John Coltrane - My Favorite Things (1960)

My Favorite Things is the seventh album by jazz musician John Coltrane, recorded October 21,1960 and released in 1961 on Atlantic Records. It was the first album to feature Coltrane's playing on soprano saxophone, and yielded a commercial breakthrough in the form of a hit single that gained popularity in 1961 on radio, an edited version of the title song. In 1998, the album was a recipient of the Grammy Hall of Fame award.
After leaving the Davis band, for his first regular bookings starting at New York's Jazz Gallery club in the summer of 1960 Coltrane assembled the first version of John Coltrane Quartet; they had signed for Atlantic records the previous year. The line-up settled to McCoy Tyner on piano, Steve Davis on bass, and Elvin Jones on drums by the autumn of that year. Sessions the week before Halloween at Atlantic Studios yielded the track Village Blues for Coltrane Jazz and the entirety of My Favourite Things, along with the tracks that Atlantic would later assemble into Coltrane Plays the Blues and Coltrane's Sound.
When he recorded Giant Steps, his first record with his new group was also his debut playing the soprano saxophone;. the hugely successful My Favorite Things. Around the end of his tenure with Miles Davis, Coltrane had begun playing soprano saxophone, an unconventional move considering the instrument's near obsolescence in jazz at the time. His interest in the straight saxophone most likely arose from his admiration for Sidney Bechet and the work of his contemporary, Steve Lacy, even though Miles Davis claimed to have given Coltrane his first soprano sax.
The new soprano sound was coupled with further exploration. For example, on the Gershwin tune But Not For Me, Coltrane employs the kinds of restless harmonic movement  used on Giant Steps (movement in major thirds rather than conventional perfect fourths) over the A sections instead of a conventional turnaround progression. Several other tracks recorded in the session utilized this harmonic device, including 26–2, Satellite, Body and Soul, and The Night Has a Thousand Eyes.
Released a mere month after Coltrane Jazz, My Favourite Things was unlike his first two albums for Atlantic; this one contains no original compositions, instead jazz versions of four pop standards. The album was also the first to quite clearly mark Coltrane's change from bebop to modal jazz, which was slowly becoming apparent in some of his previous releases.The famous track is a modal rendition of the Rodgers and Hammerstein song My Favorite Things from The Sound of Music. The melody is heard numerous times throughout, but instead of having a solo over the written chord changes, both Tyner and Coltrane taking extended solos over vamps of the two tonic chords, E minor and E major, played in waltz time.
In the documentary The World According to John Coltrane, narrator Ed Wheeler remarks on the difference the popularity this song had on Coltrane's career:
"In 1960, Coltrane left Miles (Davis) and formed his own quartet to further explore modal playing, freer directions, and a growing Indian influence. They transformed My Favorite Things, the cheerful populist song from The Sound of Music, into a hypnotic eastern dervish dance. The recording was a hit and became Coltrane's most requested tune - and a bridge to broad public acceptance."
On March 3, 1998, Rhino Records reissued Coltrane Jazz as part of its Atlantic 50th Anniversary Jazz Gallery series. Included as bonus tracks were both sides of the My Favorite Things single, originally released in 1961.

Recorded July 7, 1963 at the Newport Jazz Festival; track 1 is a 17;31 version of My Favorite Things.