McCoy Tyner Trio - Inception (2019 Impulse! Vital Vinyl Reissue LP)

McCoy Tyner Trio - Inception | Vinyl LP, 2019 Impulse! Reissue (IMP-220, Vital Vinyl Series)

• McCoy Tyner’s debut album as a leader, recorded January 10 and 11, 1962 at Van Gelder Studio while he was a member of John Coltrane’s quartet, with two of his Coltrane colleagues: Art Davis on bass and Elvin Jones on drums
• Four Tyner originals and two standards revealing the lyrical, lighter touch of his early playing, before the percussive modal style that defined his later career
• 2019 Vital Vinyl Series reissue, digitally remastered from the original tapes

“My current pianist, McCoy Tyner, holds down the harmonies, and that allows me to forget them,” Coltrane said in a 1961 interview. By January 1962, Tyner was 23 and had been in the Coltrane Quartet for two years. Inception was his chance to step out from behind the saxophone that dominated every gig and recording with Coltrane, and to play as a leader in a trio setting. The group is drawn from the Coltrane orbit: Elvin Jones, who sat next to Tyner on the Quartet bandstand every night, plays drums, and Art Davis, who had played bass on Coltrane’s Africa/Brass the year before, completes the trio. The familiarity between the three musicians is audible from the first bars of the title track.

What distinguishes Inception from the Tyner that most people know is the touch. This is not the dense, percussive, wide-interval pianist of Sahara or Enlightenment. This is a young player spinning long melodic lines with a lighter hand, closer to the influence of Bud Powell than to the massive orchestral sound he would develop in the 1970s. “There Is No Greater Love” (the Isham Jones standard) and “Speak Low” (Kurt Weill) are played with warmth and rhythmic confidence. “Blues for Gwen” and “Sunset” are lyrical originals. “Effendi” is the most forward-looking composition on the album, with Jones’s drumming pushing toward the polyrhythmic complexity that would define both their playing in the years ahead. The album runs under thirty-five minutes: concise, focused, and complete. Produced by Bob Thiele, engineered by Rudy Van Gelder, with liner notes by Nat Hentoff. This 2019 pressing is part of the Vital Vinyl reissue series, digitally remastered from the original tapes and pressed by GZ Media. Catalogue number IMP-220.