John Coltrane
Giant Steps
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Original Album

1. Giant Steps
(By John Coltrane; Jowcol, BMI. Time: 4:43)

John Coltrane – Tenor Sax
Tommy Flanagan – Piano
Paul Chambers – Bass
Art Taylor – Drums
Recorded at Atlantic Studios, New York City, May 5, 1959

2. Cousin Mary
(By John Coltrane; Jowcol, BMI. Time: 5:45)

John Coltrane – Tenor Sax
Tommy Flanagan – Piano
Paul Chambers – Bass
Art Taylor – Drums
Recorded at Atlantic Studios, New York City, May 5, 1959

3. Countdown
(By John Coltrane; Jowcol, BMI. Time: 2:21)

John Coltrane – Tenor Sax
Tommy Flanagan – Piano
Paul Chambers – Bass
Art Taylor – Drums
Recorded at Atlantic Studios, New York City, May 4, 1959

4. Spiral
(By John Coltrane; Jowcol, BMI. Time: 5:56)

John Coltrane – Tenor Sax
Tommy Flanagan – Piano
Paul Chambers – Bass
Art Taylor – Drums
Recorded at Atlantic Studios, New York City, May 4, 1959

5. Syeeda’s Song Flute
(By John Coltrane; Jowcol, BMI. Time: 7:00)

John Coltrane – Tenor Sax
Tommy Flanagan – Piano
Paul Chambers – Bass
Art Taylor – Drums
Recorded at Atlantic Studios, New York City, May 5, 1959

6. Naima
(By John Coltrane; Jowcol, BMI. Time: 4:21)

John Coltrane – Tenor Sax
Wynton Kelly – Piano
Paul Chambers – Bass
Jimmy Cobb – Drums
Recorded at Atlantic Studios, New York City, December 2, 1959

7. Mr. P.C.
(By John Coltrane; Jowcol, BMI. Time: 6:57)

John Coltrane – Tenor Sax
Tommy Flanagan – Piano
Paul Chambers – Bass
Art Taylor – Drums
Recorded at Atlantic Studios, New York City, May 5, 1959

Bonus Tracks

8. Giant Steps (Alternate Version 1)
(By John Coltrane; Jowcol, BMI. Time: 3:40)

John Coltrane – Tenor Sax
Cedar Walton – Piano
Paul Chambers – Bass
Lex Humphries – Drums
Recorded at Atlantic Studios, New York City, March 26, 1959

9. Naima (Alternate Version 1)
(By John Coltrane; Jowcol, BMI. Time: 4:27)

John Coltrane – Tenor Sax
Cedar Walton – Piano
Paul Chambers – Bass
Lex Humphries – Drums
Recorded at Atlantic Studios, New York City, March 26, 1959

10. Cousin Mary (Alternate Take)
(By John Coltrane; Jowcol, BMI. Time: 5:54)

John Coltrane – Tenor Sax
Tommy Flanagan – Piano
Paul Chambers – Bass
Art Taylor – Drums
Recorded at Atlantic Studios, New York City, May 5, 1959

11. Countdown (Alternate Take)
(By John Coltrane; Jowcol, BMI. Time: 7:02)

John Coltrane – Tenor Sax
Tommy Flanagan – Piano
Paul Chambers – Bass
Art Taylor – Drums
Recorded at Atlantic Studios, New York City, May 5, 1959

12. Syeeda’s Song Flute (Alternate Take)
(By John Coltrane; Jowcol, BMI. Time: 7:02)

John Coltrane – Tenor Sax
Tommy Flanagan – Piano
Paul Chambers – Bass
Art Taylor – Drums
Recorded at Atlantic Studios, New York City, May 5, 1959

Tracks 8-12 originally released on Alternate Takes, Atlantic SD-1668, January 1975.

13. Giant Steps (Alternate Version 2)
(By John Coltrane; Jowcol, BMI. Time: 3:32)

John Coltrane – Tenor Sax
Cedar Walton – Piano
Paul Chambers – Bass
Lex Humphries – Drums
Recorded at Atlantic Studios, New York City, March 26, 1959

14. Naima (Alternate Version 2)
(By John Coltrane; Jowcol, BMI. Time: 3:37)

John Coltrane – Tenor Sax
Cedar Walton – Piano
Paul Chambers – Bass
Lex Humphries – Drums
Recorded at Atlantic Studios, New York City, March 26, 1959

15. Giant Steps (Alternate Take)
(By John Coltrane; Jowcol, BMI. Time: 5:00)

John Coltrane – Tenor Sax
Tommy Flanagan – Piano
Paul Chambers – Bass
Art Taylor – Drums
Recorded at Atlantic Studios, New York City, May 5, 1959

Tracks 13-15 originally released on John Coltrane: The Heavyweight Champion, The Complete Atlantic Recordings, Rhino/Atlantic R2 71984, August 1995.

Recording Engineers: Tom Dowd and Phil Iihle
Cover Photo: Lee Friedlander
Cover Design: Marvin Israel
Supervision: Nesuhi Ertegun

This is a high-fidelity recording. Atlantic uses Electro-Voice 667, Capps and Telefunken U-47 microphones, and Ampex Model 300-8R tape recorder for its recording sessions. Individual microphone equalization is not permitted. The sound created by musicians and singers is reproduced as faithfully as possible, and special care is taken to preserve the frequency range as well as they dynamic range of each performance.

ORIGINAL ALBUM RELEASED AS ATLANTIC SD-1311, JANUARY 1960.

Reissue Supervision: Bob Carlton and Patrick Milligan
Reissue Liner Notes: Nat Hentoff
Editorial Supervisor: Steven Chean
Editorial Coordination: Ted Myers, Elizabeth Pavone
Editorial Research: Daniel Goldmark
Reissue Art Direction: Hugh Brown and Rachel Gutek
Reissue Design: Geoff Gans and Rachel Gutek
Booklet Photo: Lee Friedlander
Photo Research: Geoff Gans
Illustration: John Seabury
Remastering: Bill Inglot and Dan Hersch/DigiPrep
Project Assistants: Rick Brodey, Lori Carfora, David Dorn, Peter Pasternak, Brian Schuman, Thane Tierney
Special Thanks: Leon Leavitt, Vincent Pelote/Institute of Jazz Studies
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When I was in high school, my band teacher gave me a xeroxed transcription of John Coltrane's solo for "Giant Steps." Of course I'd heard of Coltrane before, but it wasn't until I started fumbling my way through that solo (on alto sax, no less) that I really began to see what was going on. Of course I ran right out and bought the Giant Steps album and proceeded to wear the grooves out of it. What an eye opener! History confirms how many eyes and ears this album has opened over the years. And I'm sure I've lost count of the many times it's been reissued. Our goal at Rhino is to make this the definitive release of Giant Steps. We've loaded it up with extra alternate takes (the last of which turned up when we were putting together our Heavyweight Champion box set of Coltrane's complete Atlantic recordings) and added fascinating new notes by Nat Hentoff, who also wrote the original liner notes. It's my hope that 2,000 years from now, any kid in high school (or whatever kind of school they have in 2,000 years) will still be able to go into his/her local music store and buy a copy of Giant Steps. I'm sure it will still be opening some eyes and ears.

- Patrick Milligan
Rhino A&R
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All musicians worth hearing during, and beyond, their time keep growing as their music deepens its hold on the listener. But John Coltrane committed his very existence to continually searching for more possibilities in his music – and therefore, in himself. After all, he once told me, “the music is the whole question of life itself.”

At home, John would practice for hours, sometimes silently – just running his fingers over the keys. He’d pick up new instruments and meditate and listen to recordings of Indian music and the sounds and rhythms of South African pygmies.

At one point, he decided to have two drummers in his group. He went on to add two bass players for a recording. I asked him why. “Because,” he said, “I want more of the sense of the expansion of time.”

A quiet man, except when he played, he would talk softly about his reason for being. “I’m not sure of what I’m looking for,” he said to me, “except that it’ll be something that hasn’t been played before. I don’t know what it is. I know I’ll have the feeling when I get it.”

And when he got it, audiences would sometimes shout because of the release of feelings in themselves.

Jimmy Giuffre was one of those who at first found Coltrane’s sound unpleasant and his seemingly endless solos oppressive. But, as Giuffre later said, “I began to understand that his bold, flat statements were as if he were standing naked onstage, the music coming directly from the man, not the horn.”

This set, Giant Steps, was an important development in Coltrane’s career. Writing the original liner notes for the album, I pointed out that it was the first set composed entirely of Coltrane originals. As passionate a soloist as he was, these tracks indicated how personal a writer he had become.

Moreover, being his own musical director in charge of his own works – and his own choice of musicians – signaled a stage of increased confidence … although John was never entirely satisfied with his music.

All these decades later, the music is as fresh and invigorating as it was upon first release. And, as I remember, Giant Steps converted a number of listeners who had initially found Coltrane “difficult.” So it was with Charlie Parker. For a while, he was accused of having a “bad tone,” especially in contrast to the sensuous sound of Johnny Hodges. But Parker’s sounds and forms eventually became so accepted that one could hear them on the sound systems of elevators in department stores.

At the time of this recording, Coltrane had been growing as a “live” soloists. For a time, he worked with Thelonious Monk at the Five Spot in downtown Manhattan. I was there almost every night, along with many other enraptured regulars. On some nights, I’d see musicians three-deep at the bar.

Being with Monk encouraged Coltrane to keep trying, to keep taking risks – including the risk of failure. “I learned new levels of alertness with Monk,” Coltrane told me. “If you didn’t keep aware of what was going on, you were lost. And Monk was on e of the first to show me how to make two or three notes at one time on tenor. It’s done by false fingering and adjusting your lips, and if it’s done right you get triads. He also got me into the habit of playing long solos.”

Extended solos became one of Coltrane’s contributions to jazz. He legitimated them – which is not to say that all of his followers could sustain his inventiveness and compelling passion. I remember nights when one of his solos lasted at least an hour, but the power of this ceaselessly original music transcended time. Also, as Archie Shepp notes, “Coltrane showed the rest of us we had to have the stamina – in terms of imagination and physical preparedness – to sustain those long flights.”

John never coasted. Every time I heard him, it was as if he was playing the last solo of his life and wanted to get all of his life into it. Or, as his wife, Alice, said: “His music was never resigned, never complacent. How could it be? He never stopped surprising himself.”

And he never stopped speculating on different approaches to his music. One afternoon he even told me, “I wish I could walk up to my music as if for the first time, as if I had never heard it before. Being so inescapably a part of it, I’ll never know what the listener gets, what the listener feels, and that's too bad."

But you, with this recording in hand, know what the listener gets, and what the listener feels. And this listener got a lot in hearing Coltrane, over many nights, with Miles Davis. When we first talked about Coltrane, Miles was somewhat exasperated over the length of John's solos. After a particularly elongated solo, Miles, as he recalled, walked up to John and said, "Why did you go on so long?"

"It took that long to get it all in," said Coltrane. Miles eventually nodded in agreement with Coltrane's logic.

While he was with Miles, Coltrane was tagged with the phrase "sheets of sound." Jazz critic Ira Gitler had first used it. These "sheets of sound" were multinote hailstorms of dense textures that sound like a simultaneous series of waterfalls. "His continuous flow of ideas without stopping really hit me," Gitler said. "It was almost superhuman. The amount of energy he was using could have powered a spaceship."

Although he was creating a new jazz language, Coltrane was always conscious of his roots in the music. And they were considerable. When he was 21, John played with a band led by the penetrating blues singer Eddie Vinson. Then, with Jimmy Heath, he learned a lot about designating patterns of music.

With Dizzy Gillespie, he learned more about the wondrous array of colors to be formed by subtly changing chords in unexpected new ways. Dizzy enjoyed showing new musicians the kaleidoscope of chord changes.

Then there was a stay with Earl Bostic - along-underestimated player with a joyous feel for the blues. For his next gig, John must have been awestruck. It was with Johnny Hodges, the reigning alto saxophonist before Charlie Parker. Hodges had left Duke Ellington, and a lot was riding on his new group, a small combo. He recognized young Coltrane's potential, and John felt privileged to be in Hodges' company.

I saw the combo at a gig. Hodges was his usual imperturbable self, as cool as an evening breeze. Coltrane was shy, somewhat tentative, and eager to please the master. I doubt if anyone at that time, including Coltrane himself, could have imagined the whirling virtuoso to come.

As I noted, John’s apprenticeship with Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk – preceding his 1960 recording – further extended the range of his capabilities, skills, and musical curiosity.

A lesson he learned from Monk became one of the most striking anecdotes in jazz history. It was a recording date with Monk as the leader. Coleman Hawkins and John Coltrane were the highly prestigious sidemen. Hawkins, a remarkable reservoir of musical knowledge, didn’t understand some of Monk’s notations. Coltrane wasn’t all that confident either. So Hawkins went to Monk and asked for clarification so that he and Coltrane could fulfill their responsibilities. Monk, who could be imperious, said to Hawkins, “You’re the guy who invented the tenor saxophone, right? And you,” Monk turned to Coltrane, “you’re the great John Coltrane, right?” As Art Blakey, who was on the date, told the story, Coltrane mumbled and blushed, and said, “Aw, I’m not so great.”

Then, Blakey added, Monk looked at both of these heavy hitters and said, “You play saxophone, right?” What could they do but nod in agreement? “Well,” said Monk, “The music is on the horn. Between the two of you, you should be able to find it.”

Coltrane never needed any lessons in humility. He never had a preening ego. But that encounter with Monk stayed with him, and if he was to be vulnerable again, it would be with his own music.

He was a kind, gentle, and gracious man. I often came to interview him for the notes to his albums. Invariably, he would say at first, “I’d really rather not talk about my music. If the music doesn’t speak for itself, no words can help it.”

And then, invariably, I would say, “John, I have this gig and the notes won’t mean much without you saying how the music came together.”

“Ok,” John would say, and he’d give me whatever time I wanted.

The last time I heard him in a club, the music seemed as if it would never stop, and I never wanted it to. At least on recordings like this one, it never has to stop.

- Nat Hentoff
September 1997
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Original Liner Notes

Along with Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane has become the most influential and controversial tenor saxophonist in modern jazz. He is becoming, in fact, more controversial and possibly more influential than Rollins. While it's true that to musicians especially, Coltrane's fiercely adventurous harmonic imagination is the most absorbing aspect of his developing style, the more basic point is that for many non-musician listeners, Coltrane at his best has an unusually striking emotional impact. There is such intensity in his playing that the string of adjectives employed by French critic Gerard Bremond in a Jazz-Hot article on Coltrane hardly seems at all exaggerated. Bremond called his playing "exuberant, furious, impassioned, thundering."

There is also, however, an extraordinary amount of sensitivity in Coltrane's work. Part of the fury in much of his playing is the fury of the search, the obsession Coltrane has to play all he can hear or would like to hear -often all at once - and yet at the same time make his music, as he puts it, "more presentable." He said recently, "I'm worried that sometimes what I'm doing sounds like just academic exercises, and I'm trying more and more to make it sound prettier." It seems to me he already succeeds often in accomplishing both his aims, as sections of this album demonstrate.

This is the first set composed entirely of Coltrane originals. John has been writing since 1948. He was born in Hamlet, North Carolina, September 23, 1926. His father played several instruments, and interested his son in music. At 15, John learned E-flat alto horn and clarinet, and in high school, he switched to tenor. He studied in Philadelphia at the Granoff Studios and the Ornstein School of Music, became a professional at 19, and played in a Navy band based in Hawaii from 1945-46. From 1947-49, he worked with Joe Webb (Big Maybelle was in the same entourage), King Kolax, Eddie Vinson and Howard McGhee. Charlie Parker had become a dominant influence on his playing.

He was on alto with the Dizzy Gillespie band in 1949, and after Dizzy disbanded, John returned to Philadelphia, discouraged and trying to find his own way in music. From 1952-53, he was with Earl Bostic, and then played with Johnny Hodges, Jimmy Smith, and Bud Powell. He first joined Miles Davis from 1955-56. Miles regards Coltrane and Rollins as the two major modern tenors. "I always liked Coltrane." Miles said recently. "When he was with me the first time, people used to tell me to fire him. They said he wasn't playing anything. They also used to tell me to get rid of Philly Joe Jones. I know what I want though. I also don't understand this talk of Coltrane being difficult to understand. What he does, for example, is to play five notes of a chord and then keep changing it around, trying to see how many different ways it can sound. It's like explaining something five different ways. And that sound of his is connected with what he's doing with the chords at any given time,"

Miles encouraged Coltrane and also stimulated his harmonic thinking. In terms of writing as well, John feels he's learned from Miles to make sure that a song "is in the right tempo to be its most effective. He also made me go further into trying different modes in my writing." After two years with Miles, there was a period in 1957 with Thelonious Monk that Coltrane found unusually challenging. "I always had to be alert with Monk," he once said, "because if you didn't keep aware all the time of what was going on, you'd suddenly feel as if you'd stepped into an empty elevator shaft."

Coltrane worked briefly with a Red Garland quintet, then rejoined Miles, and has been with him ever since. He has nothing of his own in the Davis book at present, but he has devoted more and more of his time to composing. He is mostly self-taught as a writer, and generally starts his work at the piano. "I sit there and run over chord progressions and sequences, and eventually, I usually get a song - or songs - out of each little musical problem. After I've worked it out on the piano, I then develop the song further on tenor, trying to extend it harmonically." Coltrane tries to explain what drives him to keep stretching the harmonic possibilities of improvisation by saying, "I feel like I can't hear but so much in the ordinary chords we usually have going in the accompaniment. I just have to have more of a blueprint. It may be that sometimes I've been trying to force all those extra progressions into a structure where they don't fit, but this is all something I have to keep working on. I think too that my rhythmic approach has changed unconsciously during all this, and in time, it too should get as flexible as I'm trying to make my harmonic thinking."

In her analysis of Coltrane's style in the November and December, 1959, issues of The Jazz Review, pianist Zita Carno pointed out that Coltrane's range "is something to marvel at: a full three octaves upward from the lowest note obtainable on the horn (concert A-flat) ... There are a good many tenor players who have an extensive range, but what sets Coltrane apart from the rest of them is the equality of strength in all registers, which he has been able to obtain through long, hard practice. His sound is just as clear, full and unforced in the topmost notes as it is down in the bottom." She describes his tone as "a result of the particular combination of mouthpiece and reed he uses plus an extremely tight embouchure" and calls it "an incredibly powerful, resonant and sharply penetrating sound with a spine-chilling quality."

Of the tunes, Coltrane says of Giant Steps that it gets its name from the fact that "the bass line is kind of a loping one. It goes from minor thirds to fourths, kind of a lop-sided pattern in contrast to moving strictly in fourths or in half-steps." Tommy Flanagan's relatively spare solo and the way it uses space as part of its structure is an effective contrast to Coltrane's intensely crowded choruses.

Cousin Mary is named for a cousin of Coltrane who is indeed called Mary. The song is an attempt to describe her. "She's a very earthy, folksy, swinging person. The figure is riff-like and although the changes are not conventional blues progressions, I tried to retain the flavor of the blues."

Countdown’s changes are based in large part on Tune Up, but against that, Coltrane uses essentially the same sequence of minor thirds to fourths that characterizes Giant Steps. His solo here, and in the others as well, illustrates Zita Carno's point that Coltrane, for all he's trying to express in any given solo, has a remarkable sense of form.

Syeeda’s Song Flute has a particularly attractive line and is named for Coltrane's 10-year-old daughter. "When I ran across it on the piano," he says, "It reminded me of her because it sounded like a happy, child's song."

The tender Naima - an Arabic name - is also the name of John's wife. "The tune is built," Coltrane notes, "on suspended chords over an Eb pedal tone on the outside. On the inside-the channel-the chords are suspended over a Bb pedal tone." Here again is demonstrated Coltrane's more than ordinary melodic imagination as a composer and the deeply emotional strength of all his work, writing and playing. There is a "cry" - not at all necessarily a despairing one - in the work of the best of the jazz players. It represents a man's being in thorough contact with his feelings, and being able to let them out, and that "cry" Coltrane certainly has.

Mr. P.C. is Paul Chambers who provides excellent support and thoughtful solos on the record as a whole and whom Coltrane regards as "one of the greatest bass players in jazz. His playing is beyond what I could say about it. The bass is such an important instrument, and has so much to do with how a group and a soloist can best function that I feel very fortunate to have had him on this date and to have been able to work with him in Miles' band so long." Tom Dowd's engineering, incidentally, has caught Paul's sound as well as it's ever been heard on records, and for an insight into the importance of the bass's function, it might be valuable to go through the record once, paying attention primarily to Paul. Also worth noting is the steady, generally discreet drumming of Arthur Taylor and Jimmy Cobb throughout.

What makes Coltrane one of the most interesting jazz players is that he's not apt to ever stop looking for ways to perfect what he's already developed and also to go beyond what he knows he can do. He is thoroughly involved with plunging as far into himself and the expressive possibilities of his horn as he can. As Zita Carno wrote, "the only thing to expect from John Coltrane is the unexpected." I’d qualify that dictum by adding that one quality that can always be expected from Coltrane is intensity. He asks so much of himself that he can thereby bring a great deal to the listener who is also willing to try relatively unexplored territory with him.

- NAT HENTOFF
Co-Editor, The Jazz Review