McCoy Tyner - Guitars

McCoy Tyner. The last living member of the great John Coltrane Quartet. The mere mention of his name stirs up admiration in any jazz fan's heart. Any new CD he releases is worth a listen, right? Yeah, it is. The concept behind his newest one (which has staked out a comfy spot at the top of the jazz charts for quite a while now) is given away pretty easily by the title: it's McCoy jamming with a bunch of different guitarists. The attendance sheet is surprising at first: Bela Fleck (playing banjo, not guitar), Bill Frisell, Marc Ribot, John Scofield and Derek Trucks. For some reason I thought he would have picked a more conventional lineup of solid straight-ahead players -- in my mind the list was going to read something like: Peter Bernstein, Russell Malone, Dave Stryker, and probably Scofield, too. But instead, he picks a group of iconoclasts, each with a strong vision and personal identity.
With a rhythm section of Ron Carter and Jack DeJohnette, you have a room full of larger-than-life musical personalities. And instead of making it some big Grammy-ready production, the guys pretty much conduct a straight-up jam session. Each guitarist picked two or three tunes to play with the trio. It sounds rough and unrehearsed, but ultimately engrossing. The combination of such great players essentially just having a ball in the studio couldn't have been anything less. DeJohnette is absolutely on fire, as always, Carter lays it down as only he knows how, and Tyner's individual voice shines through. One observation: Frisell and Scofield posses two of the most distinctive guitar sounds in modern jazz, and they seemed to have flattened them out a little bit for this recording.
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