My Favorite Things: How A Popular Musical Became A Gateway For Jazz

It has been almost 50 years since the Sound of Music was released, giving us a timeless classic like “My favourite things”, a tune that is still loved by millions all over the world.

 While most people know of the film version by Rogers and Hammerstein released in 1965, not many are aware that this song was originally written for a broadway musical of the same name in the late 1950s and its most important adaptation by none other than Jazz legend John Coltrane himself.

Coltrane’s version of the song was released in 1961 as part of his seventh studio album of the same name, a full four years before the film’s release.

Over the years there have been many live versions of this rending including is improvisational take in Paris in 1961 featuring a flute solo by fellow jazz legend Eric Dolphy, The one with Roy Haynes faster almost breakbeat like drums at the Newport Jazz festival in 1963. and the highly dissonant, Avant garde version with his Wife Alice in Japan in 1966.

The fact that John could take a children’s song and turn it into an iconic Jazz standard that would eventually become a gateway for so many people to get into Jazz is nothing but a testament to the genius of John Coltrane.

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