McCoy Tyner - Supertrios (1977 US Milestone 2xLP Gatefold)

McCoy Tyner - Supertrios | 2xLP - 1977 US Milestone Stereo (M-55003, Fantasy Studios/Columbia Pitman pressing)

By 1977, McCoy Tyner had spent a decade consolidating the legacy of his Impulse! and Blue Note years into an unbroken run of Milestone records under Orrin Keepnews. "Supertrios" is the most structurally ambitious of them: four sides recorded across four days in Berkeley, each side pairing Tyner with a different rhythm section drawn from the first rank of the previous decade. Carter and Williams had been the heartbeat of Davis's Second Great Quintet; DeJohnette had moved through Davis's electric period and was by this point a central figure at ECM; Gómez had spent eleven years alongside Bill Evans. The album's premise is simple enough to misread as a gimmick, but what it actually documents is how much a pianist's character changes when the ground under him shifts. Tyner plays harder and more percussively against Carter and Williams; against Gómez and DeJohnette he opens up, the lines longer and more spacious. Same pianist. Two different instruments. The Coltrane connection runs through both halves: "Moment's Notice" appears on Side B, and Tyner plays it with the authority of someone who helped write the language it is spoken in.

The Strayhorn standard "Lush Life" closes Side D, one of seven tracks across the second half attributed to the Gómez and DeJohnette trio. It is a measured, unhurried reading, Tyner stating the melody plainly before Gómez's bass takes it somewhere more exploratory, DeJohnette keeping the pulse without ever sitting on it.

This is the original 1977 US Milestone pressing on orange labels with a 70mm pressing ring, manufactured at Columbia's Pitman, New Jersey plant.