Album #3 of 133 Albums Before In the Court of the Crimson King that Every Progger Should Know.
Released November 1959.
A1. Lonely Woman (4:59)
A2. Eventually (4:20)
A3. Peace (9:04)
B1. Focus On Sanity (6:50)
B2. Congeniality (6:41)
B3. Chronology (6:05)
Ornette Coleman, alto sax
Don Cherry, cornet (pocket trumpet)
Charlie Haden, bass
Billy Higgins, drums
Produced by Nesuhi Ertegun.
"Coleman’s alto work is self-consciously original and won’t have mass appeal." - Billboard Magazine, 9 November 1959
In our day and age, we're used to hearing a harmonically vague, free-blowing solo, whether its on an astral voyage through the Grateful Dead's "Dark Star," Ash Ra Tempel's "Traummaschine," or even Steve Howe in the middle of a hot 1973 live version of "Yours Is No Disgrace."
For some musicians finding their creative feet in the 60s, Coleman's individualistic attitude became a guiding light to coming to terms with their own musically progressive attitudes. Jack Bruce, who explained the importance of Mingus in my last blog post, had this to say about the true nature of Cream:
“What it meant was I could play jazz in front of, like, vast audiences and get paid for it, because that’s basically what Cream was. It was basically a free jazz trio with Eric playing the Ornette Coleman part without knowing it. You know, we just didn’t tell him that he was actually Ornette Coleman [laughs].” Jack Bruce. BBC interview
Ornette Coleman fundamentally changed the direction of improvised music when his band was in residency at the Five Spot club in New York in 1959. To some extent, he instigated the viral spread of "free jazz" or "freedom music" at the time, making many musicians, both established and up-and-coming, question their assumptions about improvisation. Talking about one of the tracks on The Shape of Jazz to Come, biographer John Litweiler said the following:
"“Focus on Sanity” is thus a composition, with several tempos and themes that could only be realized through improvisation - and not the role-playing kinds of improvisation that Charles Mingus often called for from his interpreters. Ornette, instead, used his players’ own choices to unite in a whole musical statement. Given its success, it’s no wonder that Ornette originally wanted to title this first Atlantic album “Focus on Sanity.”" - Litweiler - Ornette Coleman: A Harmolodic Life, p. 67.
Don Van Vliet (aka Captain Beefheart), according to a 1972 interview, considered Ornette Coleman to be "the fountainhead of prime creativity in American music."
“There’s one waterhole. There’s one drop of water which makes up the ocean. And I’m just one of those drops of water, I would like to color that drop of water out and just let it break into the sunset.
“I know that Ornette Coleman feels the same way about that; I’m not trying to put my name beside Ornette Coleman, because you can’t put your name beside Ornette Coleman. I think he is one person who has done that. I just wish that people could drink water with him. I think he’s one of the greatest artists today.
“I wish that they’d let him out of that trap that they’ve made for him. He never wanted that; he was ahead way long ago – he wasn’t ahead, he was right with himself, you know? People try to make you go ahead and try to make you go back, and whenever you play, whenever I play the horn, I hope that people don’t try to tell me how to play that horn. Because the minute they try to make me go back or go forward on that horn, I’ll stick that horn into a mushroom and let it grow in a mushroom, and I’ll be out painting with a brush.
“I’ve watched what they’ve tried to do to him, and I tell ya, I don’t like it. I don’t think they’re trying to do the same thing to me because I’m a white boy, you see – which is ridiculous because everybody’s coloured or you wouldn’t be able to see them. I mean, really, I don’t feel that I’m any colour, and he doesn’t either. He just wants to play.
“I wish my audience would listen to him, and just go on to become greater and greater." - Crawdaddy, 19 March 1972
Don't feel bad if you have to read through that a few times to get van Vliet's gist. Listening to Coleman's series of albums on Atlantic, I start to see why The Magic Band sounded the way it did on Trout Mask Replica - with all players seeming to be charting a different rhythmic and harmonic course simultaneously, but somehow staying tightly unified.
The release of The Velvet Underground’s debut album triggered wild stylistic gesticulations across rock music, including progressive rock, that are still resonating to the present day. It’s worth noting the impact that Coleman had on Lou Reed.
“But it’s Ornette, it’s always been Ornette. 'Lonely Woman' is one of the greatest songs ever written. Not a day goes by without me coming back to it. It’s an amazing album, but that track…” Lou Reed
Coleman later accepted an invitation by Lou Reed lend his sax stylings to the song “Guilty” from his 2003 album The Raven.
There's a famous Brian Eno quote about the Velvet Underground's low-selling debut, "I think everyone who bought one of those 30,000 copies started a band!" This is analogous to Coleman's impact - every musician who heard The Shape of Jazz to Come around 1960 or one of his live performances of the time seemed to assimilate some element of his approach into their own music, whether or not they agreed with Coleman's direction.
Other members of the Coleman band made their mark too. Trumpeter Don Cherry and bassist Charlie Haden got involved with Carla Bley's progressive and crucial Escalator Over the Hill project in 1971.
Cherry played live with Zappa and the Mothers in 1968. He later collaborated with Canterbury luminary Steve Hillage on his “L” album from 1976. Hillage in turn implicates Cherry in later significant musical developments:
"...we met up with Don Cherry, an old friend of Daevid Allen, and with Carla Bley who lived in Woodstock close to the studio. Don Cherry is a really important figure — I reckon he had an influence on Talking Heads because he was staying in their flat while their best album 'Remain in Light' was being made. He had an influence on 'L' certainly, playing trumpet, Tibetan bells and African instruments." - Steve Hillage, interviewed by Mark Jenkins in Electronics and Music Maker, June 1983
One of the high priests of Canterbury prog, Robert Wyatt said the following when asked to make a statement after Coleman's death:
"But why do I love Ornette Coleman quite so much? Well, I’ll leave it to others to celebrate his significance to subsequent explorers of the freedom principle. What has always warmed my heart, in the end, has little to do with his influence on younger improvisors. It is the timeless vocal beauty of the actual sequences of notes and phrases he could come up with, and the feeling of pure living joy of playing they can communicate.
"Ornette dead? The way I hear it, Ornette's heartbeat's as alive, in the ether, as it ever was." - The Wire, June 2015
PERSONAL OBSERVATIONS:
The Shape of Jazz to Come doesn't sound insane to us nowadays. It swings along and maybe has some pointy textures. But opinions contemporary with the album's release didn't have our perspective.
People like to call this album the beginning of free jazz. But perhaps because of the way drummer Billy Higgins keeps it swinging, it doesn't feel like there's a whole lot of off-the-tether stuff here. There's no piano, so solo sections don't have comp chords to define them, and harmonic structure and phrase lengths seem less important sometimes. Don Cherry on cornet and Coleman on alto sax together have a particularly special kind of synchronicity that's much different and more unified than, say, Miles and Coltrane. Quicksilver or lyrical unison melodic lines are tight but flexible as if Coleman and Cherry are sharing a brain. When they solo in sequence, they respond to each other with affirmation rather than reacting with contrast. It's like listening to a sweet musical friendship.
For me personally, there's something cool about Cherry being from Oklahoma, where I spent the first third of my life, and Coleman being from Texas, where I've spent the past two thirds, echoing my own split regional identity.
ESSENTIAL YOUTUBE VIDEOS:
A segment about The Shape of Jazz to Come from a BBC Documentary
Polyphonic - The Strange Album That Changed Jazz Forever
A GREAT BOOK TO READ:
Ornette Coleman: A Harmolodic Life by John Litweiler
Written while Coleman was still alive, Litweiler's documentation about what had transpired in Coleman's life was essential stuff, as well-researched and comprehensive as it could have been. Depending on your own thoughts, he can sound a little over the top in his claim that Coleman is the central jazz figure after Louis Armstrong.
Please note: This blog post is subject to change as I learn more great stuff about The Shape of Jazz to Come!
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