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My Favorite Things is somewhat of a blend between Giant Steps and A Love Supreme. These three are definitely my favorite three Trane albums, for different reasons. But IMO My Favorite Things is the best.
Giant Steps is pretty much a group of songs, all over the place. That has pros and cons - it's probably the album that gives you the best idea of everything Coltrane was great at - you have your bebop/hard bop tunes on it, your blues form tunes, ballads, etc. You have Trane giving you his most direct applications of Coltrane Changes with Giant Steps and Countdown - and that right there has given all jazz sax players years of material to study and practice. This album doesn't have consistency in personnel - it was recorded in 1959 before Trane had an actual quartet (the first version of the Coltrane Quartet was put together in 1960.) You can definitely listen to Giant Steps front to back, but it doesn't have a consistent mood.
A Love Supreme is one piece with four movements, essentially a concept album. So it's the opposite extreme from Giant Steps. You have the classic Coltrane Quartet here, with Garrison, Jones, and Tyner, all at the top of their game playing together. The music is all very modal in style, and IMO is at the height of this period for Trane before he started really playing "out" stuff all the time. But because it's so much of a concept album, you don't have full "tunes" here, and the melodies are just quick starting points to the modal solos that the band would play.
But My Favorite Things? It sits right between those two. Came out in the time between those two albums (60 or 61 I believe), and was the first album with a Coltrane Quartet. Garrison wasn't on board yet, but you had Elvin Jones, McCoy Tyner, and Steve Davis in what would eventually be Garrison's spot. You really have a mix of GS and ALS in styles here - the title track is obviously a cover but the extended solos are completely modal - letting you hear Trane starting to develop that style that he would later perfect on ALS. But since it was a cover of an actual song, the head in and out are fully developed melodies. Then you have Everytime We Say Goodbye which is a comepletely underrated Trane ballad. Beautiful playing on that one. Summertime just might be my favorite Trane tune of all time - sounds NOTHING like the original at ALL and the solos by Trane and Tyner are just ridiculous. Sheets of sound Coltrane in full effect here.But Not For ME is a CRAZY arrangement - he took a basic Gershwin tune and reharmonized it using Coltrane changes. This tune is IMO the most advanced use of Coltrane changes that you'll hear...if you study the chords in this arrangement and what they played over them and then go back and listen to the Coltrane changes on Countdown and Giant Steps, those earlier tunes will just sound like practice exercises. You can hear on those earlier tunes that Trane was just figuring out how to solo over those Coltrane changes, while when you hear it on But Not For Me it's so organic that you may not even recognize the Coltrane changes until you sit down at a piano to figure out the reharmonization.
I guess the negative about the My Favorite Things album is the fact that the four tunes were all covers - but IMO that plays to Trane's strengths. I love him as an arranger way more than I love him as a composer. Most of his original compositions were either heavily chords based with simple melodies following the chords, or with modal work like A Love Supreme the melodies are quick starting points to get to the long solos. But on MFT you get to hear him take standards and fully arrange them to fit his style and it really works.
Once again, these are my three favorite Trane records, so I'm not taking anything away from Giant Steps or A Love Supreme at all.
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