Coltrane described influential pianist as ‘the one who gives me wings’

MHis harmonies add to the impression of being at sea, since they do not lead to any obvious destination – open chords with fourths and fifths, no comfortable resolution from one key to another.

cCoy Tyner, who has died aged 81, was one of the most influential pianists in jazz from the 1960s to the present. Elements of his highly personal style, especially his approach to harmony, are still to be found in the work of many of his successors.

It is no exaggeration to say that without Tyner’s presence in John Coltrane’s classic quartet, between 1960 and 1965, Coltrane’s music, and consequently the history of jazz over the ensuing half-century, would have been very different. Coltrane himself called Tyner ‘‘the one who gives me wings and lets me take off from the ground’’.

Alfred McCoy

Tyner was born in Philadelphia.

His father

worked for a

pharmaceutical

firm and sang in a gospel quartet. His mother ran a beauty parlour in the front room of their house, where the family piano was kept on which the lad practised from the age of 14.

While still at high school, Tyner played with a local rhythm and blues band before becoming a professional pianist, in the band of the trumpeter Cal Massey.

In 1957, John Coltrane, then aged 31, was living at his mother’s house in Philadelphia, having temporarily left Miles Davis’ band to cure himself of his addictions. This was when he and 18-year-old Tyner met and became friends. Coltrane revealed his intention of eventually forming his own band and they discussed this, together with spiritual matters, in which they were both interested. It was around this time that Tyner embraced Islam and took the name Sulaiman Saud, although he never used it professionally.

Tyner made his recording debut in early 1960, on the album Meet The Jazztet, with the band of that name. It was soon followed by his first recordings with Coltrane, for the Atlantic label. The saxophonist was assembling his band, with musicians coming and going. Tyner came and stayed in 1960, followed by the drummer Elvin Jones towards the end of the year and bassist Jimmy Garrison later in 1961. The universally admired John Coltrane Quartet was now complete.

It is not easy to separate the elements that create the rolling sea of sound, turbulent but hypnotic, surrounding Coltrane’s saxophone in the quartet’s recordings. Tyner’s piano is certainly at the heart of it, dynamic and insistent. His harmonies add to the impression of being at sea, since they do not lead to any obvious destination – open chords with fourths and fifths, no comfortable resolution from one key to another.

The quartet’s triumphant string of albums, for the Impulse label, reached its highest point in 1964, with A Love Supreme. John Coltrane was constantly seeking ways of expanding into new realms of expression.

By late 1965, with excursions into ever more exotic cultures, and the addition of more players, the border of incoherence had been reached. Tyner, declaring he could not even hear his own piano through the din, left.

During his time with Coltrane, Tyner recorded several albums under his own name for Impulse, including Reaching Fourth (1962) and Today and Tomorrow (1964). He also recorded under other leaders, notably saxophonist Wayne Shorter (Night Dreamer and Juju, Blue Note 1962) and vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson (Stick Up, Blue Note 1965).

After leaving Coltrane, he had a five-year contract with Blue Note which produced several excellent albums, including The Real McCoy (1967) and Expansions (1970).

But, in jazz, recordings alone rarely produce enough income. For that, live performances are necessary – and these proved hard to come by. Apart from a brief period in Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers in 1976-77, Tyner was on his own. Many musicians formed ‘‘crossover’’ bands, playing jazz and popular styles. Tyner never considered this, having a strong dislike for electronic keyboards. But matters slowly improved from the early 1970s.

A new recording contract, with Milestone Records, had something to do with it. Mainly, though, it was the jazz audience catching up with Tyner as an artist in his own right, rather than as an adjunct of Coltrane, who had died in 1967. Sahara (1972) was voted Album of the Year by Downbeat magazine and he began touring with his own quartet.

In the 1980s Tyner had two bands, a trio and a 16-piece big band. Two big band albums, The Turning Point (Verve 1991) and Journey (Verve 1993) gained him Grammy awards.

His solo piano recordings include Echoes of a Friend (Milestone 1972), Soliloquy (Blue Note 1991) and Live at the Warsaw Jazz Festival (Jazzmen 1991). These, and Soliloquy especially, may prove to be the most lasting of all his recorded work.

McCoy Tyner is survived by his wife, two sons and a daughter. – Telegraph Group