McCoy Tyner: Today and Tomorrow (Verve By Request series) [VERVE]

Why you'll love it

This Verve By Request series edition is remastered on 180g vinyl in a gatefold jacket, pressed at Third Man Pressing in Detroit. AllMusic's Scott Yanow says it has more variety than most of Tyner's Impulse! albums.

This edition

• Verve By Request series
• 180g vinyl
• Remastered
• Gatefold jacket

About the album

McCoy Tyner spent his nights in the early 60s anchoring John Coltrane's quartet, and his days off making records of his own. Today and Tomorrow, his fifth as a leader, catches him in two very different moods, eight months apart.

The February 1964 sextet sessions pack a punch: Thad Jones on trumpet, John Gilmore (best known for his years with Sun Ra's Arkestra) on tenor, Frank Strozier on alto, Butch Warren on bass and Tyner's Coltrane bandmate Elvin Jones on drums. "Contemporary Focus" opens with a bold Tyner original, Thad Jones's "T 'N A Blues" swings hard, and the ten-minute "Three Flowers" gives every horn room to stretch. The June 1963 trio date, with Coltrane's bassist Jimmy Garrison and drummer Albert Heath, turns inward: a rippling "A Night in Tunisia," a gorgeous "Autumn Leaves" and a tender "When Sunny Gets Blue."

Jones and Garrison, like Tyner himself, were members of Coltrane's classic quartet at the time. Together these sessions show both sides of a pianist who would become one of the most influential in jazz. It's two albums for the price of one, which is the kind of maths we can get behind.

Also at Kops: more McCoy Tyner on vinyl · browse Modern Jazz

Tracklist

Listen

On Impulse! / Verve, a reissue of the 1964 album.