Groundbreaking pianist was mainstay of Coltrane quartet
1938-2020 McCOY TYNER
McCoy Tyner, a cornerstone of John Coltrane’s groundbreaking 1960s quartet and one of the most influential pianists in jazz history, died Friday at his home in northern New Jersey. He was 81.
His nephew Kolby Tyner confirmed the death.
Along with Bill Evans, Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea and only a few others, Tyner was one of the main expressways of modern jazz piano. Nearly every jazz pianist since Tyner’s years with Coltrane has had to learn his lessons, whether they ultimately discarded them or not.
Tyner’s manner was modest, but his sound was rich, percussive and serious, his lyrical improvisations centered by powerful left-hand chords marking the first beat of the bar and the tonal center of the music.
That sound helped create the atmosphere of Coltrane’s music and, to some extent, all jazz in the 1960s.
To a great extent he was a grounding force for Coltrane. In a 1961 interview, about a year and a half after hiring Tyner, Coltrane said: “My current pianist, McCoy Tyner, holds down the harmonies, and that allows me to forget them. He’s sort of the one who gives me wings and lets me take off from the ground from time to time.”
Tyner did not find immediate success after leaving Coltrane in 1965. But within a decade his fame had caught up with his influence, and he remained one of the leading bandleaders in jazz as well as one of the most revered pianists for the rest of his life.
Alfred McCoy Tyner was born in Philadelphia on Dec. 11, 1938, to Jarvis and Beatrice (Stephenson) Tyner, both natives of North Carolina. Tyner started taking piano lessons at 13, and a year later his mother bought him his first piano.
At 16, Tyner was playing professionally with a rhythm-and-blues band at house parties around Philadelphia and Atlantic City.
Tyner was in a band led by trumpeter Cal Massey in 1957 when he met Coltrane at a Philadelphia club called the Red Rooster. At the time, Coltrane, who grew up in Philadelphia but had left in 1955 to join Miles Davis’ quintet, was back in town, between tenures with the Davis band.
The two musicians struck up a friendship. Coltrane was living at his mother’s house, and Tyner would visit him there to sit on the porch and talk. He would later say that Coltrane was something of an older brother to him.
Tyner was 21 when he joined the Coltrane quartet. He would remain — along with drummer Elvin Jones and, beginning in 1962, bassist Jimmy Garrison — for the next five years. Through his work with the group, which came to be known as the “classic” Coltrane quartet, he became one of the most widely imitated pianists in jazz.
Harmonically, his sound was strongly defined by his use of modes — the old scales that governed a fair amount of the music Tyner played during his time with Coltrane — and by his chord voicings.
Tyner’s survivors include his wife, Aisha Tyner; his son, Nurudeen, who is known as Deen; his brother, Jarvis; his sister, Gwendolyn-Yvette Tyner; and three grandchildren.