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My Favorite Things

A show tune with a double life. Rodgers & Hammerstein wrote 'My Favorite Things' for the Broadway musical The Sound of Music in 1959 — and the 1965 film...

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A show tune with a double life. Rodgers & Hammerstein wrote 'My Favorite Things' for the Broadway musical The Sound of Music in 1959 — and the 1965 film carried it worldwide — a child's list of comforts held up against the dark. Then in 1960 John Coltrane transformed it, stretching the little waltz into a hypnotic modal vamp on soprano saxophone; the tune was reborn as a vehicle for improvisation. The Latin players ran with it — the Bronx's New Swing Sextet giving it the hornless 'salsa con vibes' treatment in 1969, Bogotá's La-33 recasting it as brassy salsa dura, Tito Puente carrying it across the vibraphone. A Broadway lullaby that became a jam.

Composer
Richard Rodgers & Oscar Hammerstein II
Year
1959
Lineage
show-tune→jazz→Latin

Sources