64 years ago today, Giant Steps, the 5th album from John Coltrane, is released on Atlantic Records. The producer was Nesuhi Ertegun, brother of Atlantic Records co-founder Ahmet. It would go on to sell 500,000 copies over time, and be honored by the Library of Congress in the National Recording Registry. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is such a fan of the album he named his autobiography Giant Steps.

The results of Coltrane’s first session in March of ’59, with Milt Jackson and Cedar Walton, were scrapped. He followed with two days of sessions in May (2 weeks after Coltrane completed work on Miles Davis’ Kind Of Blue), with Paul Chambers on bass, Art Taylor on drums, and Tommy Flanagan on piano, that all but completed the album. One last session in early December featured John backed by the Kind Of Blue band: Chambers on bass with Wynton Kelly on piano, and Jimmy Cobb on drums.

Painting by Martin Hoo, Deviant Art

I checked in with a West Coast musician I know very well, a man well-versed in Jazz history, multi-instrumentalist Austin Klewan. I asked if he could offer any insight into the final album, and he told me the story of Tommy Flanagan’s piano solo on the title track “Giant Steps”:

“[Obviously] “Giant Steps” is a very fast tune, with rapidly changing chords. When Trane first brought it in to the sessions, he didn’t really run it down with the band, he just gave the impression that it was going to be a medium-slow swing, something pretty manageable, not with chords going all over the place. So Flanagan was thinking it would be medium tempo, something chill. Then they start the recording, Trane counts it off rapidly “one two onetwothreefour!” They get to the piano solo, after Coltrane’s wild soloing, and Tommy plays a quiet, somewhat understated solo, which worked and feels nice, but he had no idea the piece would be so fast. He couldn’t come up with anything to play at that speed. So he was sort of screwed over with it, but it’s what he is now most famous for. He had a ton of other recordings as a leader and a sideman, but he’s most famous for that solo.”

Thank you Austin! Austin’s website, by the way: https://www.austinklewan.com/

Nesuhi Ertegun had been working for Imperial Records in the mid 1950’s but his brother and Jerry Wexler persuaded him to join their label Atlantic. He’d become VP of Atlantic, heading up the Jazz catalogue, developing the album market, and working to improve the recording quality. His credits are staggering. Just a few of those he produced: Mabel Mercer, Shelly Manne, Jimmy Giuffre, Modern Jazz Quartet, Ray Charles, Charles Mingus, Big Joe Turner, Vic Dickenson, and Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers with Thelonius Monk. And that’s just a few.

Today’s Playlist is a SomethingIsHappening brief compendium of some of the music produced by Nesuhi Ertegun:

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