Giant Steps

"Giant Steps" was written by Coltrane and recorded on May 5, 1959 at Atlantic Studios in New York with Flanagan, Chambers and Taylor, running 4:43 on the album. The harmony moves between key centers a major third apart, B major, G major and E-flat major, by way of ii-V-I motions; it is related to "Countdown", to "Central Park West" and to Coltrane's reading of "But Not for Me". The title refers to the bass line, which Coltrane described as a loping pattern of minor thirds and fourths. He brought it to the studio without rehearsal, and it took two sessions two months apart before he released his original rendition; alternate takes survive from March 26, 1959 (3:41 and 3:32) and May 5 (5:00).

Cedar Walton, who played on the rejected March session, said Coltrane showed him the tune weeks earlier and that he was not invited to the final one; Coltrane said Walton was out of town. Flanagan's solo on the master is choppy and start-stop, and the NEA calls his playing on the title track especially inspired. Quincy Jones said in 2018 that everyone thinks Coltrane wrote it but it is Slonimsky, and McCoy Tyner confirmed Coltrane used Nicolas Slonimsky's Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns; a music-theory paper by Waters traces the second half of the progression to a pattern in the Thesaurus introduction, and that is as far as the evidence goes.

Archie Shepp and Max Roach recorded it on The Long March in 1979, Henry Butler on Fivin' Around in 1986, and AllMusic says Buddy Rich and McCoy Tyner recorded it most; Joey Alexander's version was nominated for a Grammy for best improvised jazz solo at the 58th awards, and Paquito D'Rivera's Funk Tango won the 2008 Latin jazz Grammy. Vox called it the most feared song in jazz. The setlist.fm page for Coltrane lists 1,059 setlists, but "Giant Steps" did not appear in the content we read, so a play count is not established, and no video or samples were found. Which version our upload carries is unverified.