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Ornette Coleman

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Ornette Coleman
Coleman at the Enjoy Jazz Festival in Heidelberg, 2008
Coleman at the Enjoy Jazz Festival in Heidelberg, 2008
Background information
Birth nameRandolph Denard Ornette Coleman
Born(1930-03-09)March 9, 1930
Fort Worth, Texas, U.S.
DiedJune 11, 2015(2015-06-11) (aged 85)
Manhattan, New York City, U.S.
Genres
Occupations
  • Musician
  • composer
Instruments
Years active1940s–2015
Labels
Spouse
​
​
(m. 1954; div. 1964)​

Randolph Denard Ornette Coleman (March 9, 1930 – June 11, 2015)[1] was an American jazz saxophonist, trumpeter, violinist, and composer. He is best known as a principal founder of the free jazz genre, a term derived from his 1960 album Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation. His pioneering works often abandoned the harmony-based composition, tonality, chord changes, and fixed rhythm found in earlier jazz idioms.[2] Instead, Coleman emphasized an experimental approach to improvisation rooted in ensemble playing and blues phrasing.[3] Thom Jurek of AllMusic called him "one of the most beloved and polarizing figures in jazz history," noting that while "now celebrated as a fearless innovator and a genius, he was initially regarded by peers and critics as rebellious, disruptive, and even a fraud."[3]

Born and raised in Fort Worth, Texas, Coleman taught himself to play the saxophone when he was a teenager.[1] He began his musical career playing in local R&B and bebop groups, and eventually formed his own group in Los Angeles, featuring members such as Ed Blackwell, Don Cherry, Charlie Haden, and Billy Higgins. In November 1959, his quartet began a controversial residency at the Five Spot jazz club in New York City and he released the influential album The Shape of Jazz to Come, his debut LP on Atlantic Records. Coleman's subsequent Atlantic releases in the early 1960s would profoundly influence the direction of jazz in that decade, and his compositions "Lonely Woman" and "Broadway Blues" became genre standards that are cited as important early works in free jazz.[4]

In the mid 1960s, Coleman left Atlantic for labels such as Blue Note and Columbia Records, and began performing with his young son Denardo Coleman on drums. He explored symphonic compositions with his 1972 album Skies of America, featuring the London Symphony Orchestra. In the mid-1970s, he formed the group Prime Time and explored electric jazz-funk and his concept of harmolodic music.[3] In 1995, Coleman and his son Denardo founded the Harmolodic record label. His 2006 album Sound Grammar received the Pulitzer Prize for Music, making Coleman the second jazz musician ever to receive the honor.[5]

Biography

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Early life

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Coleman was born Randolph Denard Ornette Coleman on March 9, 1930, in Fort Worth, Texas,[6] where he was raised.[7][8][9] He attended I.M. Terrell High School in Fort Worth, where he participated in band until he was dismissed for improvising during John Philip Sousa's march "The Washington Post". He began performing R&B and bebop on tenor saxophone, and formed The Jam Jivers with Prince Lasha and Charles Moffett.[9]

Eager to leave town, he accepted a job in 1949 with a Silas Green from New Orleans traveling show and then with touring rhythm and blues shows. After a show in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, he was assaulted and his saxophone was destroyed.[10]

Coleman subsequently switched to alto saxophone, first playing it in New Orleans after the Baton Rouge incident; the alto would remain his primary instrument for the rest of his life. He then joined the band of Pee Wee Crayton and traveled with them to Los Angeles. He worked at various jobs in Los Angeles, including as an elevator operator, while pursuing his music career.[11]

Coleman found like-minded musicians in Los Angeles, such as Ed Blackwell, Bobby Bradford, Don Cherry, Charlie Haden, Billy Higgins, and Charles Moffett.[3][12] Thanks to the intercession of friends and a successful audition, Ornette signed his first recording contract with LA-based Contemporary Records,[13] which allowed him to sell the tracks from his debut album, Something Else!!!! (1958), with Cherry, Higgins, Walter Norris, and Don Payne.[14] During the same year he briefly belonged to a quintet led by Paul Bley that performed at a club in New York City (that band is recorded on Live at the Hilcrest Club 1958).[3] By the time Tomorrow Is the Question! was recorded soon after with Cherry, bassists Percy Heath and Red Mitchell, and drummer Shelly Manne, the jazz world had been shaken up by Coleman's alien music. Some jazz musicians called him a fraud, while conductor Leonard Bernstein praised him.[12]

1959: The Shape of Jazz to Come

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In 1959, Atlantic Records released Coleman's third studio album, The Shape of Jazz to Come. According to music critic Steve Huey, the album "was a watershed event in the genesis of avant-garde jazz, profoundly steering its future course and throwing down a gauntlet that some still haven't come to grips with."[15] Jazzwise listed it at number three on their list of the 100 best jazz albums of all time in 2017.[16]

Coleman's quartet received a long and sometimes controversial engagement at the Five Spot Café in Manhattan. Leonard Bernstein, Lionel Hampton, and the Modern Jazz Quartet were impressed and offered encouragement. Hampton asked to perform with the quartet; Bernstein helped Haden obtain a composition grant from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. A young Lou Reed followed Coleman's quartet around New York City.[17] Miles Davis said that Coleman was "all screwed up inside",[18][19] although he later became a proponent of Coleman's innovations;[20] Dizzy Gillespie remarked of Coleman that “I don’t know what he’s playing, but it’s not jazz."[17]

Coleman's early sound was due in part to his use of a plastic saxophone; he had purchased it in Los Angeles in 1954 because he was unable to afford a metal saxophone at the time.[9]

On his Atlantic recordings, Coleman's sidemen were Cherry on cornet or pocket trumpet; Charlie Haden, Scott LaFaro, and then Jimmy Garrison on bass; and Higgins or Ed Blackwell on drums. Coleman's complete recordings for the label were collected on the box set Beauty Is a Rare Thing in 1993.[21]

1960s: Free Jazz and Blue Note

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In 1960, Coleman recorded Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation, which featured a double quartet, including Don Cherry and Freddie Hubbard on trumpet, Eric Dolphy on bass clarinet, Haden and LaFaro on bass, and both Higgins and Blackwell on drums.[22] The album was recorded in stereo, with a reed/brass/bass/drums quartet isolated in each stereo channel. Free Jazz was, at 37 minutes, the longest recorded continuous jazz performance at the time[23] and was one of Coleman's most controversial albums.[24] In the January 18, 1962, issue of Down Beat magazine, Pete Welding gave the album five stars while John A. Tynan rated it zero stars.[25]

While Coleman had intended "free jazz" as simply an album title, free jazz was soon considered a new genre; Coleman expressed discomfort with the term.[26]

After the Atlantic period, Coleman's music became more angular and engaged with the avant-garde jazz which had developed in part around his innovations.[21] After his quartet disbanded, he formed a trio with David Izenzon on bass and Charles Moffett on drums, and began playing trumpet and violin in addition to the saxophone. His friendship with Albert Ayler influenced his development on trumpet and violin. Charlie Haden sometimes joined this trio to form a two-bass quartet.

In 1966, Coleman signed with Blue Note and released the two-volume live album At the "Golden Circle" Stockholm, featuring Izenzon and Moffett.[27] Later that year, he recorded The Empty Foxhole with his ten year-old son Denardo Coleman and Haden;[28] Freddie Hubbard and Shelly Manne regarded Denardo's appearance on the album as an ill-advised piece of publicity.[29][30] Denardo later became his father's primary drummer in the late 1970s.

Coleman formed another quartet. Haden, Garrison, and Elvin Jones appeared, and Dewey Redman joined the group, usually on tenor saxophone. On February 29, 1968, Coleman's quartet performed live with Yoko Ono at the Royal Albert Hall, and a recording from their rehearsal was subsequently included on Ono's 1970 album Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band as the track "AOS".[31]

He explored his interest in string textures on Town Hall, 1962, culminating in the 1972 album Skies of America with the London Symphony Orchestra.

1970s–1990s: Harmolodic funk and Prime Time

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Coleman playing his signature alto saxophone in 1971
Coleman playing the violin in 1978

Coleman, like Miles Davis before him, soon took to playing with electric instruments. The 1976 album Dancing in Your Head, Coleman's first recording with the group which later became known as Prime Time, prominently featured two electric guitarists. While this marked a stylistic departure for Coleman, the music retained aspects of what he called harmolodics.

Coleman performs in Toronto in 1982.
Coleman playing the trumpet at the Great American Music Hall, San Francisco in 1981

Coleman's 1980s albums with Prime Time such as Virgin Beauty and Of Human Feelings continued to use rock and funk rhythms in a style sometimes called free funk.[32][33] Jerry Garcia played guitar on three tracks on Virgin Beauty: "Three Wishes", "Singing in the Shower", and "Desert Players". Coleman joined the Grateful Dead on stage in 1993 during "Space" and stayed for "The Other One", "Stella Blue", Bobby Bland's "Turn on Your Lovelight", and the encore "Brokedown Palace".[34][35]

In December 1985, Coleman and guitarist Pat Metheny recorded Song X.

Coleman plays his Selmer alto saxophone (with low A) at The Hague in 1994.

In 1990, the city of Reggio Emilia, Italy, held a three-day "Portrait of the Artist" festival in Coleman's honor, in which he performed with Cherry, Haden, and Higgins. The festival also presented performances of his chamber music and Skies of America.[36] In 1991, Coleman played on the soundtrack of David Cronenberg's film Naked Lunch; the orchestra was conducted by Howard Shore.[37] Coleman released four records in 1995 and 1996, and for the first time in many years worked regularly with piano players (Geri Allen and Joachim Kühn).

2000s

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Two 1972 Coleman recordings, "Happy House" and "Foreigner in a Free Land", were used in Gus Van Sant's 2000 Finding Forrester.[38]

In September 2006, Coleman released the album Sound Grammar. Recorded live in Ludwigshafen, Germany, in 2005, it was his first album of new material in ten years. It won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for music, making Coleman only the second jazz musician (after Wynton Marsalis) to win the prize.[39]

Personal life

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Jazz pianist Joanne Brackeen stated in an interview with Marian McPartland that Coleman mentored her and gave her music lessons.[40]

Coleman married poet Jayne Cortez in 1954. The couple divorced in 1964.[41] They had one son, Denardo, born in 1956.[42]

Coleman died of cardiac arrest in Manhattan on June 11, 2015, aged 85.[1] His funeral was a three-hour event with performances and speeches by several of his collaborators and contemporaries.[43]

Awards and honors

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Discography

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Main article: Ornette Coleman discography
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McClintic Sphere, a character in Thomas Pynchon's 1963 novel V., is modeled on Coleman and Thelonious Monk.[51][52][53]

Notes

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  1. ^ a b c Ratliff, Ben (June 11, 2015). "Ornette Coleman, Saxophonist Who Rewrote the Language of Jazz, Dies at 85". The New York Times. Retrieved December 16, 2018.
  2. ^ Mandell, Howard. "Ornette Coleman, Jazz Iconoclast, Dies At 85". NPR Music. Retrieved January 12, 2023.
  3. ^ a b c d e Jurek, Thom. "Ornette Coleman". AllMusic. Retrieved August 14, 2018.
  4. ^ Hellmer, Jeffrey; Lawn, Richard (May 3, 2005). Jazz Theory and Practice: For Performers, Arrangers and Composers. Alfred Music. pp. 234–. ISBN 978-1-4574-1068-0. Retrieved December 15, 2018.
  5. ^ "2007 Pulitzer Prizes". Pulitzer.org. Retrieved July 13, 2020.
  6. ^ Fordham, John (June 11, 2015). "Ornette Coleman obituary". The Guardian. Retrieved December 16, 2018.
  7. ^ Palmer, Robert (December 1972). "Ornette Coleman and the Circle with a Hole in the Middle". The Atlantic Monthly. Ornette Coleman since March 19, 1930, when he was born in Fort Worth, Texas
  8. ^ Wishart, David J. (ed.). "Coleman, Ornette (b. 1930)". Encyclopedia of the Great Plains. Archived from the original on July 7, 2012. Retrieved March 26, 2012. Ornette Coleman, born in Fort Worth, Texas, on March 19, 1930
  9. ^ a b c Litweiler, John (1992). Ornette Coleman: the harmolodic life. London: Quartet. pp. 21–31. ISBN 0-7043-2516-0.
  10. ^ Spellman, A.B. (1985). Four Lives in the Bebop Business (1st Limelight ed.). Limelight. pp. 98–101. ISBN 0-87910-042-7.
  11. ^ Hentoff, Nat (1975). The Jazz Life. Da Capo Press. pp. 235–236.
  12. ^ a b "Ornette Coleman biography on Europe Jazz Network". Archived from the original on May 2, 2005.
  13. ^ Golia, Maria (2020). Ornette Coleman: The Territory and the Adventure. Unit 32, Waterside 44-48 Wharf Road, London NI 7UX UK: Reaktion Books Ltd. p. 100. ISBN 9781789142235.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link) CS1 maint: location (link)
  14. ^ Jurek, Thom. "Something Else: The Music of Ornette Coleman". AllMusic. Retrieved August 14, 2018.
  15. ^ Huey, Steve. "The Shape of Jazz to Come". AllMusic. Retrieved August 14, 2018.
  16. ^ Flynn, Mike (July 18, 2017). "The 100 Jazz Albums That Shook The World". www.jazzwisemagazine.com. Retrieved December 16, 2018.
  17. ^ a b Shteamer, Hank (May 22, 2019). "Flashback: Ornette Coleman Sums Up Solitude on 'Lonely Woman'". Rolling Stone. Retrieved July 16, 2024.
  18. ^ Miles Davis, quoted in John Litwiler, Ornette Coleman: A Harmolodic Life (NY: W. Morrow, 1992), 82. ISBN 0688072127, 9780688072124
  19. ^ Roberts, Randall (January 11, 2015). "Why was Ornette Coleman so important? Jazz masters both living and dead chime in". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved December 16, 2018.
  20. ^ Kahn, Ashley (November 13, 2006). "Ornette Coleman: Decades of Jazz on the Edge". NPR.org. Retrieved December 16, 2018.
  21. ^ a b Yanow, Scott. "Ornette Coleman". AllMusic. Retrieved August 14, 2018.
  22. ^ "Happy 55th: Ornette Coleman, Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation". Rhino Records. December 21, 2015. Retrieved November 17, 2019.
  23. ^ Hewett, Ivan (June 11, 2015). "Ornette Coleman: the godfather of free jazz". The Telegraph. Archived from the original on January 12, 2022. Retrieved November 17, 2019.
  24. ^ Bailey, C. Michael (September 30, 2011). "Ornette Coleman: Free Jazz". All About Jazz. Retrieved November 17, 2019.
  25. ^ Welding, Pete (January 18, 1962). "Double View of a Double Quartet". DownBeat. 29 (2).
  26. ^ Howard Reich (September 30, 2010). Let Freedom Swing: Collected Writings on Jazz, Blues, and Gospel. Northwestern University Press. pp. 333–. ISBN 978-0-8101-2705-0.
  27. ^ Freeman, Phil (December 18, 2012). "Good Old Days: Ornette Coleman On Blue Note". Blue Note Records. Retrieved August 14, 2018.
  28. ^ Chow, Andrew R. (June 28, 2015). "Remembering What Made Ornette Coleman a Jazz Visionary". The New York Times. Retrieved April 25, 2021.
  29. ^ Gabel, J. C. "Making Knowledge Out of Sound" (PDF). stopsmilingonline.com. Retrieved August 14, 2018.
  30. ^ Spencer, Robert (April 1, 1997). "Ornette Coleman: The Empty Foxhole". All About Jazz. Retrieved August 14, 2018.
  31. ^ Chrispell, James. "Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band". AllMusic. Retrieved August 14, 2018.
  32. ^ Appiah, Kwame Anthony; Henry Louis Gates Jr. (March 16, 2005). Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780195170559. Retrieved March 18, 2017.
  33. ^ Berendt, Joachim-Ernst; Huesmann, Günther (August 1, 2009). The Jazz Book: From Ragtime to the 21st Century. Chicago Review Press. ISBN 9781613746042. Retrieved March 18, 2017.
  34. ^ Scott, John W.; Dolgushkin, Mike; Nixon, Stu (1999). DeadBase XI: The Complete Guide to Grateful Dead Song Lists. Cornish, New Hampshire: DeadBase. ISBN 1-877657-22-0.
  35. ^ "Grateful Dead Live at Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum on 1993-02-23". Internet Archive. February 23, 1993.
  36. ^ "Ornette Coleman: Quartet Reunion 1990". AllAboutJazz.com. January 10, 2011. Retrieved July 13, 2020.
  37. ^ Mills, Ted. "Howard Shore / Ornette Coleman / London Philharmonic Orchestra: Naked Lunch [Music from the Original Soundtrack]". AllMusic. Retrieved July 13, 2020.
  38. ^ "Finding Forrester: Music From The Motion Picture". discogs.com. Retrieved July 15, 2020.
  39. ^ a b "Pulitzer Prize winning jazz visionary Ornette Coleman dies aged 85". HeraldScotland. June 11, 2015. Retrieved December 16, 2018.
  40. ^ Lyon, David (March 14, 2014). "Joanne Brackeen On Piano Jazz". NPR.org. Retrieved December 16, 2018.
  41. ^ Rubien, David (October 26, 2007). "Poet Jayne Cortez makes heady music with Ornette Coleman sidemen". sfgate.com. Retrieved July 13, 2020.
  42. ^ Fox, Margalit (January 3, 2013). "Jayne Cortez, Jazz Poet, Dies at 78". The New York Times. Retrieved December 16, 2018.
  43. ^ Remnick, David (June 27, 2015). "Ornette Coleman and a Joyful Funeral". The New Yorker. Retrieved December 16, 2018.
  44. ^ "Ornette Coleman - John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation". www.gf.org. Retrieved June 26, 2024.
  45. ^ The Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize Archived October 6, 2013, at the Wayback Machine, official website.
  46. ^ "Ornette Coleman Honored at Berklee - JazzTimes". Archived from the original on April 19, 2017. Retrieved April 18, 2017.
  47. ^ Montreal Jazz Festival official page Archived May 16, 2010, at the Wayback Machine
  48. ^ "Press Release: 2008 CUNY Graduate Center Commencement". www.gc.cuny.edu. Retrieved December 16, 2018.
  49. ^ "CUNY 2008 Commencements". cuny.edu. Archived from the original on August 14, 2018. Retrieved December 16, 2018.
  50. ^ Mergner, Lee (June 3, 2010). "Ornette Coleman Awarded Honorary Degree from University of Michigan". JazzTimes. Archived from the original on November 7, 2018. Retrieved December 16, 2018.
  51. ^ Davis, Francis (September 1985). "Ornette's Permanent Revolution". The Atlantic. Retrieved May 11, 2020. In Thomas Pynchon's novel V. there is a character named McClintic Sphere, who plays an alto saxophone of hand-carved ivory (Coleman's was made of white plastic) at a club called the V Note.
  52. ^ Yaffe, David (April 26, 2007). "The Art of the Improviser". The Nation. Retrieved May 11, 2020. Of all the ink spilled on Coleman's impact, perhaps the most memorable came from Thomas Pynchon's 1963 debut novel, V., in which the character McClintic Sphere (with a last name nodding to Thelonious Monk's middle name) sets the jazz world on end at a club called the V-Note.
  53. ^ Bynum, Taylor Ho (June 12, 2015). "Seeing Ornette Coleman". The New Yorker. Retrieved May 11, 2020. In Thomas Pynchon's 1963 novel 'V.', a thinly veiled character named McClintic Sphere appears, playing a 'white ivory' saxophone at the 'V Spot.' Pynchon's wonderfully terse parody of the portentous debate around Coleman's music is as follows: 'He plays all the notes Bird missed,' somebody whispered in front of Fu. Fu went silently through the motions of breaking a beer bottle on the edge of the table, jamming it into the speaker's back and twisting.

References

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