American Record Guide
Joe Goldberg : July, 1960

Coltrane‘s new album is as much an announcement of a new authority, and therefore a new phase of creation as Sonny Rollins‘ Work Time was. Coltrane has definite theories of music, and, as Nat Hentoff quotes him on the liner notes, he is able to be quite articulate about them, but they do not restrict him, as theories so often do. They seem rather to free him for a new spontaneity. Those two words – spontaneity and authority – are the keys to this album. The rhythm section of Tommy Flanagan, Paul Chambers, and Art Taylor provide the best possible backing, empathetic to Coltrane and each other. ( Wynton Kelly and Jimmy Cobb, who replace Flanagan and Taylor on one selection, are just as good.) The compositions, all Coltrane originals, have a songfulness that has emerged only intermittently in his work before this. It is, quite simply, a powerful swinging statement by an important musician, that keeps its solid foundation hidden behind its initial excitement.

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Army Review
Tom Scanlan : 02/20/1960

And those who can get with the unusual sounds of John Coltrane‘s tenor saxophone will no doubt rave over Giant Steps. I suppose this may be unexplored territory, as the liner notes maintain, but I am not convinced that it is territory worthy of exploration. Well, each to his own. I know people who can’t understand why I like Bud Freeman. (Well, of course I think such people deserve pity.)

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Cashbox : 02/13/1960
Jazz Pick of the Week

Emerging from the confines of the Miles Davis book, Coltrane aptly demonstrates why he has become the major influence on his instrument (with Rollins). He plays seven of his own compositions, slashing, biting, tearing off intense statements. His impact is overwhelming and he never ceases to amaze harmonically. Rhythm support is impeccable, by such stalwarts as Tommy Flanagan, Paul Chambers and Art Taylor. Album will achieve immediate jazz acceptance.

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Delaware County Daily Times
Bill Kagler : 03/04/1960
Coltrane Out On His Own

For the past several years, the harsh horns of tenormen Sonny Rollins and John Coltrane have been the most explorative in jazz.

Rollins, however, has all but disappeared from the scene in recent months. Coltrane, on the other hand, is stronger than ever. Aided and advised by trumpeter Miles Davis, with whom he has worked since 1957, Coltrane has gradually shown himself the more consistently brilliant of the two.

Earlier this month, Coltrane – schooled in Philadelphia, by the way – announced his plans to leave the Davis sextet and strike out on his own. His last Atlantic LP – Giant Steps – substantiates this self-confidence.

Given to the long solo, his sound spurts – it does not flow. And yet, there is a meshing of ideas so that despite the spurts, the solos have continuity. A hard swinger, he can also give forth with lyrical sweetness that has none of th emusical frills relied upon by other jazzmen.

On this Atlantic record, for instance, one tune (all were written by Coltrane) is named for his wife, Naima. Deftly done, it presents a musical description of the soft loveliness found only in a woman. It’s sweet, but without syrup.

With Mr. P.C., dedicated to bassist Paul Chambers, the tempo is stepped up briskly. Aided by Chambers’ bass, the drums of Art Taylor and the piano work of Tommy Flanagan, the swinging Coltrane is allowed to move swiftly, yet surely – and always with taste.

This particular record provides an excellent opportunity to hear, loud and clear, the cry of the best “hard” horn in jazz today.

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Encyclopedia of Popular Music
4th Edition, 2006 : Five stars

As influential upon contemporaries and successors as were Louis Armstrong and Charlie Parker, John Coltrane divided critical comment. For his supporters he was both high priest of contemporary jazz and prophet of what was yet to come. The ultimate statement of Coltrane’s early obsession with chord progressions, this album marks the moment before he changed direction. Giant Steps is a vibrant demonstration of his inventive, dazzling and relentless playing of bop. Hereafter, Coltrane sought and found an avenue for his restless exploratory zeal in modal jazz. The album is therefore both a landmark and turning point and is still a textbook for many young musicians.

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Minneapolis Star Tribune
Charles Hanna : 03/20/1960

John Coltrane is a shy and modest musician who is often embarrassed by compliments from his fans and colleagues.

Sometimes, he hangs his head and grins sheepishly when praise is heaped upon him. He did that last fall when Julian “Cannonball” Adderley talked about him at an interview in the Star and Tribune cafeteria.

“John blows an awful lot of tenor,” Adderley said, “and it means so much that it’s hard to grasp everything he does.”

Many critics have been reluctant to grant Coltrane the respect that he commands by his “hard” and hot style of playing. His work, while he was with the Miles Davis quintet, was sharply contrasted by the spare and lyrical Davis trumpet.

Adderley’s alto playing bridged the gap most of the time, but frequently the differences were too great between Coltrane and Davis for a well-integrated performance.

Coltrane has grown tremendously in the past couple of years in a soul-searching effort to find a really personal message to put through his tenor saxophone. He’s had something important to say for a long time, but only recently has he found a suitable way of expressing himself.

Much of his appeal lies in his absorbing harmonic designs. He plays a chord five different ways, milking every possible sound from its structure. He avoids the dangers of a clinical sound with use of a good rhythmic sense and a deeply emotional tone.

There is an urgency in his work that lets notes pile up one on top of another. Sometimes the rash of notes braid the lines of his solos together in fat chordal sounds that seem odd coming from a tenor saxophone.

There is a fervor in his work that has caused some critics to complain that Coltrane “doesn’t make sense.” New York Times critic John Wilson wrote that “he plays as though he were determined to blow it (his sax) apart.”

Coltrane has found his way. Try Giant Steps (Atlantic) for size. It is packed with Coltrane’s original writing and sounds.

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New York Age : 02/13/1960
Louise Davis Stone : Four stars

Many tenor players have Coltrane‘s extensive range, but few if any, have such strength in all registers. His characteristic sound is penetrating and eerie, sort of like bagpipes. The record notes say “he is becoming, in fact, more controversial and possibly more influential than Rollins.” If he is not more influential, he should be because his ideas are more original and musical.

Mr. Coltrane has completely written all compositions within this album, and demonstrated that he really digs his family. In his rocking Cousin Mary the changes are not conventional blues progressions, but a blues feeling is readily recognized. Coltrane’s shot-from-guns tempo in Countdown gives this one a too academic approach to be enjoyable. Spiral, though appropriately blessed, is undistinguished, but Flanagan‘s solo is well formed and lyrical.

Syeeda’s Song Flute is expressive of Coltrane’s keen harmonic imagination. It is a picture of a happy child as he intended, thinking of his 10-year-old offspring. Naima (an Arabic name), is the name of his wife, a declaration of love, it is a very beautiful impressionistic ballad. Although it tends to be solemn sounding. I don’t think it is meant to be. Applauds to Tommy Flanagan for his contribution. Paul Chambers has his moment of glory on Mr. P.C.

Group support is good. In contrast, Tommy Flanagan is non-expansive and economizing musically.

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Oakland Tribune
Russ Wilson : 02/07/1960

For several years now, John Coltrane has been one of the most influential tenor saxophonists in modern jazz. With his latest album Giant Steps he definitely becomes the No. 1 man in his field. Backed only by a rhythm section and playing only his own compositions, Coltrane is as clearly revealed as a redwood in a pasture. He meets the inspection admirably as he displays his emotional intensity, his lyricism, his technical command of his horn and his beautiful sense of form. The ballad Naima is a delightful demonstration of Coltrane’s ability to make moving use of few notes. At the opposite extreme is Countdown, in which the racing solo suggests the path which Ornette Coleman is following. Coltrane’s solo on Spiral, which uses a descending chromatic line, is intense yet not fierce. Space forbids going into other details, but it should be said that this is definitely an important jazz album.

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Pittsburgh Courier : 03/05/1960
Harold L. Keith : Two stars

John Coltrane has released another of his charmers. This one is on Atlantic and is labelled A Giant Step.

It must be stated at the outset that here Coltrane does not startle one with the exotic riffs as he did on the memorable Prestige album which contained the selection Bakai.

Instead, this is a swinger, devoted to more conventional sounds which are enhanced by the fine techniques of Messrs. Tom Flanagan, Paul Chambers, Jim Cobb, Art Taylor and Wynton Kelly.

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Penguin Jazz Guide
Brian Morton & Richard Cook, 2010

Pianist Tommy Flanagan said (1996): “People chided me, and the others, for making mistakes, but Coltrane was making them too. Writers sometimes like to make all that music sound like some big spiritual journey and musicians like to say it was just a job, just a gig, and just about getting the charts down. I think I realized later that the two things were the same, that for Coltrane getting the music exactly right and making those mistakes was the spiritual journey.”

Just ten years separate John Coltrane’s first records as leader and the sombre curtain-call of Expression, made weeks before his death in 1967. The work he made in that period and the personal influence he exerted are still being felt in jazz today, perhaps to a degree that has stifled other, even more radical approaches to the music. One might argue that Coltrane was not a radical at all, merely a musician who pushed the existing logic of jazz harmony to its utmost, and then beyond that. By the end of his life, what had begun as subtly detoured standards performances – My Favorite Things most famously – had turned into hour-long improvisations of implacably alien aspect. The political and wider cultural implications of Coltrane’s subversion of American popular song haven’t yet been fully worked out at a conscious level but their impact runs through the counter-culture.

Had Coltrane recorded no more than his Prestige records, his solitary Blue Note recording Blue Train and his appearances with Miles Davis and others, he would probably be regarded as a substantial soloist of considerable promise, but no more. It was when he began recording for Atlantic, and with what evolved into the ‘classic’ quartet, that he started to create a more individual and stylistically adventurous body of work.

The first album is the product of time and preparation, and it cements its status as Trane’s first genuinely iconic record, with no fewer than seven original compositions, most of them now squarely established in the repertory. The big stylistic shift is the move away from chordal jazz, and a seemingly obsessive need to cross-hatch every feasible subdivision before moving on to the next in the sequence. In its place, a faster-moving, scalar approach that was to achieve its (in the event) brief apotheosis in the title-track. That this was a technically exacting theme is underlined by the false starts and alternative takes included on the expensive and atrociously titled The Heavyweight Champion Rhino box set, but there is a chance to sample an earlier version of the tune on this CD reissue, performed with another group a month and a half before the issued recording (which featured Flanagan, Chambers and Taylor). Cedar Walton just about goes through the motions at the 26 March session. He finds the beautiful ballad Naima a more approachable proposition, though this time the released version was actually from a later session still, with Wynton Kelly and Jimmy Cobb. It remains one of Trane’s best-loved themes, a million miles away from the pitiless drive of many of his solos. Dedicated to the bassist, Mr. P.C. is a delightful original blues which has become part of most contemporary horn-players’ repertoire. Syeeda’s Song Flute is a long, spun-out melody for Trane’s daughter. The remaining tracks are Spiral, Countdown and the funky, homely Cousin Mary. Giant Steps was released on the cusp of a new decade, in January 1960. It threw down a quiet, unaggressive challenge. Once again, it is difficult to see it as anything other than a transitional record. Flanagan doesn’t sound much more confident with the new idiom than Walton had been on the dry run, though he is a more intuitively lyrical player. The ‘deluxe edition’ includes alternates of most of the tunes; these variants have been available before, of course, but they still help to build a picture of what was going on during this remarkable session. Having them isolated in the context of the issued album is of some merit, though perhaps only newcomers to the Coltrane diaspora will be unaware of the extraordinary enterprise that had such seasoned and intelligent players wrestling with a new conception in jazz.

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Roanoke Times
Arthur Hill : 03/26/1960

The angular Superman-like style of John Coltrane (able to leap three octaves in a single bound), a passionately personal approach to the tenor saxophone, is well displayed on Giant Steps.

A less musician might be tempted to settle for prowess alone but Coltrane shows a remarkable talent for the expression of ideas as well as the technician’s enchantment with range.

Whether it is the blistering pace of Countdown or the stately melodic figures of Naima Coltrane’s outstanding artistry is present throughout the record.

Although it’s a minor point to pick with such a fine album, Coltrane dominates the other musicians, except bassist Paul Chambers, to the point where they lose some individuality.

This seems especially evident in Spiral where pianist Tommy Flanagan virtually repeats a Coltrane solo.

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Salt Lake City Tribune
Larry Devine : 02/21/1960

Best jazz album of the week is Atlantic’s John Coltrane, Giant Steps. Recognized, along with Sonny Rollins and others, as one of the leading tenor sax men of the day, Coltrane wheels and deals with imagination and polished technique through seven of his original compositions. Backed only by rhythm section (piano, bass, drums – with changing personnel), he displays versatility without getting so far “out” as to lose contact.

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San Bernardino County Sun
Jim Angelo : 04/02/1960

Highly regarded among the leaders of avant garde jazz is John Coltrane, generally recognized as the most influential of contemporary tenor saxists. A provocative sampling of his current work is afforded by Giant Steps, a session that ranks among his finest efforts. Accompanied by pianist Tommy Flanagan, bassist Paul Chambers, and drummer Art Taylor, Coltrane gets fine rhythmic rapport and ample space in which to develop his ideas. Especially compelling are his improvisations on Cousin Mary, Spiral, Syeeda’s Song Flute, and the title number. Seven Coltrane originals are performed.

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San Francisco Chronicle
Ralph J. Gleason : 03/06/1960
Album of the Week

This is the most impressive album that Coltrane has made on his own. All the tunes in it are Coltrane originals and he plays with a sureness and definition that mark his emergence as a major soloist on the tenor sax. He is accompanied by a group that seems to be particularly sympathetic to his way of playing (Paul Chambers, bass; Art Taylor, Jimmy Cobb, drums; and Wynton Kelly, Tommy Flanagan, piano). The Coltrane style may take a bit of getting used to, but the work is worth it because he is particularly effective as the communicator of a strong emotional message which has the “cry” of the jazz world in it to a high degree. He is a powerful soloist with great swing and exciting, brilliant flights of imagination.

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Saturday Review
Frederic Ramsey, Jr : 04/16/1960

John Coltrane‘s tenor saxophone represents a penultimate stage of welding technical achievements to musicianly discipline, although his playing here sounds more real than all this would imply. This latest LP exposes him hard at work on the problem of seeking an expressive framework suitable to his technical prowess, and that within the jazz medium. He seems to want to break away from the long marathon of breathing that is characteristic of many tenor saxophone solos, to cut through to a kind of composition that provides him with something to sing. There are moments, especially in the tender Syeeda’s Song Flute, where he touches the goal; and there are the exasperating promenades with versatility (staccato runs at opening of Countdown) that are simply enervating.

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White Plains Reporter Dispatch
Ted Riedeburg & Don Smith : 03/16/1960

From an influence out of the past we turn to a current innovator, tenor saxist John Coltrane, whose first Atlantic album, Giant Steps, keeps him in the vanguard of controversial modernists. Most of his seven original compositions are melodically spare – and when taken at a lickety-cut tempo, are difficult to follow unless one has a good ear for what he does with the chords. We keep getting closer, but it’s still going to take a lot of digging even with the help of Tommy Flanagan‘s interesting piano.

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Down Beat : 03/31/1960
Ralph J. Gleason : 5 stars

There seems to exist some feeling that John Coltrane, while granting him his importance as a major tenor influence, is a harsh-sounding player to whom it is difficult to listen. This LP, if it does nothing else, should dispel that idea quickly. There are times here when Coltrane is remarkably soft, lyrical and just plain pretty. For instance, on Naima, which is an original as are all the tunes in the LP, JC starts out calling the title almost on his horn (it’s his wife’s name, by the way) in a hauntingly beautiful passage. Then again at the end of the same tune, JC cries wistfully and poignantly on the horn. In Syeeda’s Song Flute there’s a throw-away phrase just before Tommy Flanagan‘s piano solo that is exquisite in its beauty.

Of course the usual Coltrane forceful playing is present all over the album. The title song (which has echoes of Tune Up) is an example of this and so it Countdown which has a particularly intriguing tenor and drum duet in the front of the tune, as well as a great, soaring ending.

Paul Chambers works particularly well with Coltrane and on the final track there is some hard digging by PC which is the kind of thig you put the arm back to over and over.

It is no wonder that JC is making such an impression on tenor players. He has managed to combine all the swing of Pres and the virility of Hawkins and added to it a highly individual, personal sound as well as a complex and logical, and therefore fascinating, mind. You can tag this LP as one of the important ones.

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Liner Notes by Nat Hentoff

Along with Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane has become the most influential and controversial tenor saxophonist in modern jazz. He is becoming, in fact, more controversial and possibly more influential than Rollins. While it’s true that to musicians especially, Coltrane’s fiercely adventurous harmonic imagination is the most absorbing aspect of his developing style, the more basic point is that for many non-musician listeners, Coltrane at his best has an unusually striking emotional impact. There is such intensity in his playing that the string of adjectives employed by French critic Gérard Brémond in a Jazz-Hot article on Coltrane hardly seem at all exaggerated. Brémond called his playing “exuberant, furious, impassioned, thundering.”

There is also, however, an extraordinary amount of sensitivity in Coltrane’s work. Part of the fury in much of his playing is the fury of the search, the obsession Coltrane has to play all. he can hear or would like to hear – often all at once – and yet at the same time make his music, as he puts it, “more presentable.” He said recently, I’m worried that sometimes what I’m doing sounds like just academic exercises, and I’m trying more and more to make it sound prettier.” It seems to me he already succeeds often in accomplishing both his aims, as sections of this album demonstrate.

This it the first set composed entirely of Coltrane originals. John has been writing since 1948. He was born in Hamlet, North Carolina, September 23, 1926. His father played several instruments, and interested his son in music. At 15, John learned E-flat alto horn and clarinet, and in high school, he switched to tenor. He studied in Philadelphia at the Granoff Studios and the Ornstein School of Music, became a professional at 19, and played in a Navy band based in Hawaii from 1956-46. From 1947-49, he worked with Joe Webb (Big Maybelle was in the same entourage), King Kolax, Eddie Vinson and Howard McGhee. Charlie Parker had become a dominant influence on his playing.

He was on alto with the Dizzy Gillespie band in 1949, and after Dizzy disbanded, John returned to Philadelphia, discouraged and trying to find his own way in music. From 1952-53, he was with Earl Bostic, and then played with Johnny Hodges, Jimmy Smith, and Bud Powell. He first joined Miles Davis from 1955-56. Miles regards Coltrane and Rollins as the two major modern tenors. “I always liked Coltrane,” Miles said recently. “When he was with me the first time, people used to tell me to fire him. They said he wasn’t playing anything. They also used to tell me to get rid of Philly Joe Jones. I know what I want though. I also don’t understand this talk of Coltrane being difficult to understand. What he does, for example, is to play five notes of a chord and then keep changing it around, trying to see how many different ways it can sound. It’s like explaining something five different ways. And that sound of his is connected with what he’s doing with the chords at any given time.”

Miles encouraged Coltrane and also stimulated his harmonic thinking. In terms of writing as well, John feels he’s learned from Miles to make sure that a song “is in the right tempo to be its most effective. He also made me go further into trying different modes in my writing.” After two years with Miles, there was a period in 1957 with Thelonious Monk that Coltrane found unusually challenging. “I always had to be alert with Monk,” he once said, “because if you didn’t keep aware all the time of what was going on, you’d suddenly feel as if you’d stepped into an empty elevator shaft.”

Coltrane worked briefly with a Red Garland quintet, then rejoined Miles, and has been with him ever since. He has nothing of his own in the Davis book at present, but he has devoted more and more of his time to composing. He is mostly self-taught as a writer, and generally starts his work at the piano. “I sit there and run over chord progressions and sequences, and eventually, I usually get a song – or songs – out of each little musical problem. After I’ve worked it out on the piano, I then develop the song further on tenor, trying to extend it harmonically.” Coltrane tries to explain what drives him to keep stretching the harmonic possibilities of improvisation by saying, “I feel like I can’t hear but so much in the ordinary chords we usually have going in the accompaniment. I just have to have more of a blueprint. It may be that sometimes I’ve been trying to force all those extra progressions into a structure where they don’t fit, but this is all something I have to keep working on. I think too that my rhythmic approach has changed unconsciously during all this, and in time, it too should get as flexible as I’m trying to make my harmonic thinking.”

In her analysis of Coltrane’s style in the November and December, 1959, issues of the The Jazz Review, pianist Zita Carno pointed out that Coltrane’s range “is something to marvel at: a full three octaves upward from the lowest note obtainable on the horn (concert A-flat) … There are a good many tenor players who have an extensive range, but what sets Coltrane apart from the rest of them is the equality of strength in all registers, which he has been able to obtain through long, hard practice. His sound is just as clear, full and unforced in the topmost notes as it is down in the bottom.” She describes his tone as “a result of the particular combination of mouthpiece and reed he uses plus an extremely tight embouchure” and calls it “an incredibly powerful, resonant and sharply resonating sound with a spine-chilling quality.”

Of the tunes, Coltrane says of Giant Steps that it gets its name from the fact that “the bass line is kind of a loping one. It goes from minor thirds to fourths, kind of a lop-sided pattern in contrast to moving strictly in fourths or in half-steps.” Tommy Flanagan‘s relatively sparse solo and the way it uses space as part of its structure is an effective contrast to Coltrane’s intensely crowded choruses.

Cousin Mary is named for a cousin of Coltrane who indeed is called Mary. The song is an attempt to describe her. “She’s a very earthy, folksy, swinging person. The figure is riff-like and although the changes are not conventional blues progressions, I tried to retain the flavor of the blues.”

Countdown‘s changes are based in large part on Tune Up, but against that, Coltrane uses essentially the same sequence of minor thirds to fourths that characterizes Giant Steps. His solo here, and in the others as well, illustrates Zita Carno’s point that Coltrane, for all he’s trying to express in any given solo, has a remarkable sense of form.

Syeeda’s Song Flute has a particularly attractive line and is named for Coltrane’s 10-year-old daughter. “When I ran across it on the piano,” he says, “it reminded me of her because it sounded like a happy, child’s song.”

The tender Naima – an Arabic name – is also the name of John’s wife. “The tune is built,” Coltrane notes, “on suspended chords over and Eb pedal tone on the outside. On the inside – the channel – the chords are suspended over a Bb pedal tone.” Here again is demonstrated Coltrane’s more than ordinary melodic imagination as a composer and the deeply emotional strength of all his work, writing and playing. There is a “cry” – not at all necessarily a despairing one – in the work of the best of the jazz players. It represents a man’s being in thorough contact with his feelings, and being able to let them out, and that “cry” Coltrane certainly has.

Mr. P.C. is Paul Chambers who provides excellent support and thoughtful solos on the record as a whole and whom Coltrane regards as “one of the greatest bass players in jazz. His playing is beyond what I could say about it. The bass is such an important instrument, and has so much to do with how a group and a soloist can best function that I feel very fortunate to have been able to work with him in Miles’ band so long.” Tom Dowd’s engineering, incidentally, has caught Paul’s sound as well as it’s ever been heard on records, and for an insight into the importance of the bass’s function, it might be valuable to go through the record once, paying attention primarily to Paul. Also worth noting is the steady, generally discreet drumming of Arthur Taylor and Jimmy Cobb throughout.

What makes Coltrane one of the most interesting jazz players is that he’s not apt to ever stop looking for ways to perfect what he’s already developed and also to go beyond what he knows he can do. He is thoroughly involved with plunging as far into himself and the expressive possibilities of his horn as he can. As Zita Carno wrote, “the only thing to expect from John Coltrane is the unexpected.” I’d qualify that dictum by adding that one quality that can always be expected from Coltrane is intensity. He asks so much of himself that he can thereby bring a great deal to the listener who is also willing to try relatively unexplored territory with him.