An Introduction to America’s Music

444 PART 4 | SINCE WORLD WAR II

songwriters: Richard Rodgers and

Oscar Hammerstein II

date: 1961

genre: modal jazz

performers: John Coltrane, soprano sax;

McCoy Tyner, piano; Steve Davis, bass;

Elvin Jones, drums

meter: triple

form: aaa'a chorus with interpolated vamps

WHAT TO LISTEN FOR

• distinctive sound of soprano saxophone


• characteristic sounds of modal jazz:
  drones, slow-moving harmonies


• expansion of chorus through interpolated
  vamps

CD 3.18 Listening Guide 18.1 “My Favorite Things” JOHN COLTRANE

timing section comment

0:00 introduction The rhythm section, grounded by the droning bass, sets a

minor-key modal groove in waltz time

0:18 head a 16 bars: Although the song as written has moving

harmonies in the second half of the a section, Davis

continues to drone on the tonic note, E, sustaining the

modal style.

0:35 vamp 8 bars: Instead of repeating the a section directly, the

rhythm section vamps on the tonic E, again sustaining the

modal style.

0:43 a Repeat of a.

1:01 vamp 24 bars: Shift to the tonic major for a brighter quality,

giving some of the contrast that a conventional B section

would supply; Coltrane solos over the rhythm section.

1:18 References to the melody imply a return of a, but this is

still vamp.

1:27 a' The ending of this a section is slightly different, as in the

original song.

1:44 a Instead of Rodgers’s b section, a repeats with no

intervening vamp.

2:02 vamp 16 bars.

2:19 chorus 2

(piano solo)

Piano solo for one a section and the beginning of a vamp

before the fade out marks the end of the single’s A side.

note Recorded October 21, 1960, and released the following year on LP and, in truncated

form, on 45.

172028_18_440-467_r3_sd.indd 444 23/01/13 11:02 AM