McCoy Tyner - Atlantis (1975 US Milestone Gatefold Vinyl 2LP)

McCoy Tyner - Atlantis | Vinyl 2LP - 1975 US Milestone (M-55002, gatefold, Santa Maria pressing)

By the mid-seventies McCoy Tyner had completed one of the great second acts in jazz. He had been the pianist in John Coltrane's classic quartet, the thunderous left hand and modal vamps behind A Love Supreme, but after leaving in 1965 he spent lean years out of fashion before Milestone signed him and the records started to land. Atlantis, cut live at the Keystone Korner in San Francisco over two nights in 1974, is one of the peaks of that run. Tyner plays with astonishing force, great rolling chords and cascading runs, and in Azar Lawrence he had a young saxophonist steeped in Coltrane who could match his intensity. The eighteen-minute title track is the centrepiece, a churning modal epic that builds and builds, and "Pursuit" and "Love Samba" keep the fire going. In the middle of it all sits "In A Sentimental Mood", played alone at the piano, Tyner's tribute to Duke Ellington, who had died a few months before. It is jazz played at full stretch, spiritual in the way the best of this music is.

The Milestone albums, Sahara, Enlightenment, Sama Layuca and this one, are where Tyner stepped fully out of Coltrane's shadow and became a giant in his own right, and they remain the heart of any McCoy Tyner collection. Orrin Keepnews, the producer who had built Riverside and now ran Milestone, oversaw the date, and the live recording captures the band at a pitch a studio rarely could.

This is the 1975 US original on Milestone, a gatefold double LP, pressed at Columbia's Santa Maria plant in California and distributed by Fantasy, catalogue number M-55002.