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Giant Steps was Never Played Live?

8K views 58 replies 24 participants last post by  warp x 
#1 ·
Branford told my mentor a few months ago that Coltrane never played Giant Steps live. I've scoured YouTube and can't find any live performances or recordings of live performances. Can anyone dispute this?
 
#2 ·
depends of what " live performance” means.

this appears to be a TV take which of course in those years was unedited and often live in front of a studio audience.

But of course you hear the voice at the start which suggests that they made several takes.
 
#4 ·
depends of what " live performance" means.

this appears to be a TV take which of course in those years was unedited and often live in front of a studio audience.

But of course you hear the voice at the start which suggests that they made several takes.

Did someone digitally alter this? Highly suspect. Listen and watch closely.
 
#7 ·
depends of what " live performance" means.

this appears to be a TV take which of course in those years was unedited and often live in front of a studio audience.

But of course you hear the voice at the start which suggests that they made several takes.

Sounds like accordion music. lol
 
#3 ·
Live, as in, in front of an audience rather than in a recording studio. I know it may be impossible to say for sure as obviously there are multiple club dates that weren't recorded, etc. It just sounds like one of those stories that could be true, for some reason.
 
#13 ·
I'm pretty sure there is no live recording of him playing it. Which of course doesn't mean he NEVER played it live. Who knows what got played during the late set on a random weeknight in some club somewhere? But given the wealth of live recordings (and bootlegs) we have from Trane, it's clear at any rate that this wasn't a tune he played regularly.
 
#14 ·
+1. There's a difference between saying it was never recorded live vs played live. Easy enough to show that no known live recordings exist (or can be found); not so easy to say, or prove, that Coltrane never played it in a live performance somewhere with no one recording it. Nowadays we are used to everything in public being recorded (usually poorly, on iPhones, etc), but of course back then most live performances were not recorded.
 
#19 ·
The footage used in milandro's link comes from Coltrane's appearance on Ralph Gleason's TV program Jazz Casual: - on the program he played Afro Blue, Alabama, and Impressions.

I imagine he would have probably played Giant Steps live at some point either before or after it was first recorded (or both) but who knows for sure.
 
#25 ·
I remember reading that Bill Cosby appeared in a club as warmup for Trane and when Trane opened with Giant Steps, Cosby sang along with the head. I don't remember whether it was an account by Nat Hentoff or by J.C. Thomas (Chasin' the Trane). If the anecdote is true, then it's testimony to a live performance of Giant Steps.
 
#26 ·
#29 ·
I wouldn't be surprised if Trane never played it before a live audience because if you listen to all of the 20+ takes that he did, you'll notice how the improv begins relatively tame and not very complex but evolves in complexity with each take. Out of the 20+ takes, number 17 is the version that most of us are most familiar with and it's the only take that one finds the transposition of (to my knowledge). My point is that perhaps he couldn't match the studio performance unless he did a lot of warm-up. It's just a guess.

I'm taking that guess because none of Sonny Rollins' recorded improvs of St. Thomas match his studio performance on Saxophone Colossus. His live performances aren't nearly as complex. I wonder if it was the same thing for Trane, only Trane didn't want to chance a lackluster performance of the tune.
 
#32 ·
This is pure conjecture, but I'm not buying anything in the quote above. The idea that such innovative and master improvisors like Sonny Rollins and John Coltrane would balk at playing any of their compositions in live performance on the off chance that they wouldn't live up to the recorded version is highly unlikely, imo. I simply can't imagine that being the case.

And having been lucky enough over the years to hear Sonny Rollins and many other jazz masters playing live (unfortunately Trane was gone before I was going to jazz clubs), in almost every case what I heard in the live performance surpassed, and often FAR surpassed, anything they had recorded. Most of the top jazz musicians took full advantage of the freedom afforded in a live situation that doesn't exist in the studio. So no, if Coltrane never played Giant Steps live (and I would be surprised if he didn't), I don't for a second believe it was because he was afraid it wouldn't be up to the standards of the recorded version. As mentioned already here, just because it wasn't recorded live, doesn't mean he never played it live.
 
#30 ·
According to Lewis Porter's biography, Coltrane did play "Giant Steps" live with the quartet he formed with Steve Kuhn, Art Davis, and Pete Laroca in late 1959-early 1960. The source for this info seems to be Kuhn, who apparently kept his notebooks from the period, and Laroca.

"The repertory included Coltrane's "Giant Steps," "Countdown" (called "Tune Up," its source, in Kuhn's notebook), "Naima," "Straight Street," "Spiral" (from the Giant Steps album), "Cousin Mary," "Like Sonny," Cal Massey's "Bakai," and the standards "Little Old Lady" and "I Want to Talk about You," Porter writes. He also mentions that the group played Trane's reharmonized versions of "How High the Moon," "Confirmation," "Summertime," and "Body and Soul," and writes that both Kuhn and Laroca remembered having played "Impressions."
 
#33 ·
There is a recording of Coltrane playing "Giant Steps" live with McCoy Tyner, Steve Davis, and Pete Laroca in 1960, according to "The John Coltrane Reference," which catalogues all the known details about performances and recordings. It is an audience recording, probably from July 18-23, 1960, at the Showboat in Philadelphia. "Giant Steps" is the first tune on the tape, and it lasts 10:56 even though the beginning is cut off.

So, I think that settles it. Steve Kuhn and Laroca remembered playing the "Giant Steps" while they were in Coltrane's early quartet, as reported in the Lewis Porter biography. And there's an unreleased audience recording that confirms it.
 
#39 ·
The more I understand the person John Coltrane, the more I see Giant Steps as a breaking of shackles. I’ve made the assertion that JC made Giant Steps to prove (mostly to himself) that he could play changes, all of them...to the extent of creating his own template. I find angst and tension with a boxed in feel whenever I listen to Trane’s playing before Giant Steps. I think he made Giant Steps out of frustration and to prove a point. I don’t enjoy hearing anyone play Giant Steps live and I’ve heard many do it. I wish it weren’t such a litmus test.
Oh, about the number of takes...I think Tommy Flanagan et al were seeing it for the first time.
 
#40 ·
The more I understand the person John Coltrane, the more I see Giant Steps as a breaking of shackles. I've made the assertion that JC made Giant Steps to prove (mostly to himself) that he could play changes, all of them...to the extent of creating his own template. I find angst and tension with a boxed in feel whenever I listen to Trane's playing before Giant Steps. I think he made Giant Steps out of frustration and to prove a point. I don't enjoy hearing anyone play Giant Steps live and I've heard many do it. I wish it weren't such a litmus test.
Oh, about the number of takes...I think Tommy Flanagan et al were seeing it for the first time.
I wonder if Trane just wrote that tune as part of his on-going study process for that time period and by the time he had his first quartet
post-Miles..was done with the tune itself.
He still used parts of that cycle in his actual improvisations going into 1960, and 61 .

In terms of Angst and tension .. that could be heard post-Giant Steps if you hear things that way .
I hear pure exuberance and molten fire, among other descriptors
Trane was one of the most emotive saxophonists we've had .
 
#45 ·
I have had two teachers in the past tell me that Coltrane never intended to publish Giant Steps. At the time, he was exploring Tonic movement by thirds (chromatic mediants) and wrote the tune as an exploration of that concept. When he was recording that day, he recorded Giant Steps as an experiment for him to go back and listen to, but the studio told him that they were putting it on the album. Coltrane was upset, and was later interviewed and said that he did not intend for "Giant Steps" to make it out into the world, and that he considered it to be an exercise, not a tune.

I believe the story for a few reasons. For one, he had to call up Tommy Flanagan on the day of the session because his scheduled piano player wasn't willing to record the changes to Giant Steps without time to shed them. For those who didn't know, that explains Tommy Flanagans solo on that tune....The other reason is that "Giant Steps" is a very pretentious title for Coltrane.
 
#46 ·
I have had two teachers in the past tell me that Coltrane never intended to publish Giant Steps. At the time, he was exploring Tonic movement by thirds (chromatic mediants) and wrote the tune as an exploration of that concept. When he was recording that day, he recorded Giant Steps as an experiment for him to go back and listen to, but the studio told him that they were putting it on the album. Coltrane was upset, and was later interviewed and said that he did not intend for "Giant Steps" to make it out into the world, and that he considered it to be an exercise, not a tune.

I believe the story for a few reasons. For one, he had to call up Tommy Flanagan on the day of the session because his scheduled piano player wasn't willing to record the changes to Giant Steps without time to shed them. For those who didn't know, that explains Tommy Flanagans solo on that tune....The other reason is that "Giant Steps" is a very pretentious title for Coltrane.
This makes a lot of sense and rings true to me. Of course there's no way to know for certain since Coltrane is not around to verify or deny it, unfortunately. But the tune does sound a lot like an exercise; although an exercise in Coltrane's hands can sound very musical.

I saw a youtube clip of one of Barry Harris's classes and he stated he never liked 'Giant Steps' and so he never really learned it. Maybe he heard it as too much of an 'exercise', which could explain his dislike for the tune.

I do like the sound of movement in thirds, but maybe it was taken to an extreme in Giant Steps; I still like it though.
 
#48 ·
Good point(s) MLucky. Unless there is some documentation of Coltrane making such statements, skepticism is the way to go. I'm just saying it's not totally unreasonable that he initially was trying out an experiment and maybe wasn't all that crazy about having the first recording released. But once the tune 'caught on' he may well have changed his mind, deciding the experiment paid off and was a success. It's all speculation unless someone can come up with an actual interview.

A lot of jazz tunes (and other genres as well) were written by trying out something unconventional; chords were substituted, unusual chord progressions tried out, and other 'what if' ideas that resulted in some great tunes.
 
#57 ·
...or it could be that he got fascinated or had difficulty with the bridge to 'Have You Met Miss Jones', and made up an exercise that became Giant Steps.
 
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