Giant Steps

Giant Steps

Released in January 1960, John Coltrane’s first album devoted entirely to his own compositions confirmed his towering command of tenor saxophone and his emerging power as a composer. Apprenticeships with Dizzy, Miles, and Monk had helped focus his furious, expansive solos, and his stamina and underlying sense of harmonic adventure brought Coltrane, at 33, to a new cusp–the polytonal “sheets of sound” that distinguished his marathon solos were offset by interludes of subtle, concise lyricism, embodied here in the tender “Naima.” That classic ballad is a calm refuge from the ecstatic, high-speed runs that spark the set’s up-tempo climaxes, which begin with the opening title song, itself a cornerstone of modern jazz composition. This exemplary reissue benefits from eight alternate takes of the original album’s seven stellar tracks, excellent remastering of the original tapes, and an expanded annotation. –Sam Sutherland

User Ratings and Reviews

5 Stars awesome, accessbile, fun stuff!!
So I’ve been intensely listening to Coltrane for all of, what, three months now? A novice to be sure. First, A Love Supreme, followed by some great albums from the Prestige collection (e.g., Coltrane (Prestige 7105)) and some good later stuff too (e.g., Sun Ship). But, as popular an album as Giant Steps is/was, I was afraid to throw down eleven bucks on it. I thought from the descriptions that it might be most just a musicianship-showoff album. After being shaken to my core by “A Love Supreme” and moved to tears by Ballads and incessantly tapping my foot to “Prestige 7105″ I did not want to hear Coltrane just zipping through insane technical pieces for the sake of insane technicality. I feared that maybe this was Coltrane’s “Facing the Animal” period album, so to speak. And ok, maybe Countdown is a little showoffy-for the sake of showing off, but it’s short, and fun none the less. And the rest of the album is simply fantastic. Moving, impressive, fun at times, brooding at others. Incredibly accessible, too. Likeable/knowable from the first listen on. GREAT STUFF, Giant Steps, this.

5 Stars Giant Steps
John Coltrane-Giant Steps *****

While I am rather new to Coltrane myself, only recently discovering him within the last year or so, I have acquired numerous albums of his, on top of the work he did with Miles Davis (all of which I own) I have to say that this is by far his most important album. While not as spiritual and uplifting, and maybe not even as moving as A Love Supreme, but still deeply influential, and maybe more so in fact. Giant Steps is a musicians album in true from, with emphasis on harmony’s rather than on song/structure on his more early work, or on soloing and freedom in his later work.

As the title track, ‘Giant Steps’ opens the album you can tell your in for something special and something unique among the mans masterful body of work, and as that track comes to a close with his long sustained notes you feel satisfied, and this continues throughout the album. ‘Countdown’ was a sign of things to come, and ‘Spiral’ was absolutely breathtaking. Coltrane’s reading of ‘Mr. P.C.’ well astonishing to say the least, it is a marvelous way to close such a land mark album.

While A Love Supreme may be the quintessential album of all time, and Ascension might be the most original, Giant Steps is by far my favorite Coltrane record, and easily the one that gets the most spins.

3 Stars One giant step for Coltrane, but…
…from a purely musical standpoint, as in being actual compositions, it’s not that great of a listen. Giant Steps, for the most part, is an album for people who understand music, those who know about music theory and understand what new breakthroughs this guy made with this album, and how he uses the numerous things. And for those people, they would probably know if Coltrane’s Giant Steps is worth listening to for the musical technique and the like involved

But for me, Giant Steps shows some hints of brilliance, and John Coltrane still can play the heck out of his saxophone, he’s brilliant obviously, on the whole. But the problem is that for all of the brilliant hints (the melodies he usually plays at the beginning and end of the songs are worth hearing), it suffers from nonstop, breathless, noodling. I would even say that John Coltrane sounds more like he’s showing off instead of trying to play something memorable, akin to the arrogant showboating licks, the reason why many technical death metal bands are insulted (mostly on the showboat front). I can’t deny the skill it takes to play like this, but John Coltrane gets annoying quick with his mastur______ noodling skronks of boring blasts of saxophones.

Maybe this is for my complete lack of understanding of music theory, but it simply isn’t varied enough. It isn’t bad, it has interesting parts, it just doesn’t have enough to do it justice. If you are interested in the technical aspects, I have no problem with that, but there isn’t much use for it when you have more focused, and ultimately more memorable Coltrane albums like Blue Train, My Favorite Things, and A Love Supreme.

5/10

5 Stars A Legendary Album
When I started listening to jazz about 15 years ago, Giant Steps was one of the first albums that I really got into.

I was 18 years old, a freshman in college, and I didn’t know anything about chords, scales, modes, time signatures etc. All I knew was that from the first time I heard Coltrane I knew that this was the greatest soloist that I had ever heard on any instrument.

The amazing thing on this album is that even with the amount of notes that he plays, Coltrane always maintains the melody of the song. I couldn’t disagree more with the people that say this album is not very musical or very listenable. His solos are all based on the blues and all are melodic and are as a result very accessible even with the speed at which he is running through the notes.

This album is filled with memorable songs. “Syeeda’s Song Flute” and “Spiral” are two standouts featuring two of Coltrane’s most beautiful melodies , excellent solos and stellar work on the bass by Paul Chambers.

Paul Chambers was one of the best bassists of all time but never seems to be remembered anymore. “Mr. PC” is a fine showcase of his skills.

My favorite song is the ballad, “Naima”. This one has gone down as ne of the great Jazz standards of its era and for good reason. It is a beautiful, sublime composition which proved once and for all that Coltrane was alot more than just a technical marvel,he had real soul and emotion to go with his physical skills.

If you are new to Jazz this should definately be one of the first albums you pick up.

4 Stars Technical Score: 10, Artistic Score: 7
I’m being a bit provocative with my review title here by giving technical and artistic skills like they do for figure skaters at the Olympics. There is no question that Coltrane demonstrates extraordinary musical and improvisational skills on every tune of this album. But I think the album lacks variety. Listening to it is kind of like watching a figure skater do lots of triple and quad jumps without ever doing any spins or other skills within their routine. I admit that my music theory is fairly limited, so I don’t really follow all the harmonic innovation that Coltrane is demonstrating here. But I do have several hundred jazz CDs and know that I prefer CDs with more variety. It’s true that Syeeda’s Flute Song and Naima both differ from the rest of the album; but I find Coltrane’s playing on Giant Steps, Cousin Mary, Countdown, Spiral, and Mr. P.C. very repetitious. Each of the tunes is individually very good; but the collection lacks the variety that the best jazz albums have.

I find Blue Train a better album than this even if Coltrane’s playing is not as advanced. I also like My Favorite Things, Impressions, and Crescent more than this album. They all have more variety and more beauty than Giant Steps. There’s no question that this is a very important album in the history of both Jazz and Coltrane, and I do like it. But I can’t give it 5 stars (or a perfect 10).

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