Ornette!

Ornette! is a studio album by Ornette Coleman, released by Atlantic Records in February 1962. The session was recorded on January 31, 1961, at Atlantic Studios in New York City, with Ornette Coleman on alto saxophone, Don Cherry on pocket trumpet, Scott LaFaro on bass, and Ed Blackwell on drums. LaFaro appears here in place of Charlie Haden, who had left the Quartet but would work with Coleman again later. Original Liner Notes by Gunther Schuller: Well over a century ago (in 1830 to be exact) the musical élite of Paris first encountered the strange music of a 27-year old composer named Hector Berlioz. The encounter was not a mutually agreeable one, for the Parisian public and musical professionals did not take kindly to Monsieur Berlioz’s art. They accused him of not knowing his harmony, of having no sense of melody, of producing horrible dissonant sounds in his orchestration, of using conventional instruments in weird, hideously new ways, of writing a music that defied rhyme or reason, and ultimately condemned him as a “deranged madman.” The story, of course, doesn’t end there. Some twenty years later public and musicians alike began to find some sense and logic in the “madman’s ravings,” and today the music of Berlioz figures consistently on orchestral concert programs. The annals of music history are filled with similar instances of total public apathy and the temporary failure of the innovator’s contemporaries to comprehend his creative efforts. One need only cite a few other cases: Schubert, who died of poverty and hunger, the bulk of his music unperformed and ignored; Beethoven, whose late music still baffles present-day “music lovers”; Mahler, Schoenberg and Webern, who for long periods of their life were accorded epithets similar to those received by Berlioz, with some degree of comprehension of their music coming only after their death, and even then with holdouts most notably among musicians, whose prejudices are often bolstered by a little-but-not-enough knowledge; Lester Young, whose new sound and concept of the tenor saxophone was found unacceptable by fellow musicians for nearly a decade; Charlie Parker, who was laughed off the stand as a young man, later considered merely a weird “legend” by the relatively few who even knew of his existence, and whose music, like “late Beethoven,” is still largely misunderstood (witness his countless imitators and the “false pretenders” to his throne); Thelonious Monk, who had to wait a decade or more for a belated sanctioning by his fellow musicians and the acceptance of his music by jazz audiences. So much for historical fact and the old truism that history constantly repeats itself. In the process, time and time again, the well-entrenched authorities find self-righteous justifications and rationales with which to deride “the newcomer,” little realizing, in their blissful ignorance, that the burden of artistic proof is as much on them as on the innovator. One need not belabor the point. Ornette Coleman’s music is part of the same historical process, and it has suffered some or all of the accusations enumerated above in the case of Berlioz. But then as now, the end of the story has not yet been written. The freedoms Ornette Coleman’s music has unlocked may yet be recognized as the triumphant break-through they in fact constitute. What has this quietly intense man wrought to generate such violently divergent opinions? Are his concepts of melody, of tone, of musical form and continuity so radical as to justify the controversy enveloping his music? The answer lies in the music itself, obviously,—although that is precisely the place where very few would seem to look, substituting instead their own “emotional” reactions as sufficient evidence for their claims. Ornette Coleman’s proposition is a very simple one: release me from the bondage of long out-dated harmonic and formal conventions, and I will take you away from the wallpaper-like clichés of my contemporaries and let you hear a world of sound which you have never heard before, which is free, and which is beholden only to its own innermost logic and discipline. The scoffers, of course, reply that you can’t have jazz without harmony and form, that anarchy is the inevitable result. Aside from the fact that one man’s “anarchy” is another man’s “freedom” (vide politics), it only needs to be pointed out that “classical” music started to do away with eight-bar phrases way back in the 1780’s and with unalterably pre-fixed forms some 60 to 80 years ago. It has survived rather well despite the loss of those supposed guarantors of musical pedigree. There is no question that jazz will survive such “radical” changes as well. And since to date, no one has seriously questioned Ornette Coleman’s claim to being a jazz musician, the day may yet come when he will find full acceptance among the “nouveau-hippies” and jazz cognoscenti. In the meantime, performances such as those recorded here give ample proof of the validity of Ornette Coleman’s musical vision,—a vision which embraces as many of the traditional bases of music making as one has a right to expect. That Ornette chooses to work with a more fragmented, externally disrupted kind of continuity is his right, as is his tendency to exploit the more unusual timbres of his instrument, or his emphasis on melody and counterpoint over harmony. In fact, far from being a “poor melodist,” Ornette is conceptually almost all melody, since harmony is given a decidedly secondary dependent role in his music. All these qualities are amply represented on the four pieces recorded here. In addition, with the inclusion of long drum and bowed bass solos (T. & T. and C. & D. respectively) and two examples of Ornette’s ability to operate within a simpler, more traditional style (the theme of R.P.D.D. and his solo on C. & D.), there is perhaps an even greater variety in style and format than on previous Coleman Quartet recordings. R.P.D.D., given over entirely to Ornette, is a fine example of how his solos and themes (compositions) are no more than two sides of the same coin. Like the theme of C. & D., with its short motive treated sequentially, only to be answered by a tonality-disrupting phrase of rising fourths, his solo on R.P.D.D., in expanded form, follows the same general pattern. Little motives are attacked from every conceivable angle, tried sequentially in numerous ways until they yield a motivic springboard for a new and contrasting idea, which will in turn be developed similarly, only to yield to yet another link in the chain of musical thought, and so on until the entire statement has been made. We can also hear Ornette’s ability to exploit the unusual tonal-timbral characteristics of the alto. In the purposely split tones, harmonics, and abrasively gutteral low register sounds there lies a “beauty” of the same sort that we accept readily enough in Armstrong’s gravel-voiced vocalism or Nanton’s legendary trombone growls. Furthermore, these sonority investigations (as with Sonny Rollins) have an inevitability about them that removes them from the merely experimental. Then there are Don Cherry’s featherweight solos, twisted and tortured, yet with an underlying touch of humor, and curiously unresolved and suspended. Blackwell’s subtly propulsive drumming is, by virtue of its omni-presence, too easily taken for granted. It is therefore a special pleasure to have his remarkable solo effort, T. & T. Starting with the decidedly “Latin” feeling of Ornette’s theme, Blackwell gradually transforms the piece into one of the purest examples of African drumming in jazz. Tremendously pulsating, through a deft combination of repetition and variation, he generates the deep earthy feeling and pattern-conscious continuity of his forebears’ art of drumming. A final word about the late Scott LaFaro, who, had he lived, would certainly have become one of the great bass players (jazz and classical) of our century. The full range of his astounding abilities is exemplified in these four performances. While Scotty never quite found the unique three-way groove of providing the beat, harmonic foundation and melodic counterpoint to the “horns” possessed by his predecessor Charlie Haden, he did evolve a highly personal solution to the requirements of Ornette’s music, still preserving its truly three-level counterpoint (horn, drums, bass). Within this concept, Scotty’s role was slightly more independent of the “horns,” less harmonically tied to them, and smoother in its continuity. Towards these ends, his lively, springy beat and elastic technique were eminently suited; and good examples of these qualities abound on this record: the ostinato figure under Don Cherry’s splintered lines at the beginning of W.R.U.; a little later his driving low-register bass line (shortly before Ornette’s entrance); the twisting sitar-like glissandos and doublestops of his own solo on W.R.U.; and his richly beautiful bowed tone on C. & D. The latter solo is of special interest, since it is the kind of playing which is still extremely rare in jazz, and because it displays the wide range of his imagination and technical skills, as well as his knowledge of the solo bass’ role in contemporary non-jazz music. The C. & D. solo reflects, for example, Scotty’s fascination with the bass part of Milhaud’s rarely heard chamber orchestra work, L’homme et Son Desir. But the ultimate measure of success in this music lies in the ability of these four musicians to give their manifold talents over to one single cooperative effort: the realization of a dream about music which Ornette Coleman continues to have and to cherish.