Giant Steps: History and Key Facts

Giant Steps is a studio album by the jazz saxophonist John Coltrane. It was released in February 1960 through Atlantic Records. It was Coltrane's first album as leader for the label, with which he had signed a new contract the previous year. The record is regarded as one of the most influential jazz albums of all time, and many of its tracks have become practice templates for jazz saxophonists. In 2004, it was one of fifty recordings chosen that year by the Library of Congress to be added to the National Recording Registry. It attained gold record status in 2018, having sold 500,000 copies.

Two tracks, "Naima" and "Syeeda's Song Flute", are respectively named after Coltrane's wife at the time and her daughter, whom he adopted. A third, "Mr. P.C.", takes its name from the initials of bassist Paul Chambers, who played on the album. A fourth, "Cousin Mary", is named in honor of Mary Lyerly, Coltrane's younger cousin.

Source and attribution

Text excerpted from Giant Steps by Wikipedia contributors, available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0. The extract is abridged and formatting has been adjusted; the adapted text on this page is shared under the same licence. Revision history.