My Favorite Coltrane

National notice at age 29, solo career by age 33 and dead by age 40 in 1967.
John Coltrane packed an extraordinary musical legacy into such a short life.
I have been listening to "The Very Best of John Coltrane" while driving around today.
The compilation pulls together songs 'Trane recorded as a leader at Atlantic Records from 1959 to 1961.
I adore his version of "My Favorite Things."
While the later "A Love Supreme" can sometimes seem to me to be other-wordly and beyond human -- like music sent down directly from heaven, "My Favorite Things" seems to me more like a great jazz player stretching the boundaries of a song with a soprano saxophone.
Here is how Coltrane himself described his approach to the song, as quoted by writer Ashley Kahn:
"I try to pick... a song that sounds good and song that might be familiar... and then I try to have parts in the song where we can play solo... in a modal perspective, more or less. So therefore, we end up playing a lot of vamps within a tune."
"My Favorite Things" is my favorite Coltrane, I think, because it seems within the real of human possibility. Not an ordinary human, mind you.