Review Summary: Giant Steps saw Coltrane taking a few more steps towards growing those wings, so that he could fly to Heaven and dance among the stars.
John Coltrane is now, and will forever be, a pillar in the Jazz community. He took the music to dizzying heights, developing styles and phrasings that would forever change the genre. Many a youngster, many aspiring-young-sax-men pick up the instrument because Coltrane played it so damn well. One of the reasons for that, his record, 1959’s Giant Steps.
With all that being said, a record like John Coltrane’s Giants Steps might not be the best place to start for a novice listener. I first heard it when I was just that, a novice in the Jazz field. I appreciated it, but I didn’t really get it until years later, when my Jazz collection had grown-up, and my ears had matured.
But Giant Steps is one fantastic record. Coltrane was hot off recording another classic, Kind of Blue, with Miles Davis. Giant Steps saw Coltrane coming into his own; his phrasings were elegant, sometimes simple, sometimes complex, but always full of enough personality and soul to get the audience’s hearts beating in unison.
Giants Steps is a hard-bop record; hard bop is an extension of be-bop, a style of Jazz characterized by fast tempos and instrumental virtuosity—and it was often distinguished as Jazz that is supposed to be listened to and not danced to, like the music of the ‘swing’ and ‘big band’ eras. Hard-bop is simply bebop with more noticeable influences of soul, gospel, and blues.
But this is not a history lesson, it is a record review; however, I think the distinction, and description are pertinent for the listener to understand what it is he or she is listening to. This basic understanding makes it easier for the any would-be listener to appreciate just how magnificent Giant Steps really is.
The record is sometimes fast like the title track, ‘Giant Steps,’ and ‘Countdown.’ It’s phrasings are elegant with cuts like ‘Spiral,’ that sounds like a very hip waltz. A crowd that got down on Chuck Berry, would find themselves dancing just as hard to this track. And then there’s ‘Syeeda’s Song Flute.’ This is my favorite song on the record; it’s both fast, and as technical as the day is long. The phrasings were like nothing heard before it’s release; like modern trance music that was fuzed with the grooviest big band; if electronic music could swing, and swing in the classic sense, it would sound like ‘Syeeda’s Song Flute.’ It was Earth-Shattering at the time, and it continues to change lives even today.
Every great Jazz record has to have a proper ballad—a slow, heart-felt love song, that makes it okay for the biggest, toughest guys to weep like little babies. Giant Steps has that too, ‘Naima.’ It’s one of Coltrane’s most famous cuts, and certainly his most popular ballad. The song is beautiful and rounds out the record nicely.
Giants Steps is timeless, and will remain a must own record for any proper Jazz-Head. It offers everything in the way of things that swing. And it was a watershed moment in the career of John Coltrane, one of Jazz’s greats, as it saw him taking a few more steps towards growing those wings, so that he could fly to Heaven and dance among the stars.
