Alfred McCoy Tyner (December 11, 1938 – March 6, 2020) was an American jazz pianist and composer known for his work with the John Coltrane Quartet from 1960 to 1965 and his long solo career afterward. He was an NEA Jazz Master and a five-time Grammy Award winner. Tyner has been widely imitated and is one of the most recognizable and influential jazz pianists of all time.
Tyner was born on December 11, 1938, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States, the eldest of Jarvis and Beatrice (née Stevenson) Tyner's three children.
Tyner was encouraged to study piano by his mother, who had installed a piano at her beauty salon. At the age of 13, he began piano lessons at the Granoff School of Music, where he also studied music theory and harmony. By the time he was 15 years old, music had become the center of his life.
Tyner's decision to study piano was reinforced when he encountered bebop pianist Bud Powell, a neighbor of the Tyner family. Another major influence on Tyner's playing was Thelonious Monk, whose percussive attacks informed Tyner's style. During his teens, Tyner led his own group, the Houserockers.
When he was 17, Tyner converted to Ahmadiyya and changed his name to Suleiman Saud, although he continued to perform as "McCoy Tyner".
Early career and the John Coltrane Quartet
Tyner began playing professionally in Philadelphia with local artists such as Lee Morgan and Jimmy Heath, participating in the city's modern jazz scene. He first met John Coltrane, who eventually became "like a big brother" to Tyner, in the summer of 1955. They kept in touch, played together occasionally, and had an understanding that if Coltrane ever formed a group of his own, Tyner would be the pianist. In 1960, Tyner joined The Jazztet led by Benny Golson and Art Farmer and recorded on the group's debut album, Meet the Jazztet. Around the same time, Coltrane left Miles Davis's group and formed a quartet of his own, but because he was friends with Golson, he was reluctant to ask Tyner to leave The Jazztet. Encouraged by his wife, Naima, Coltrane eventually asked Tyner what he wanted to do.
After six months with The Jazztet, Tyner joined the John Coltrane Quartet, which then included bassist Steve Davis and drummer Elvin Jones. Tyner worked with the band during its extended run at the Jazz Gallery, replacing Steve Kuhn. Reflecting on the situation later, Tyner said: "There were probably some bad feelings at first with the Jazztet, but I think they understood better later on. John's group was where I belonged." Coltrane had already recorded Tyner's composition "The Believer" on January 10, 1958, which became the title track of Prestige Records' 1964 album under Coltrane's name.
The band toured almost nonstop between 1961 and 1965 and went through personnel changes on bass, with Reggie Workman replacing Davis and then Jimmy Garrison replacing Workman, establishing the quartet's classic lineup. The group recorded many albums widely considered jazz classics, including Coltrane "Live" at the Village Vanguard (1962), Ballads (1963), John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman (1963), Live at Birdland (1964), Crescent (1964), A Love Supreme (1964), and The John Coltrane Quartet Plays (1965) for Impulse! Records.
A Love Supreme, in particular, is recognized by consensus as one of the greatest jazz albums ever made. Tyner said, "the band had reached a very high level by that time .... [Coltrane] wanted to dig deep and bring us up to another level. And that's what he did."
While in Coltrane's group, Tyner also recorded albums as a leader, including trio recordings, such as his debut album, Inception (1962). In late 1962 and the first half of 1963, producer Bob Thiele asked Tyner to record other more straightforward jazz albums as a leader. These include Reaching Fourth (1963), Nights of Ballads & Blues (1963), Today and Tomorrow (1964), and McCoy Tyner Plays Ellington (1965).
Tyner also appeared as a sideman on many Blue Note Records albums of the 1960s, including classic recordings with Freddie Hubbard, Wayne Shorter, and Joe Henderson, although he was often credited as "etc." on these albums' covers to respect his contract with Impulse!.
Tyner's maximalist playing style developed in close contact with Coltrane. In 2019, Sami Linna of the University of the Arts Helsinki wrote that Coltrane described the two different directions in his playing as "playing chordally (vertically) or melodically (horizontally)". Linna suggests that "Tyner would eventually find a way of dealing with the two directions simultaneously, in a manner that was supportive and complementary yet original and slightly different from Coltrane's approach." After 1960, Coltrane did not hire anyone to replace Tyner if he was unavailable; between the time Tyner joined the group (around the end of May 1960) and left (December 1965), no other pianist accompanied Coltrane.
Tyner's involvement with Coltrane ended in 1965. Coltrane's music was becoming much more atonal and free; he had also augmented his quartet with additional percussion players who threatened to drown out both Tyner and Jones, who left the following year. Tyner commented, "I didn't see myself making any contribution to that music. ... All I could hear was a lot of noise. I didn't have any feeling for the music, and when I don't have feelings, I don't play." Alice Coltrane then replaced Tyner as the group's pianist.
In 1966, Tyner rehearsed with a new trio and embarked on a career as a bandleader. Inconsistent work initially discouraged him and led him to consider taking a day job to support his family, and he inquired about becoming a taxi driver. Eventually, Tyner established himself as a viable solo artist through a series of post-bop albums as a leader Blue Note released between 1967 and 1970. These include The Real McCoy (1967), Tender Moments (1967), Time for Tyner (1968) with vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson, Expansions (1968), and Extensions (1970).
Tyner then signed with Milestone Records, where he developed an excellent working relationship with jazz producer Orrin Keepnews, who had previously worked closely with Thelonious Monk and Bill Evans. Tyner's first album with his new label, Sahara, earned him his first two Grammy nominations and was named Album of the Year in the DownBeat critics' poll. Tyner recorded 19 albums for the label before moving to Columbia, including a solo piano tribute to Coltrane titled Echoes of a Friend (1972), a number of small-group records like Enlightenment (1973) and Sama Layuca (1974), and two orchestral albums, Song of the New World (1973) and Fly with the Wind (1976), both featuring flutist Hubert Laws, various other wind instruments, and full string sections. Tyner did the orchestrations, drawing on Walter Piston's book Harmony. Front-line players featured on Tyner's Milestone recordings include Gary Bartz, Sonny Fortune, Azar Lawrence, and Woody Shaw.
Tyner's recordings for Blue Note and Milestone often took Coltrane Quartet's music as a point of departure; as Tyner said, "a lot of what I learned from [Coltrane] transferred" to his later work. Tyner also incorporated African and East Asian elements into his music. On Sahara, he played koto in addition to piano, flute, and percussion. On the trio recording Trident (1975), with bassist Ron Carter and Elvin Jones, Tyner played the harpsichord and celesta, instruments rarely heard in jazz. These albums have been cited as examples of innovative 1970s jazz that was neither fusion nor free jazz. Unlike many jazz keyboardists of his generation, Tyner rarely used electronic keyboards or synthesizers, saying, "To me, electronic instruments have more of an artificial sound. Emotionally I couldn't function on them."
In 1982, Tyner and a number of other notable jazz pianists participated in the recording Bill Evans: A Tribute (Avion Records). He played an 8½-minute solo version of Evans's "We Will Meet Again" in honor of his deceased colleague.