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One of the great pioneers and innovators of jazz, Ornette Coleman has passed away at age 85. Credited with the creation of "free jazz", Coleman truly was an amazing saxophonist, composer, and band leader who gave the musicians in his bands great freedom to solo and experiment. He based his approach around improvisation off the melody rather than the underlying chord patterns and, after John Coltrane, was one of the greatest players of his generation. RIP Ornette.
I would like to add my appreciation of Ornette Coleman to Ecstatic's blue note above. When I became interested in Jazz in the second half of the 1960s I was fortunate to live not far from the classes Gilbert Gaster held in Jazz History which gave me a broad perspective of the history of Jazz. I was one of the few people there with an interest in contemporary Jazz, and my attempt to open the ears of the 'trads' by playing them the second half of Coleman's Chappaqua Suite (surely the most under-rated of his recordings) was not well received (but better received than when I played them Cecil Taylor and Coltrane). In fact I think Coleman at his best was more accessible to the average listener than John Coltrane, and certainly the more 'difficult' musicians such as Don Cherry (who worked at one time with Coleman) and Archie Shepp.
One of the problems that beset Jazz musicians in that era was the hangover of the ban on American Jazz musicians playing the UK, imposed in 1935 and not lifted until 1956 (but the dates are contested, see the link below) -the argument was that there were British musicians whose jobs were at risk although this policy first emerged in the xenophobic years of the First World War when laws on 'aliens' coming into the UK were introduced. The absurdity of this law was exposed in 1923 when Paul Whiteman and his Orchestra were only allowed entry into the UK after the intervention of the Prince of Wales who persuaded the Ministry of Labour to let them in, and by which time Jazz was becoming increasingly popular. The issue relates to Coleman because although the ban was lifted in 1956, it was replaced by a quota system for Jazz musicians which meant that an American could only enter the UK to play if a British Jazz musician was allowed into the USA. Because this did not apply to classical musicians, when Ornette Coleman was scheduled to play in London in 1965, he was only allowed to do so if he first composed a piece of 'classical music' which he would then perform, but as a classical musician rather than a Jazz one. The result (it used to be two records of a box set) was called An Evening with Ornette Coleman. The irony of course is that Coleman did not recognise a strict demarcation between different forms of music, and anyway the 'composition' was 'torn apart' by his improvisation, including the priceless moment when a member of the audience, clearly frustrated with what Coleman was doing, at a quiet moment calls out 'Now play 'Cherokee' and moments later Coleman weaves that melody into what he was playing.
The Chappaqua Suite, originally intended for a film by Conrad Rooks, was not used in the film but is one of his finest recordings, as are the two albums recorded Live at the Golden Circle in Stockholm in 1965 where Coleman also plays trumpet and violin. For various reasons, I never saw Coleman live, but he remains for me one of the giants of American music who never lost the ability to connect to audiences, particularly when you consider the violent hostility he experienced as a young man playing tenor sax when one upset individual threatened to kill him if he didn't stop playing (as recalled in his chapter in AB Spellman's Four Lives in the Bebop Business). Tastes changes, and Jazz does not hold the same proportion of interest that it used to, but I do believe that Coleman is in the same line-up of greats that include Jelly Roll, Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington, and the moderns, from Parker and Dacis to Coltrane and Coleman. The era has passed, but the music lives on.
The full Chappaqua Suite does not seem to be available but there is a brief extract from section 2 here on youtube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_HO8wn6D-k
An article on the difficult relationship between musicians unions and Jazz performers is here-
http://www.research.ed.ac.uk/portal/...013000093a.pdf
Excellent piece, Stavros, with much detail of which I was unaware. Spot on about Coleman disregarding the lines of 'demarcation' as you put it between different forms of music. He once said something to the effect (paraphrase here) that "there are notes that have never been heard; I don't know what they are but they are out there." My favorite period of jazz runs roughly from Kind of Blue through A Love Supreme, the 50s and 60s era, and Coleman was a giant in that epoch.
I bought this Coleman album in the 1990s when I was in college on a whim, because of the album cover.
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/...JL._SX355_.jpg
I respect Coleman's contributions to jazz innovation but his music wasn't what I would call melodic. There were other artists whose music I would listen to before Coleman, whose sound was often what I would call experimental.
85 years is a long life but still too soon if you lose a loved one.
The man had some of the best album covers ever for a jazz artist.
Coleman was an American musical genius who should have been regarded as a national treasure.