Song · John Coltrane
“My Favorite Things” by John Coltrane
From the album My Favorite Things (1961)
“My Favorite Things” by John Coltrane appears on 4 radio countdowns from 3 stations between 2001 and 2020. It was first released in 1961 on the album My Favorite Things. Its best result is #114 on the WFPK 2001 Greatest Songs of All Time. In the combined RockLists rankings it is #1,247 indie & aaa song of all time.
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John Coltrane took a Broadway show tune and turned it into a trance. "My Favorite Things" came from Rodgers and Hammerstein's The Sound of Music, the 1959 musical where Mary Martin and Patricia Neway introduced it, a cozy list of mittens, sleigh bells and snowflakes. As the title track of his 1961 album My Favorite Things, Coltrane keeps the tune and throws the coziness out the window.
He plays it on soprano saxophone, a reedy, keening sound that circles the melody like a snake charmer, while McCoy Tyner's piano churns underneath, Steve Davis holds the pulse on double bass and Elvin Jones rolls all over the drum kit. Tom Dowd and Phil Iehle recorded it. Somewhere in there a family-musical sing-along becomes something hypnotic and a little dangerous.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
RockLists rankings
Indie & Adult Alternative
All Rock Formats
All-time and decade countdowns
| Year | # | Station | Countdown | of |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2001 | 114 | WFPK | WFPK 2001 Greatest Songs of All Time | 2000 |
| 2007 | 448 | WTMD | WTMD Top 897 Songs of All Time | 897 |
| 2009 | 226 | WXPN | WXPN 885 Desert Island Songs (2009) | 885 |
| 2020 | 167 | WXPN | WXPN 2020 Greatest Songs of All Time | 2020 |
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