McCoy Tyner: A Long Way From Mom’s Beauty Parlor

McCoy Tyner is assured of a major position in any jazz history of the 20th century.

As a young pianist in his 20s from 1960 to 1965, he was a member of the legendary John Coltrane Quartet, one of the most celebrated groups in the history of jazz.

And since sitting at the right hand of Coltrane, the much venerated saxophonist and jazz innovator, Tyner, 60, has recorded scores of acclaimed albums on his own. His kinetic keyboard attack--crackling with rumbling bass figures, thickly textured chords and supersonic single-note lines--has made him one of the most influential jazz pianists of the second half of the century.

Hidden among Tyner’s monumental accomplishments is an offbeat piece of personal history and musical development that no other major figure in jazz history can match.

Without question, the mild-mannered but powerful pianist is the only jazz giant who styled his craft in, of all places, his mother’s beauty parlor. The teenage pianist and his cronies from his West Philadelphia neighborhood loved to jam among the hair dryers, barber chairs and curling irons, making Mrs. Tyner’s beauty salon rock like a jazz saloon.

“My mother’s customers would be patting their feet right next to my band’s baritone saxophone player, never missing a beat,” Tyner recalls, speaking by phone from his Manhattan apartment.

“My mother would walk into her shop--we lived over the parlor on the second floor--and say, ‘Wow, McCoy! You got a big band there! Go ahead and play!’ ”

Since those formative teen years of grooming his chops in his mom’s shop, Tyner has made his mark in every format: solo piano, trio, combo, large ensemble. He’s even been backed by large orchestral and string ensembles that never could have been crammed into his mom’s busy parlor back in the ‘50s.

Tyner now leads a dynamic ensemble, a Latin-laced, salsa-spiked, all-star power unit called McCoy Tyner’s Latin Project.

The pianist and his band, which includes the incendiary saxophonist Gary Bartz, play large slices of spicy Latin jazz in their live performances, including pieces hot off their latest release on Telarc, “McCoy Tyner and the Latin All-Stars.”

If not for those formative beauty parlor jam sessions and the undying support of his devoted mother, Beatrice, Tyner might never have become one of the all-time great heavyweight champions of jazz piano.

Beatrice Tyner, a hard-working entrepreneur, saved for a year to buy young McCoy his first piano. It was a major investment. She had the new spinet moved into her beauty parlor, which was the largest living area in the Tyner home.

“My mother was my biggest fan, even after I went to New York City and was making records on my own. I learned later that she used to call jazz DJs in the area, including Joel Dorn, who had a big jazz show back then, asking them to play selections from my albums,” Tyner says.

Tyner says he was blessed to grow up in Philadelphia in the 1950s. When he was coming up, the town was rocking with activity in jazz clubs, he recalls. Young musicians like himself had plenty of opportunities to sit in and learn at jam sessions from older, wiser players. But as rock dominated the pop music scene, jazz clubs dwindled to a precious few.

“I’ve talked to young guys today who never had the opportunities to learn at jam sessions in clubs that I had. It’s a whole different scene now. When I was growing up, America had a lot of great jazz towns. Philly had plenty of great musicians, drummer Philly Joe Jones, trumpeter Lee Morgan, saxophonists John Coltrane and Archie Shepp, and others. And Clifford Brown, the great trumpeter, grew up in Delaware, which isn’t far from Philly. At one time the pianist Bud Powell lived in my neighborhood.

“There were jam sessions everywhere. A guy would call you and say, ‘Hey, man, I’m going to have a jam session at my house. Are you available?’

“Then you’d call somebody else. And before you knew it, the session had mushroomed, and the place would be packed with musicians. And the next day, you’d be at somebody else’s house for another jam session. That’s how I learned to play, by playing in jazz clubs and in jam sessions,” he says.

Shortly after graduating from high school in 1959, Tyner made his first step into the big time when he joined the Jazztet. The group was led by two jazz luminaries, saxophonist Benny Golson and trumpeter Art Farmer. That move took him away from his funky Philly proving grounds and into the wider world of jazz.

But his first real giant step occurred in 1960, when he joined the Coltrane quartet.

It happened when Tyner’s friend, fellow Philadelphian and mentor John Coltrane, left the Miles Davis Quintet to form his own quartet. Coltrane brought Tyner aboard along with drummer Elvin Jones and eventually bassist Jimmy Garrison. From then until 1965, Tyner made a series of now-canonized recordings with the quartet as well as influential albums under his own name.

Even with his enormous success in the three decades since leaving Coltrane, Tyner still looks back fondly on those years as a golden period of growth and self-fulfillment.

“Working with John was phenomenal, man. It was one of the best things that ever could have happened to me in my life.

“First of all, he was like family to me. He was like a big brother. I was about 17 when I first played with him. Then he went back with Miles in New York.

“He used to come home to Philly in the mid-’50s, and that’s when I first met him. I’d work with him or hang out, or just sit on the porch with him at his mother’s place. That’s when John was working on ‘Giant Steps’ [now a jazz standard]. When he went back to New York to record the album in the late ‘50s, I wanted to be on it. But I was only 17 or 18, so John used Tommy Flanagan on piano.

“John was a tremendous influence on my life musically. And he was such a gentleman to work for. He gave you freedom to play and to develop. What a nice guy,” Tyner says.

If the highest form of flattery is imitation, then Tyner is flattered nightly by pianists around the world who imitate him in clubs from New York to Tokyo. More desperate Tyner wannabes just plain plagiarize whole elements of his piano style.

And the mild-mannered Tyner doesn’t seem to mind any of this one tiny bit.

“When you’ve been around as long as I have, it’s really a compliment that guys, or whoever it is, find value in what I do. It kind of justifies the fact that I’m here,” he says.