teenager when he first played with Coltrane, admits it was one of the most influential meetings in his life.

“He treated me like a younger brother. I knew John for a long time and he was always very helpful and inspiring, a very beautiful and sincere man. He was always practising, a very creative man and set me an example both as a person and a musician.”

The quartet with Coltrane – it included bassist Jimmy Garrison and drummer Elvin Jones – toured virtually non-stop between 1960 and 1965, first bringing Tyner to Europe.

More importantly, they recorded ground-breaking albums like My Favourite Things and A Love Supreme, the latter with claims to be the greatest jazz album of all time.

“It was amazing playing on that,” says Tyner. “The smart thing John did was to play a lot of this music before we recorded it. Music changes every night and by playing it over and over again you can see the potential. A Love Supreme was the culmination of a lot of experiences and we were all familiar with it when we recorded as we had played it before.

“In that quartet, we all influenced each other. John used to listen, stand there listening to the others. So we played as a group, respected each other, and each felt he was adding something to the unit to make it better. It was a very unselfish situation.”

Tyner went on to become a leader himself, both on small group recordings and occasionally with his own big band. Unlike some other musicians, he never became part of the jazz-rock-fusion scene, preferring his jazz straight and was much respected for that.

It has been a long career spanning five decades, and Tyner shows no signs of slowing up. “I don’t mind taking chances and experimenting,” he says of the longevity of that career. “I like going places and doing things musically and people enjoy that.”

In Liverpool, he will be playing with bassist Gerald Cannon and drummer Eric Kamau Gravatt with guest star tenor saxophonist Joe Lovano (who appears on Tyner’s latest CD, Quartet).

So, just what is the life of a jazz musician these days? “Well, it’s a bit different from sitting in your living room,” he says mysteriously.

* McCOY TYNER Trio at the Philharmonic Hall, May 27.