Jazz giant McCoy Tyner died Friday, age 81, at his New Jersey home. He was only 22 when he joined John Coltrane’s quartet, and in the first half of the 1960s he could be heard as a sideman on scores of LPs on Blue Note, often uncredited because his own trio was signed to Impulse. He left Coltrane in 1965 after more percussionists and horn players were added, explaining, “All I could hear was a lot of noise. I didn’t have any feeling for the music, and when I don’t have feelings, I don’t play.” It took nearly a decade for his own group to achieve the prominence he had with Coltrane, but his influence on pianists who followed him is incalculable.
“Walk Spirit, Talk Spirit” is the closing track on his 1973 LP “Enlightenment.” Here he debuts the song at the 1973 Montreaux Jazz Festival, with then-20-year-old Azar Lawrence on tenor sax.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnQJsrUYb8Q