McCoy Tyner

S = Standifer
T = McCoy Tyner

S At the Campus Inn, Ann Arbor, Michigan, and we're talking to Mr. McCoy Tyner. Could we start off by first correcting my pronunciation of your name?
T Yes. McCoy Tyner.

S McCoy Tyner?
T That's right.

S Can you give us anything about the background for a name like "Tyner"? It's a very unusual name. You don't see a lot of them.
T I really don't know where the arches came from. Could be French, could it be, I don't know, I'm not sure. But it is unusual. I haven't really taken the time to research it, but there are not many Tyners in the country, really. So, it is very unusual.

S Now, we know that you were -- home for you is Philadelphia.
T That's where I was born, Philadelphia.

S Born in Philadelphia?
T That's right.

S Do you still have family there?
T Yeah. I have a sister, aunts and cousins and various people.

S Did Philadelphia or the schools of Philadelphia or anybody in Philadelphia have a big responsibility for what you now are and have become?
T Well I think I got a lot of support from my mother ______ but she really gave me a lot of encouragement and also I was involved with a lot of people that helped me out quite a bit in musical direction. There were a lot of older musicians that helped me out quite a bit. S Such as?
T Well there were some saxophone players around town, there were various jazz artists that were just coming around and socializing.

S Did you hang out in some of the clubs or places where good jazz was being played so that you could hear and be influenced by these performers? T Yeah. Well doing a job I was coming up, the music was spirit for every avenue supported and exposed to the public at large. That's why we had to ____ for the support. You know, if I'm in front of the general public, because they had a chance to hear it on one of these jazz radio stations of occasional music and so it was a part of the community that I grew up in as well as a lot of other communities around the country. But, yes, I was kind of young at the time. When I started I was 13, but I would have gotten interested in jazz when I was 15 when I had a little jazz group, but it took me a while before I was able to go into a club. I was under age, but I sort of went in anyway. But that really helped to ___ ___ ____ for another job. He was at the Red Rooster

S Do you mean Rooster, the Blue Note?
T Yes. That's where I met John Coltrain.

S Where was the Blue Note...was this in Philadelphia?
T Yes that was in Philadelphia.

S Where were these clubs located?
T Well that was on Rich Avenue and we had several clubs. We had the Showboat which was downtown on Broad Street and Lumber and then we had another club called Pimps which was on Broadside. So these come from right around the _______, so you see the type of venues that were available to artists and to the general public. It was good for a significant -- I think that had lots to do with why the people are educated as far as the music is concerned.

S Now at 15 and 13, how did you manage to get a hearing in these clubs? Did you go to sneak in? T Well, I didn't start going into the clubs until I was about 16 or 17 years old, and I just managed to get in, but a lot of the positions they were starring in some of the shows that came to town, heard about me and I knew then, so I was able to kind of find a way to hit some of these places.

S Were you big for your age that you could pass?
T I was tall.

S Tall.
T I was with those talls in the _____

S So while you were 16, you might of could of passed for 17 or 18.
T Yes.

S Let's move back just a tiny bit. You said your mother had an influence on you; did she have you take piano lessons? Or?
T Yes. Well what happened, I had a chance to take piano and voice lessons, because when I was in elementary school I sang in the glee club and also in junior high school. So I had the chance to take piano lessons as the lessons and also singing lessons. But, I chose piano and I really, really got interested. But my mother played piano. She didn't study it, but she played by ear and she, you know, I was sort of kind of interested in piano because of her character.

S Okay. You mentioned she played by ear. Did you first start then picking out tunes or did you first by the sound of the note.
T Yes, I started studying first. I mean, I really wasn't sure what I wanted to do, I wanted to play piano or take some lessons, so I started studying first. There was a man, Mr. Habishaw, who was my first teacher in the community and taught a lot of the younger people ___ ___. And he was sort of a beginner teacher, and I studied with him for a while, you know, so as time went on, I got more and more interested in it. Then I left him and went to another teacher who was Mr. Giralli and ____ ____.

S Mr. Habishaw was he a Black man or?
T Yes he was. He was a Black man.

S And how do you spell it? H a b e r s h a w?
T I think so.

S And when he taught you, what kind of technique did he use?
T Well he taught basically _______ piano. He taught a lot of ______ children in the ____ room. He bounced out with children and was a very, very gentle man, very patient and a very, very good teacher, he would encourage you and he would take you so far and then he'd tell you "Now, it's time for you to go to someone else who can carry you further." So, after studying with him then I moved on and of course I eventually went to Granoff to study for a while.

S Where?
T Granoff. And I studied for a while in theory. But most of my, I think, development came from playing, actually playing. I used to go to Atlantic City ___ ___ ____ ___. I used to go there in the summertime. Like a lot of the students picked their jobs, I'd just go down there and play.

S Oh, so when you mentioned earlier that when you were 15 you had put together a little group...
T I put together a little group of Junior High School friends. I had a 7-piece band.

S Did you play for parties?
T Yes. We played for parties at people's homes and also we were in talent shows. We won a talent show; I guess I must have been about 16 years old. A talent show at the uptown theatre. Med Ten Morley was the MC.

S Oh, really? You're kidding. Was Med Ten then still -- you know, we saw Med when I was a kid even, but he was still sort of a kind of a clown, you know, like, but then ­ in the movies anyway.
T Yes. In the movies he was a clown. But he wasn't entirely too much that day. I think he was real serious.

S Was he as well known then as ____ ?
T Yes, he was, because he was there with Charlie Stanford.

S Well, I'll be darned.
T And so, like I said, the city I grew up in was very, very active musically.

S Was the school music filament
T Some of it was there. Right. There were some other students when I was in High School and other people who had attended ___ and also Curtis Institute.

S All right. Yes. Did you study at Curtis?
T No, I didn't. My formal training was very limited I did mostly playing at _____

S Oh
T I studied actually I think it was a period of about three years, was my training

S well then you obviously had a fantastic year in other words you hears a lot of music.
T Yeah I used to practice quite a bit and I think really the talent lies within the person; you know I really think so. I think it's going to come out either way. The schooling necessarily means that you'll be a major artist art; it's a gods gift I think that's where it come from.

S well how is it and this is a curious thing what ever pianist I'm talking to, I always ask, how did the shift of the direction of jazz come? How did that happen you know, all of us take piano to take piano and then for some reason or another we begin to migrate or magnetize toward one pole or another. How did it happen that yours was in the direction of jazz, or was it innately in the direction of jazz?
T well in the beginning I played Chehovski and Schopan know the normal repartee and then your supposed to learn ____ but ah I was interested in rhythm and blues I mean I used to get work I mean I got called for a lot of jobs, playing backup singers an playing little just little jobs like that. I think that's what it was I mean it was people...I was interested in jazz as I used to say, you know the radio it was successful and then the blues was successful I used to hear that o lot.

S What was the big, well I shouldn't say black station but maybe there was in Philadelphia at that time
T Yeah I can't remember the call letters of the station____ ____ ____.

S was Philly considered to historically be one of the recording...one of the places where one of the recording companies such as we have in Memphis. We have Motown we have...
T Yeah...no it wasn't like in New York it was in sort of such___ _____ _____Postbox in New York, I think a lot of people would go to New York before actually, but most of the...you have great rhythm sections that came out of New York, but ah _____ _______. We used to have a lot of secessions an artist would come down that's how I got my opportunity to play with a lot great people. Like Cole Train, I met him when I was 17 years old.

S You met him in Philadelphia?
T In Philadelphia went there to play with him

S Tell us about that cause that's not generally know that the first time you and Cole Train really got together was having it at such a young age.
T Well I was in Calvin Masses band was in with a friend of John Cole Train and we used to practice together, he had a quintet actually I John had come to New York cause he worked with so many bands, then he came back to do some writing and stuff. I met him ah during this period like around the mid- fifties and one afternoon ah I was playing at the Rooster because we played a week there and he came in and the club owner asked him if he wanted to have a good band show, so we didn't have a band, so he asked Calvin's' rhythm section if they Œd like sit with him, so we said sure, cause I heard of John and that he was a great musician and ah that's when I first met John I played with him then.

S well you must have had quite a reputation for him, well he was established did he have his reputation then.
T He was somewhat established even though he was working in Brooklyn bars ____ ____ ________ _____, but he had a name cause he had made records.

S Well then that says something of your reputation for him to say, look I want to work with this manor this boy cause you were a kid then, and one doesn't normally pick up a relatively green kid unless he's pretty good.
T Yeah well at that time I was work...had worked with a lot of people and some of the people...

S So you were paying dues for a long time then and it began to pay off in that way.
T Yeah I had been working quite a bit around town _____ ______ ________.

S What did you think when you found that John Cole Train had chosen you to work with him?
T Well actually we became very close friends. We'd go to his mothers' house and sit down and talk about music and ah I was really thrilled because we were very compatible. Even then I realized that. He went back to ______ and I later rejoined him when I was about twenty. I worked with The jazz Temp it's the first band that I had been able to join, while I worked with the Jazz Temp which comprised basically of _____ ______ _____ _____, and I worked with them for about six months, till I joined John.

S Was Alvin Jones ah...
T No Alvin came later he came along. Our first drummer was Pete_____ and ah we had Bill Higgins for a while then Alvin came along.

S Let's get back again, when John first heard you or asked to did he ask, or some established guy would talk to them first and then they put you through your trace, "Let me hear you do this and let me do a few changes, and then sign you on. Did he do this or he just knew of you?
T No because I had a chance to get together with him and play a little bit together ah you know when he was _____ _____ ______ you know. So he was familiar with what I could do he used to come to secessions so he had a chance see what we did. S When you exchanged words with a John Cole Train, and I'm not suggesting that McCoy Tyner, you know sometimes you see readings about McCoy Tyner and John Cole Trains name is thrown around so often you say now wait a minute McCoy Tyner had an investment before the contract and the playing and after the court, but I'm really saying that when you talked to him what kind of music talk...did you talk about well like I think that maybe this would be better maybe if we tried to play this in a using a kind of quoi fact tone row or I think this is maybe a total of string and maybe the seventh cord or diminished cords did you talk on that level or did you talk more on the jargon of the jazz musician where you talk in maybe less specific terms.
T Yeah we didn't always talk in technical terms but ah occasionally if we needed to we would but it was very, very held on the level, the conversation was definitely more of a lesser note.

S Could you give me a specific on that?
T What I'm saying is we were talking about music not necessarily in terms of noted but in terms of sound and affect that we will have motes or more type of thing, rather than making colors, and not to basics or specifics.

S How did he communicate to you if he said look at this point I want to come to a climax or want the emotional pitch to be biggest at this point, How do you get it together? Here all these musicians ...
T Yeah well that's the thing, picking the right people to composite a group, yes is very, very important, I think that ah you know you have to have the right people together other wise there would be _________ _________. So it's very important that you get the right combination of artists together so the music can reach its full potential.

S When you didn't communicate musically who would stop and say wait a minuet let's go back and let's do something and what we need. If that happened what was that something just for one example.
T Well ah usually I'll tell you with all the years I worked with him we had about 6 or 7 rehearsals, that was out of five and a half years.

S seven rehearsals...
T That's about it, it sounds odd doesn't it?

S Especially when you think about the complexity of his music.
T Yeah, well that's because we played ah every night, we played a lot and a lot of things were done on stage, a lot of the playing was just playing.

S So you just met and played. T Yeah, we did we developed that, ____ ________.

S Another thing now in looking at his record and your record too for that matter, in terms of with whom you've played, five men and so forth he had quite a number of people that played with him. If that ... to me that seems kind of odd for a person that's developing into what we think John Cole Train ultimately developed into, I'm not sure what that is, but was that because he had faith in these people out there, or was he a hard man to work with? T No he was very easy to work with, and I think it has a lot to do with ah he was never accretive in terms of his leadership, and we all felt like we were one unit, not really separate or individual.

S Are you accretive, musically or verbally or other wise?
T Well, I...not to a point where maybe I may be a little bit more than him in some respects, I mean I like sort of ________, but I still try to maintain some flexibility in being the leader of the band.

S Did you ever try to inflect McCoy Tyner's stamp on some of Cole Trains arrangements or recordings?
T Well like I said we were allowed to do that it was a very natural thing to do. We were never told what to do or how to do it, nothing like that. So if he felt very comfortable with what ever you wanted to do, I had total freedom like that.

S What can I ...now this is a stupid question but as a musician if I were to go through, and I have listened to a lot of recordings, but a lot of those things wither its my favorite things or what ever it being I'm looking for, something that would say look I know this is McCoy Tyner playing in the back ground, can you think of a couple of things, musical things I could look for, that seem to be consistent through out your career?
T Well actually my sound I think is really what...even before I met John I think I had a sound.

S What was that?
T I mean you it was just in me you know and ah I don't know what that is it's a sort of inner feeling that perception that you have you know, __________ ________. I don't think that you can, really be specific its just a sound, and I think that's what we should all strive for.

S I asked that because so often we historians have a tendency to look at your performance and say this is your style this is his style and that's his style then again a person like you, you say well I don't know what it is you listen to the music and that will tell you in other words...
T Yes you can... there some people that can sit down and analyze it.

S Aren't there some musical clashes that you seem to just...this is me and when I perform what is a run or it's a simple arpeggio or it's a fast, or there's just something that you just like to do and you just hang in there when you do a performance?
T Well ah...there are so many things that you do. There's certain things that are characteristically able but ah I think that I try to do so many things then to just lock myself into one thing and say this is me you know, I try to do a combination of a lot of things. I think that ah better than saying I have something specific to recognize my playing.

S Let me say it another way then, if I had to differentiate between you and say Peterson what are some of the differences do you find between you and him?
T I think that probably would be the way we approach harmony and that would be different.

S Such as...
T _______ ________...

S Would yours be more first or second position or ...
T Yeah... well I really wouldn't be able to ...

S Like enter the harmony ...
T Yeah... my approach... the way I approach cords and I use a lot of sustaining power, generally I approach my lines just different.

S Is your right hand more academic more ah virtuosetic more...
T No...______ _______ ____ ____ __.

S Oh yeah I agree...
T Its not that it's just the way people think.

S One last thing, did you attend church when you were a boy and if you did, did you ever play music in church?
T I did ...I played more or less...I would do the _______ of church. That's one thing that my mother like, she liked me to play silence of church.

S As a kid what would be some of a couple of numbers that you might have played?
T I would do...like what I was telling you like Chikoffski or something like that____ ______, and I would always play what ever I was doing at the time you know, when I was young. I didn't get into playing gospel cause they had _________ that did that so I would just give a little concert of some of the tune I was doing.

S Have you made money in your career, I mean big money?
T Big money well that a little...

S Relative I know...
T Yeah relative, yeah well I make a living and ah it's not easy to make money_______ ______ its not always commercial music.

S Have your handlers ... agents been pretty sensitive to Tyner in his wishes?
T They try to be sensitive...yes, mostly.

S Have any of them tried to use you I mean in their financial gains?
T Well not to my knowledge...

S Are you a pretty good business man yourself?
T I think I am, I would be aware of anything like that.

S In reading articles about you I'm sure you might have read the Ann Arbor rag. It points out that you were dropped by Blue Note, the mile stone you were dropped by CBS, in other words you might have performed with this label for a while and then maybe because of lack of commercial success or what ever that particular company dropped you and then you went to another one. Now they say dropped and you don't agree with that?
T No, I left ...every contract I've had I've left even the last one, its my choice, and I usually because the offers better where I feel as though I've had you know for some reason a record company by large isn't an honest institution that we have to deal with, so I've been sometimes discouraged by all the things that have happened in my experiences with the record companies.

S All those that you performed with Blue Note Mile Stone, Electra, and CBS. Electra video is a subsidiary to CB

S isn't it?
T Well no it was part of Warner Brother.

S You didn't record on Impulse did you?
T Yeah...I recorded on Impulse that was my first _.

S Okay
T Cause see I did my first album already...

S Out of those, which were the most now, I have two questions...which was the most ecstatically pleasing for you to work with? In other words permitted you to be creative and do what you wanted to do, and which was the one most commercially successful?
T Well all of them I hadn't been approached by any of them to do anything that I would want to do, I've had creative freedom but ah I think that ah CB

S is sort of ah elusive I didn't know...most companies I felt comfortable with...I didn't feel comfortable with it. I think that ah I _____ ______...it's not a matter of ...it's a matter of how happy you are and if you don't be dissatisfied with ____ -______.

S When you say happy now this is my ________ of course, give an instance when CB

S did not permit you to be happy with their treatment?
T Well because if some people make promises and they don't want to keep them something's wrong. I've had jazz offices _________ and record companies make promises that they don't keep.

S These include the commercial ones where their really going to push your album or to...
T Yeah. Because a lot of times it's always done on a limited bases and sometimes ah I always do albums with a commercial band and other albums, but the ones that they do are sometimes pretty good, so I'm not saying that it happens in every case but it might, that's when I've done something which can be assessable to the general public is ah I think ____ _____ ____.

S Which is the...of those labels which ones were the most or the least pleasant for you to work with?
T The least pleasant?

S Well...I don't know, maybe I shouldn't get into that I...

S Alright, let's put it another way. Which ones were the most... you felt you were the most successful in terms, doing what you wanted to do both creatively and other wise.
T Well actually Impulse was ________ but the time period that we _____ __________ _______ we had a very creative period in the sixties, I started, I was reading my first work in the sixties. I was doing my first record under my name.

S In sixty-two...
T The first record I made was in 19... ah the first record of mine was made in 1962.It was a trio.

S Okay, let's get back ... and I'm going to pick up on both of those points. The first record that you got was in 59, T yeah I was with Curtis Porter ...

S and that was one that you first made?
T yeah, that was after we had ah actually when I first left ah Philadelphia I left the ________ _____ ______who later I became angry with the jazz tap______club and Curtis was with us, it was before the...prior to the jazz tap, but with some of the same people, and we worked in secessions for about three weeks, we only came back and started the jazz tap together and ah this is out of that experience with those people I got a chance to make a record session on purpose, which was the first album that I got to record with anybody you know, and ah then we did jazz tap was the next album.

S Now this first album did you play as an ________ on all of the side that were...
T Yeah I had some of the space, and everything then after that I met the jazz tap and after that I went to jazz tap, so I was rather fortunate in my ______.

S So then at this point you began to do my favorite things...
T yeah-in 1960 we had ah my favorite things

S To everyone at first this is quite a land marvel esthetically and professionally and success in terms of this commercial success and so forth. Wasn't that commercial successful?
T Yes it was. The sound of music was ah I think was at that time on of the top shows of ...

S I guess timing had to do with well like anything else...
T Your timing has a lot to do with it all, at first I didn't like the song but then after we started playing it then it sort of grew on me and then the song began to achieve ...

S How did that arrangement come about did you participate in the...
T John and I both...he set out and told me what he'd like to happen, just ah we got it from there...

S Is the big score available, the arrangement?
T Not the arrangement no, the arrangement was _______.

S Ah...okay
T A lot of the arrangement was the quartet was...their head arrangements, but there maybe some transcriptions available of the original material I'm pretty sure they are.

S What happened to Cole Trains material when he died?
T Well I guess his wife at the time Alice Cole Train she probably has it.

S Sop you don't think she's given them to a collection or archive or...
T I really don't know. You would have to contact her.

S Where does she live now?
T I think she is in Los Angeles, yes that's right.

S Have you...as a jazz musician, and I ask all my jazz musicians this ah do you drink a lot do you womanize do you do what a lot of people think most commercial artists do because it's a fast lane life.
T Well it's not really as fast as...it's as fast as you want to make it.

S Do you make it fast?
T No...I don't make it fast. I mean I never know well my life has been pretty steady and so you know life is staying on.

S What are the ages of your children?
T Right now 15, 19, and 21.

S What two boys and one girl?
T No, three boys.

S Where are they are they in school now?
T Yeah, my middle is in collage and my oldest one is working in Washington D. C. and the youngest one is in high school.

S Where's your middle one in collage?
T I'm sorry...

S What collage is your...
T He's going ______ ______ ______.

S Oh I see, okay, you didn't keep any of them in...ah for long in Philadelphia though
T Well that's where my ______ ______ New Jersey Connecticut, Rhoda Island...

S Where'd you meet your wife?
T I'm sorry?

S Where did you meet your wife?
T Oh she's in Jersey.

S Did you meet her in Jersey?
T No I met her in Philadelphia. I was seventeen and she was fifteen.

S So she grew up in Philadelphia too.
T yeah

S Go to the same high school?
T No, she was from another part of town ... we met under musical circumstances.

S Oh, is she musical also?
T Well she's musical but she... well lets put it this way ah I met her... I was having a session in her house so her sister-in-law ...my sister-in-law was a singer and ah I met her ah thru her, that's why we were having a session in her house.

S Are your children performers?
T Ah, my youngest one is really ah... avidly... ah... he's very talented.

S Piano?
T He plays piano he's studying flute and he sings, he's a very good singer, dancer and actor.

S Fifteen?
T He's been to acting school.

S and he's only fifteen you said?
T Yeah he's shear genius.

S Your pushing him I hope.
T Yeah, definitely. ah... he's really aggressive.

S Great! Are you giving him some opportunities like in maybe a performing arts high school or...
T Yeah he was in... he got accepted in ________ school in New York but he chose to stay in New Jersey, that was his choice.

S Is he...where he is, is he able to get some training in ah that will help him?
T Yeah, he's studying privately with a very, very good teacher, and also he's playing in the high school band, I'm trying to pass it on to him.

S Great! Well our probe here in Michigan is not to bad and one of the best things we could have is one of the Tyner's coming out here.
T Maybe he might take that into consideration when he's ready for collage.

S and we also have Interlocking Arts Academy up here, which is beautiful, but you have to be... of course you're a rich man; it's an expensive place.
T No I don't think I'm a rich man.

S Ha, your rich...
T Ha. I just want to make it clear...

S Well I should say rich both not just in money but rich in ah family and love.
T I might be richer in talent or richer in exposure that the maker has given me.

S Yes...ah after ah you know we talk about your influence in free jazz and the modern jazz movement and we're going down to the end here ah can you...and this is a terrible question to ask you, can you...what is the contribution that you think you've made to the evolution of jazz, particularly modern jazz?
T Well I think that ah from all indications when in fact historically I think that on the piano I think that I've contributed something to the piano in jazz, in music ah I think that sometimes we confuse...we get confused to the fact that jazz is ____ and its music and the category confuses a lot of people, jazz is a very, very influential music, period, it always has been.

END OF INTERVIEW