[Dixielandjazz] McCoy Tyner

[Charles Suhor]

I agree with Ed on this. Sometimes artists have a creative slump after a
huge contribution. But just as often the audience looks elsewhere for a new
Messiah while the "deposed" giant continues to play well, without blazing
new trails, in the style s/he advanced. I heard Tyner live a couple of
times in the 80s and 90s in Chicago and for my money he was still doing
excellent things. It's interesting to follow jazz artists of all styles,
great and less than great, through the changes in their playing.

Charlie Suhor


Steve Barbone wrote:

>>McCoy Tyner was a tour de force in the 1960s with Trane. Then quite passe
>>for the last decade or so. Coasting along with the same old stuff. Done
>>well, but with no panache.

I have to disagree, Steve.  You're right about Tyner's work with Coltrane --
for good or bad, depending on where your ears are.  I thought his comping
and tremolos were the perfect accompaniment for Trane's "sheets of sound"
style.  I admit that I had dismissed him as stuck in that one style.

But Tyner has hardly been "passe" since then.

The first time I played the track "I Could Write a Book" on George Benson's
mainstream album of 1989, "Tenderly," the very swinging piano in the
ensemble passages caught my ear.  Looking at the liner notes, I did a double
take:  McCoy Tyner playing his ass off!  Tyner put out an excellent big band
album in 1988, "Uptown Downtown," that's very exciting and full of fire, and
plenty of fine trio albums.  There's also "McCoy Tyner with the Latin
All-Stars" from 1999 that cooks like crazy.  (What didn't work well, to my
mind, was his Burt Bacharach tribute album from 1997, with John Clayton's
lush string orchestrations, but I figure that's Bacharach's fault, not
Tyner's.  Only Cedar Walton can make Bacharach swing.)

I also have to disagree with Ben Ratliff, who wrote the review of Tyner's
performance.  Charnett Moffat and Eric Harland are excellent players, but
Tyner's trio work with Avery Sharpe and Yoron Israel was also very solid.

Obviously Tyner's music isn't to eveyone's taste on the DJML, but he is a
brilliant player who knows and honors his roots (Art Tatum, Erroll Garner,
Bud Powell).  He's not in the avant-garde anymore (which is what Ratliff
looks for), but he continues to do interesting work.

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