Horns of a dilemma
From new radical to reborn experimentalist: the pioneering saxophonist on two vinyl box sets. By Andrew Male.
IN 2015, reviewing Beauty Is A Rare Thing, the 6-CD box set of Ornette Coleman’s 1959-1961 Atlantic recordings, I had an epiphany. Part of me wanted chaos, to experience all the turmoil and confrontation listeners heard when this divisive Texas-born 27-year-old arrived on the late-’50s US jazz scene. Instead, the music sounded euphoric, the calland-response of Coleman’s sax and Don Cherry’s cornet raw and bright; snorting, laughing and stretching blues phrases, tracked and circled by Charlie Haden’s minimal bass and Billy Higgins’ forwardflashing drums. Then, wham, halfway into Disc 4, Haden and Higgins go, replaced by Scott LaFaro on bass, Ed Blackwell on drums, and suddenly something essential has gone. Beauty a rare thing indeed.
Now here’s a chance to hunt down that elusive beauty in the music Coleman made before and after those Atlantic cuts.
Genesis Of Genius (Craft Recordings, ★★★★★) brings together Something
Else !!!! and Tomorrow Is The Question!,
Coleman’s exclamatory late-’50s recordings for Hollywood independent Contemporary. As Ashley Kahn explains in his linernotes, this was music defined by “experimentation… hardship and disdain”. And Something
Else !!!! , his debut, is Ornette at his wildest, the blurred ghosts of communal gospel, Western Swing and big bands twisting through rhythms and harmonies like a spinning late-night radio dial. On
Tomorrow Is The Question!, Coleman and Cherry are joined by the more ‘professional’ rhythm section of drummer Shelly Manne and Percy Heath and Red Mitchell on bass. Odd but thrilling, Coleman sounds youthful and insolent in such company.
Six years on, the six-LP Round Trip:
Ornette Coleman On Blue Note (★★★★) finds the 36-year-old saxophonist emerging from a period of self-imposed exile, and ready to attack with a new unhinged sound. 1965’s live two-volume
At The Golden Circle Stockholm, is a masterpiece. Simultaneously thrilling and unnerving, Coleman playing pure, punching rhythms that speed alongside the driving cymbal rides and cries of drummer Charles Moffett. An even more radical percussive approach is adopted on 1966’s The Empty Foxhole, with Coleman enlisting his 10-year-old son Denardo on drums. Described by Shelly Manne as “unadulterated shit”, Denardo’s drumming now sounds deadly serious and punk as fuck. The lawlessness continues on Jackie McLean’s 1967 LP
New And Old Gospel. As Thomas Conrad points out in his accompanying essay, Coleman’s trumpet playing is either “defiantly sharp or flat” but both McLean and Coleman play with a sanctified fire.
For his last two Blue Note albums, 1968’s New York Is Now! and Love Call, Coleman hired Jimmy Garrison and Elvin Jones from John Coltrane’s Classic Quartet. Accompanied by tenor saxophonist Dewey Redman, Coleman goes in heavy, burrowing deep into the blues and gospel of his youth with a complex gravitas that perplexes and beguiles in turn. Now released on Blue Note’s deluxe vinyl imprint Tone Poet, these records aren’t cheap, but rare beauty always comes at a price.