BLP 4264

McCoy Tyner - The Real McCoy

Released - November 1967

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, April 21, 1967
Joe Henderson, tenor sax; McCoy Tyner, piano; Ron Carter, bass; Elvin Jones, drums.

1873 tk.1 Contemplation
1874 tk.6 Passion Dance
1875 tk.7 Blues On The Corner
1876 tk.12 Four By Five
1877 tk.18 Search For Peace

Session Photos

Photos: Francis Wolff

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Passion Dance	McCoy Tyner	April 21 1967
Contemplation	McCoy Tyner	April 21 1967
Side Two
Four by Five	McCoy Tyner	April 21 1967
Search for Peace	McCoy Tyner	April 21 1967
Blues on the Corner	McCoy Tyner	April 21 1967

Liner Notes

McCoy Tyner’s music has an inner strength, a firm sense of self-order that has enabled him to play in widely varying contexts - from the spiraling flights of John Coltrane to the volcano that is Art Blakey - and always remain identifiably himself. No matter what the setting, McCoy does indeed become part of it, but he also retains his own sound and his own feeling for organic structure.

The particular qualities of Tyner’s work have been distilled by John Coltrane: melodic inventiveness and clarity of ideas. “He also,” Coltrane adds, “gets a very personal sound from his instrument; and because of the clusters he uses and the way he voices them, that sound is brighter than what would normally be expected from most of the chord patterns he plays.”

In this album, his first for Blue Note, Tyner reveals the range and depth of his jazz conception more fully than on any previous recording. In recalling the date, Alfred Lion, who directed it, referred to the feeling of joy that was present. “It’s what you might call a ‘pure’ jazz session,” Lion continued. “There is absolutely no concession to commercialism, and there’s a deep, passionate love for the music imbedded in each of the selections.”

Passion Dance, like all the other songs, is an original by Tyner. “After I’d written it,” he says, “it sounded to me like a kind of American Indian dance. It evoked ritual and trance-like states. As for its structure, we improvise in only one key - F - and that makes for freer melodic invention.”

After Elvin Jones’ authoritative introduction and the statement of the intriguing theme, there is a characteristically bright-sounding Tyner solo which also illustrates another Coltrane comment about his work: “McCoy has an exceptionally well developed sense of form, both as a soloist and accompanist.” I would also note his remarkable technical skill, including his precise articulation. Joe Henderson, now unmistakably a vitally personal voice on tenor, follows with a solo that combines structural command with penetrating emotional force. After a brilliant solo mobile constructed by Elvin Jones, the dance-like theme retums - but ends in a series of exhilarating variations.

“The title for Contemplation,” McCoy recalls, “also came to me after I’d written the piece. As I listened to it, the song had the sound of a man alone: A man reflecting on what religion means to him, reflecting on the meaning of life. It had a spiritual quality. It’s basically in 3/4, and that’s a very interesting meter because you can employ - as we do here - so many other rhythms within it.”

The theme is a haunting, yearning line, and Joe Henderson’s personalization of the theme and mood is an arresting performance. He is simultaneously lyrical and virile, as is Tyner on the subsequent solo statement. And always - throughout the album - there is the persistently stimulating but never overwhelming rhythmic foundation of Elvin Jones and Ron Carter. Carter, moreover, also contributes a solo in this piece that illustrates again the sonic and inventive fulness of his musicianship.

Four by Five receives its title, McCoy explains, because “the melody is constructed as if there’s a middle - it’s in 4/4 on the outside and 5/4 on the inside. But we improvise as if there weren’t a middle; we improvise only in 4/4.” The melodic line is brisk - brisk in its feeling for contemporary urban rhythms. Henderson’s meaningful and easeful speed here re-emphasizes how much of a pro this man is. He knows his horn, and so there are no problems in terms of instant execution of ideas. In fact, it is this quality of thorough professionalism which characterizes all the musicians on the date. Each plays with authority. And beyond the authority, which comes from thorough musicianship, is an incisive individuality of expression. As for Tyner, Coltrane’s remark about the clearness of his ideas is so well taken that anyone whether he knows one chord or one time signature from another - ought to have no problem following the way Tyner’s solo here is inexorably built.

“After writing the melody of Search For Peace” Tyner says, “I chose this title because the song has a tranquil feeling. Tranquil and personal. It’s very difficult to verbalize about music; the important thing is what the listener himself gets from the act of listening. But insofar as I can verbalize about this piece, it has to do with a man’s submission to God, with the giving over of the self to the universe.”

The melody has that sense of inevitability-as if it couldn’t have come out any other way - that marks a real melodist. And I think one result of this album will be to underline Tyner’s considerable and growing talent as a writer of fresh, durable melodies. His own solo is a model of crystalline serenity - the curve of the hue is sketched with just enough sharp-edged weight to etch the mood but ls light enough to let the emotion soar. Similarly Joe Henderson is both firm and resilient. For me it’s an unusually satisfying performance - the essence of spare romanticism.

The strutting, high-spirited Blues On The Corner, is a reminiscence by McCoy of his boyhood. “When I was growing up in Philadelphia,” he says, "some of the kids I knew liked to hang out on the corner. And this is sort of a musical picture of that scene - youngsters talking, kidding around, jiving.” The theme and the solos have the vividness and spontaneity of the young at observant play as they engage in the rituals of growing up on the urban scene.

Of his colleagues on the session, Tyner underscores the bursting individuality of Henderson and “that sound of his - which goes through the whole range of his instrument. If I had to use one word for Joe’s playing, it would be ‘mature.’ As for Ron Carter, aside from his technique, he has unusual flexibility and everything he plays shows a real, keen intelligence at work. What can I say about Elvin Jones? After six years of working with him in John Coltrane’s group, I have no words to describe fully my respect for him as a musician. I can try by mentioning his capacity to go in all kinds of directions. And no matter what the direction, Elvin always gets to the nucleus of what’s going on. He molds what’s happening to fit what the soloist is doing. And always, no matter how many polyrhythms are in the air, Elvin’s time at the bottom stays groovy.”

After we finished talking about this album, I asked McCoy in what directions he wanted his music to go from this point on. “I don’t think in those terms,” he said. “You see, to me living and music are all the same thing. And I keep finding out more about music as I learn more about myself, my environment, about all kinds of different things in life. I play what I live. Therefore, just as I can’t predict what kinds of experiences I’m going to have, I can’t predict the directions in which my music will go. I just want to write and play my instrument as I feel.”

And as McCoy continues to do that, two other observations by John Coltrane will also continue to be true: “McCoy doesn’t fall into conventional grooves, and he has taste. He can take anything, no matter how weird, and make it sound beautiful.”

Beauty and clarity and strength of individuality. Insofar as it’s possible to verbalize about McCoy Tyner’s music, those are the key words.

- NAT HENTOFF

RVG CD Reissue Liner Notes

A NEW LOOK AT THE REAL MCCOY

McCoy Tyner had spent six years making musical history with John Coltrane and launching his own recording career as a leader before cutting The Real McCoy in 1967. Succeeding decades would find him solidifying his position as one of the dominant post-bop piano influences, and one of the few acoustic jazz artists capable of sustaining an active performing career at the head of his own band. Yet it is no exaggeration to designate this album, the first under Tyner's name for Blue Note, the pivotal single work of his illustrious career.

The first thing to strike listeners about The Real McCoy at the time of its release was its quartet configuration. Tyner had released six LPs while under contract to Impulse!, only two of which featured horns on selected tracks. The label had emphasized the piano trio format, both to place Tyner in a context distinct from that of the Coltrane quartet and to fill a niche held at other labels by such popular figures of the time as Bill Evans, Erroll Garner, Ahmad Jamal and Oscar Peterson. Tyner had the individuality to set himself apart in such exalted company (from the outset; but his style was still evolving, and the heavy diet of standards and blues did not present a complete picture of where his music was headed. Having left the Coltrane group at the end of 1965, Tyner worked briefly with Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers prior to recording this session, end the jazz world was curious about what direction the pianist would take with his own music. This session provided the unequivocal answer.

Tyner chose to pursue the modal, rhythmically complex direction that the Coltrane quartet had staked out prior to the saxophonist's turn toward freer structures in 1965. It was a choice that dictated a sax-plus-rhythm quartet at the least, and The Real McCoy signals a centrality of the saxophone in the pianist's music that he would sustain until returning to an emphasis on trio performance nearly two decades later. Elvin Jones, Tyner's former partner in the Coltrane rhythm section, would join the Blue Note roster shortly after Tyner, and focus on sax and pianoless rhythm in his own early efforts.

Two leading saxophonists had already explored the tenor-and-rhythm terrain on four classic Blue Note albums with the assistance of Tyner and Jones: Night Dreamer and Juju by Wayne Shorter and In 'N' Out and Inner Urge by this album's featured horn, Joe Henderon. (Tyner and Jones logged numerous other appearances on the label, with Tyner's Blue Note discography commencing with Freddie Hubbard's 1960 debut session Open Sesame.) The Shorter and Henderson albums established both the flexibility and the consistent excellence of the Tyner/Jones team in the company of excellent bassists Bob Cranshaw, Richard Davis and Reggie Workman. The ability of Ron Carter — still a member of Miles Davis's quintet at the time of this recording — to blend his more fluent style with Tyner and Jones was no surprise. Neither was the fierce engagement of Joe Henderson with Tyner's music. The tenor saxophonist had completed his own Blue Note contract and was signed to the then new Milestone label at the time, and his playing here stands as a fitting swan song to his years under the Blue Note banner.

What set The Real McCoy apart from the Coltrane quartet in addition to personnel were the same things that distinguished the earlier efforts of Henderson and Shorter: original compositions that reflected a singular personality. Tyner had recorded his own music on Impulse!, though never as the focal point of an entire album. This initial all-Tyner program was a spectacular display of his writing talents, as well as an ideal canvas for his and the rest of the band's galvanic improvisations. Each of the five pieces have been covered on numerous occasions and "Passion Dance," "Search For Peace" and "Blues On The Corner" are as worthy of the term jazz standard as anything written in the period.

With personnel and material in place, Tyner, Henderson, Carter and Jones give five-star performances that fully justify the album title. When the boat leaves for that desert island and there is room for only a single Tyner album, this is the one to grab.

— Bob Blumenthal, 1999

Blue Note Spotlight - December 2020

http://www.bluenote.com/spotlight/the-real-mccoy/

When someone uses the word “idyllic” to describe a scene, we think of Monet’s Water Lilies or another classic of impressionism – a work in summery shades that pretty much demands a daydream. But there are different kinds of idylls – as “Search For Peace,” one of five McCoy Tyner originals on The Real McCoy, suggests. The tempo is slow, stately, deliberate. The harmony, outlined first by piano trills and broken chords, has purpose behind it: The title implies an ongoing and perhaps unattainable quest, not some easily abandoned momentary pursuit. The theme, when it arrives, enhances this sense – it’s at once solemn like a hymn, and contemplative, and also floatingly free. It puts forth an idealistic vision of what “peace” might feel like, and in the same breath holds the full awareness of possible futility. It’s a meditation on the potentiality of peace, and what it means to pursue it.

Of course the search for peace still continues to this day, but when Tyner and his group gathered at Rudy Van Gelder’s studio to record this landmark on April 21, 1967, war was raging in Vietnam and the social upheavals over civil rights were simmering throughout America, a direct parallel to the impassioned demands for social justice that spilled out into the streets in 2020. The jazz community of the late-60s responded to the heady time in all kinds of ways – song titles became commentary, and inevitably the “heat” of the cultural moment informed recordings and performances. Tyner, who departed from the Coltrane group in 1965, evidently felt that there was a need for music that looked inward and invited reflection. In Nat Hentoff’s original liner notes, the pianist explains that when he wrote the piece, he perceived it as outlining a spiritual mission, “the giving over of the self to the universe.”

The Real McCoy was Tyner’s Blue Note debut, and though it starts in a frenzied mood with “Passion Dance,” much of it finds the pianist and composer creating zones of reflection, offering musical refuge from the tumult of the times. Tyner has said that he left the Coltrane group because of its increasingly chaotic dissonance; his compositions here utilize the open block-chord harmonies Coltrane loved, channeled into tightly focused rhapsodies. There is a vibe of serenity in the writing, not just in the ascending theme of “Search for Peace,” but also the gentle, affirmative modal journey entitled “Contemplation” – this album contains five tunes, and two of them are riveting downtempo ballads. The other three are equally poised and thoughtful, and each is defined by its own internal logic. “Passion Dance” is an essay in rhythmic upheaval: Tyner’s spikes and Elvin Jones’ jabs establish an obstacle course, and the challenge for tenor saxophonist Joe Henderson (aided by Ron Carter’s nimble bass) is to navigate the shifting patterns while creating a cogent ad-libbed testimony. (Of the many Blue Note sessions featuring strong work by Henderson, this might be his shining hour, in part because of his patient impossible-to-notate inventions on “Passion Dance” and “Contemplation.”) “Four By Five” offers polyrhythmic daring in a different hue, while the entrancingly settled “Blues on the Corner,” the session’s lone blues, suggests that even this formidable group understood the importance of kicking back once in a while.

The peak statement of Tyner’s solo career, The Real McCoy is also one of a handful of recordings that define post-bop. Lots of records from this genre have interesting tunes and blazing solo performances, but few attain such an interconnected synergy. Listening to these these rich, beautifully realized atmospheres, and how they inspire deep, passionate, strikingly collective improvisations, you realize how far we’ve come and how far we still have to go in our quest for peace.