Song of the Day 12/24: McCoy Tyner, “I’ll Be Home for Christmas”
If you like holiday music played by jazzmen, you’ve probably heard this on Columbia’s 1981 Christmas sampler, “God Rest Ye Merry, Jazzmen,” because there aren’t all that many jazz Christmas collections out there. That album also includes Dexter Gordon’s extended “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” and Wynton Marsalis’ deconstruction of “We Three Kings of Orient Are,” making it a worthy sort-of sequel to the label’s “Jingle Bell Jazz” LP of 1961.
McCoy left the great John Coltrane Quartet when Coltrane went cosmic and atonal, and Tyner could no longer hear himself in the music. Elvin Jones left soon thereafter.