A favorite thing in many jazz affectionado's collections.
My Favorite Things is the seventh studio album by American jazz artist John Coltrane, released in 1961 through Atlantic Records. It was the first album to feature him playing soprano saxophone, and the title track became a radio hit single — once it was edited down from its original running time of 13 minutes and change.
Tracklist:
Side One- "My Favorite Things" (13:41)
- "Everytime We Say Goodbye" (5:39)
Side Two
- "Summertime" (11:31)
- "But Not for Me" (9:34)
The 1998 reissue CD adds the bonus tracks "My Favorite Things, Part 1" (2:45) and "2" (3:02).
Personnel:
- John Coltrane: tenor and soprano saxophone
- McCoy Tyner: piano
- Steve Davis: double bass
- Elvin Jones: drums
My Favorite Tropes:
- Cover Album: All tracks are covers, including the title track, which was taken from Rodgers and Hammerstein's The Sound of Music. "Summertime" is from George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess and "But Not for Me" from Girl Crazy. "Everytime We Say Goodbye" is a Cole Porter track.
- The Cover Changes the Meaning: Coltrane gives the tracks his own personal interpretations.
- Darker and Edgier: The Title Track. Coltrane took a perky little Rodgers and Hammerstein ditty from The Sound of Music and turned it into something a critic described as a "hypnotic eastern dervish dance" lasting more than 13 minutes.
- Serial Escalation: Live versions could take this even further, though the mood of the track could vary widely from night to night. Probably none were darker or edgier than the Olatunji Concert version, though; it was Coltrane's final recorded performance (he performed once more, but no known recordings of the performance exist), and he gave the song a particularly discordant free jazz arrangement that (after a seven and a half-minute bass solo, anyway) probably, even today, would be regarded as rather intense, which is only made more extreme by the lo-fi recording quality.
- Epic Rocking: A Coltrane staple, seen particularly in the Title Track. We say again: more than 13 minutes! (13:41, to be precise.) "Summertime" and "But Not for Me" count as well, running 11:31 and 9:34 respectively. (At 5:39, "Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye" just barely misses the six-minute cutoff.) Put another way, the album runs for nearly 41 minutes despite containing only four tracks, making the mean song length more than 10 minutes long. Also, live versions of these tracks could stretch out much longer than their studio counterparts. Versions of the title track exist which exceed half an hour in length.
- Face on the Cover: Coltrane playing his instrument.
- Grief Song: "Everytime We Say Goodbye".
- Instrumental: Like many (though not all) of Coltrane's other albums, it is entirely instrumental.
- List Song: My Favorite Things is one in the context of the original play The Sound of Music, but the album tracks in themselves could also be seen as Coltrane's list of his "favorite things".
- Longest Song Goes First: The album kicks off with the Title Track, which at 13:41 beats out the next-longest song, "Summertime", by around two minutes.
- New Sound Album: For the first time Coltrane played soprano saxophone on one of his albums.
- One-Word Title: "Summertime".
- Rearrange the Song: Coltrane did this for his covers, and then when he performed these tracks live, the arrangements often changed significantly. This is nothing new for jazz, but Coltrane took it to a much further extent than many other jazz musicians did - see Darker and Edgier above.
- Record Producer: Nesuhi Ertegün.
- Title Track: "My Favorite Things".
