Tommy Flanagan

Music from the classic 1960 album, Giant Steps.

You heard the title track, and the personnel on that cut: John Coltrane, tenor sax, Tommy Flanagan, piano, Paul Chambers, bass, Art Taylor on drums.

And John Coltrane, this guy was a member of the first great Miles Davis Quintet.

We dug up some cuts from the jazz vaults.

And so I pursued that, and I got a scholarship, and then I went to New York University, and I literally... could go and watch the greatest jazz piano players of all time for the price of a beer.

I would just go downstairs on University Place and I could see Hank Jones and Tommy Flanagan and Soros and McCoy Tyner.

Oh my God, George Coleman played the saxophone and oh my god it was incredible and then at that time too you know punk was happening and metal was happening and i met oh just some amazing players and so so like i don't know uh the lead singer for reagan youth which was a great punk band and he would bring me over to cbgb's to see the bad brains and dead kennedys and oh i even saw this guy With his band, and they were called White Zombie at the time.

Yeah, yeah.

And, uh, Motown's studio band had a, a deep jazz background.

Uh, Earl Van Dyke was the, basically the unofficial band leader, and he had been schooled unofficially by Hank Jones and, um, Tommy Flanagan.

All the, all the Detroit jazz musicians, you know, they kind of took him under their wing.

And, uh, then you had Joe Messina, the guitar player from the Funk Brothers.

And then when I got into jazz, when I first, you know, I heard Kenny Burrell, Wes Montgomery around the same time, got some records, and I was like, "What are they doing? I don't know.

I hear the blues." You know, my ears were limited to a certain thing, and I just had to expand what I was able to hear, and hearing Wes Montgomery and Kenny Burrell play the blues, I was like, "Okay, I gotta figure out what those other, other notes are too." But, but fr- from the first time I heard Wes and, and Kenny Burrell, the other people on the record, the Kenny Burrell record had Coltrane and Tommy Flanagan.

It was that stuff, so.

Then I heard Wes with Wynton Kelly, and I was like, "That's serious piano playing." Just the feeling of the music, the drums, the bass.

for decades, but he just seemed like the perfect fit for this.

And, and he was, you know, he just, and so I kind of approached the session as if I was going to hear them play duo at Bradley's piano bar in the village, which is, you know, hasn't been there for 30 years, but I used to go and, and hear Hank Jones there or, or, Tommy Flanagan or Cedar Walton or Kenny Barron or Larry Willis or, you know, any of the great pianists, usually in piano bass duo configuration quite often.

So yeah, that was the idea.

And that could, could I just sort of get in the flow on slush pump and not mess it all

you know,

red Garland, you know, just keep going.

Tommy Flanagan, uh, Barry Harris.

I mean, Cedar, I guess I mentioned him and, but you know, I, I used to tell people if, if you really want to know what I'm trying to do on the trombone, yes, JJ Johnson, Curtis Fuller, slide Hampton, of course, you know, all day long and many others, but, uh, it's really piano trios.

Rollins' mother would sing it to him as a child, but independently, pianist Randy Weston, who was fascinated with African culture, discovered the same tune, and he recorded it a year before Sonny Rollins, but under the name of Fire Down There.

I think I'll play the whole six and a half minute Sonny Rollins version from his Saxophone Colossus album of 1956 with Tommy Flanagan piano, Doug Watkins bass, Max Roach drums, and Sonny Rollins on tenor saxophone.

St. Thomas.

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Improvising over the progression in Giant Steps at that tempo is still the hardest test in jazz.

Tommy Flanagan, who played piano on the 1959 session, picked his way through a halting solo, was haunted enough to try it again and recorded the tune 23 years later.

Modal jazz is almost the opposite challenge, how to discover a new sound while the harmonic space remains steady.

The chordal coltrane was looking for more powerful, difficult and in-your-face harmonic structures.

The saxophonist played a lot of notes while trumpeter Miles played famously few, and they tugged the music in opposite directions.

Coltrane's next boss, pianist Thelonious Monk, played even fewer notes than Miles, but in this case, opposites attract.

Monk and Coltrane sound like they approach the same musical problems from opposite directions.

This is Monk's 1957 Trinkle Tinkle.

On his famous test piece Giant Steps, the chords change on every beat while bouncing around three distantly related keys.

Coltrane had practiced it thoroughly, but not with his band.

In the studio, the great pianist Tommy Flanagan could barely keep up.

[jazz music] Miles Davis then advised Coltrane, "When you squeeze in a whole bunch of chords like that, don't make the rhythm section track your every move.

And so they closed the club, and it was a private party.

And Elvin Jones and Tommy Flanagan and the bassist, uh, who was with Red and Ira at the time, Mike Formanek, they got up and played, you know.

And of course, Elvin sat at my drum set 'cause it's-- I'm there all week, you know.

And they were his drums.