Ornette Coleman - Ornette! (1962)

Ornette Coleman - Ornette! (1962)

jazz | 1cd | eac-flac-cue-log-cover | 380MB

Atlantic

Allmusic:
Recorded a little over a month after his groundbreaking work Free Jazz, this album found Coleman perhaps retrenching from that idea conceptually, but nonetheless plumbing his quartet music to ever greater heights of richness and creativity. Ornette! was the first time bassist Scott LaFaro recorded with Coleman, and the difference in approach between LaFaro and Charlie Haden is apparent from the opening notes of "W.R.U." There is a more direct propulsion and limberness to his playing, and he can be heard driving Coleman and Don Cherry actively and more aggressively than Haden's warm, languid phrasing. The cuts, with titles derived from the works of Sigmund Freud, are all gems and serve as wonderful launching pads for the musicians' improvisations. Coleman, by this time, was very comfortable in extended pieces, and he and his partners have no trouble filling in the time, never coming close to running out of ideas. Special mention should be made of Ed Blackwell, with one of his finest performances. Ornette! is a superb release and a must for all fans of Coleman and creative improvised music in general.

Tracks
-1. "W.R.U." — 16:25 (Coleman)
-2. "T.&T." — 4:35 (Coleman)
-3. "C.&D." — 13:10 (Coleman)
-4. "R.P.D.D." — 9:39 (Coleman)

Personnel
* Ornette Coleman — alto saxophone
* Scott LaFaro — bass
* Don Cherry — trumpet
* Ed Blackwell — drums

sample & buy: Ornette

Ornette Coleman - The Music Of Ornette Coleman: Something Else!!!! (1958)

Ornette Coleman - The Music Of Ornette Coleman: Something Else!!!! (1958)

jazz | 1cd | eac-flac-cue-log-cover | 265MB

OJC

Allmusic:
This 1958 debut recording by the Ornette Coleman Quintet, which featured Coleman on his trademark white plastic alto, Don Cherry on trumpet, Billy Higgins on drums, Walter Norris on piano, and Don Payne on bass, shook up the jazz world -- particularly those musicians and critics who had entered the hard bop era with such verve and were busy using the blues as a way of creating vast solo spaces inside tight and short melody lines. Something Else!!!! is anathema to that entire idea, and must have sounded like it came from outer space at the time. First, Coleman's interest was in pitch, not "being in tune." His use of pitch could take him all over -- and outside of -- a composition, as it does on "Invisible," which begins in D flat. The intervals are standard, but the melodic component of the tune -- despite its hard bop tempo -- is, for the most part, free. But what is most compelling is evident in abundance here and on the next two tunes, "The Blessing" and "Jayne": a revitalization of the blues as it expressed itself in jazz. Coleman refurbished the blues framework, threaded it through his jazz without getting rid of its folk-like, simplistic milieu. In other words, the groove Coleman was getting here was a people's groove that only confounded intellectuals at the time. Coleman restored blues to their "classic" beginnings in African music and unhooked their harmonies. Whether the key was D flat, A, G, whatever, Coleman revisited the 17- and 25-bar blues. There are normal signatures, however, such as "Chippie" in F and in eight-bar form, and "The Disguise" is in D, but in a strange 13-bar form where the first and the last change places, altering the talking-like voice inherent in the melodic line. But the most important thing about Something Else! was that, in its angular, almost totally oppositional way, it swung and still does; like a finger-poppin' daddy on a Saturday night, this record swings from the rafters of the human heart with the most unusually gifted, emotional, and lyrical line since Bill Evans first hit the scene.

Tracks
-1. "Invisible" – 4:11
-2. "The Blessing" – 4:45
-3. "Jayne" – 7:17
-4. "Chippie" – 5:37
-5. "The Disguise" – 2:46
-6. "Angel Voice" – 4:19
-7. "Alpha" – 4:09
-8. "When Will the Blues Leave?" – 4:58
-9. "The Sphinx" – 4:13
All tracks composed by Ornette Coleman.

Personnel
* Ornette Coleman – alto saxophone
* Don Cherry – cornet
* Walter Norris – piano
* Don Payne – double bass
* Billy Higgins – drums

sample & buy: Something Else!!! the Music of Ornette Coleman

Ornette Coleman - At The Golden Circle_Stockholm v1-2 (1965) (RVG) (eac-log-cover)

Ornette Coleman - At The Golden Circle_Stockholm v1-2 (1965)

jazz | 2cd | eac-flac-cue-log-cover | 565+550MB

BN | RVG 2001 24-bit rem | rar +5% recovery

AMG:
v1
Ornette Coleman's 1965 trio with bassist David Izenzon and drummer Charles Moffett is easily the most underrated of all his bands. Coming off the light of the famed quartet in which Don Cherry, Eddie Blackwell, and Charlie Haden shone, anything might have looked a bit dimmer, it's true. But this band certainly had no apologies to make. Coleman was deep into creating a new approach to melody, since Haden and Cherry had honed his harmonic sensibilities. Izenzon proved to be the right bassist for Coleman to realize his ambitions. A stunning arco as well as pizzicato player (check his solo in "Dawn") Izenzon offered Coleman the perfect foil. No matter where Coleman's soloing moved the band, Izenzon was there at exactly the same time with an uncanny sense of counterpoint, and he often changed the harmonic mode by force. The first of these two volumes from December 3 shows Coleman in a playful, mischievous frame of mind, toying with the trio ads well as the audience on "Faces and Places" by inserting standard bop phrases and song quotes into the heart of his free soloing. On "Dee Dee," Coleman moves along to rhythmic counterpoint by Moffett, pushing Izenzon into the unlikely role of beat-keeper -- not simple for such an amazing improviser. But it's on the closer, "Dawn," that the band gels as one inseparable, ethereal unit, cascading through scalar invention and chromatic interplay as if it were second nature.
v2
The second night of Ornette Coleman's two-week stand in Sweden was even fierier than the first, if the recorded documents are to be believed. For starters, December 4 was the night that Coleman brought out the violin and the trumpet on the first tune; "Snowflakes and Sunshine" must have taken club-goers by surprise. Those first notes skitter across the neck as the bow goes "scree" in the middle registers and bassist David Izenzon moves to create an atonal bed of rock for Coleman, while Charles Moffett plays in the triple time to a cipher of a time signature. And just as the violin starts to create a tension that is difficult for the other two members of his trio to endure musically, Coleman switches to trumpet and hauls it back inside, or at least to the ledge's edge before returning to the violin a few minutes later. The rhythm sect tries to rein him in, but he careens off Izenzon's arco playing and into an entirely new harmonic language. For the rest of the gig, it's back to the alto, with Coleman even going as far as to goof on Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" on the opening bars of "Morning Song" before playing a ballad every bit as tender and angularly beautiful as one of his. "Riddles" is one of Coleman's Eastern screamers, played modally with the same kind of breathy acrobatics Coltrane used on the music that made it onto the posthumous Sunship. There are several drone modes created by Izenzon, with off-measure rhythmic figures cut by Moffett. Coleman plays the alto as one would a Tibetan oboe or a thighbone trumpet, reaching deep into the lower register to touch the drone and then sail off into scalar abandon. There is more than enough fire, but the astonishing thing is the color and texture Coleman gets from the horn. The set closes with a lovely, knotty piece called "Antiques," in which Izenzon and Coleman match modes for an interesting meeting of the minds in a dramatic wash of color and mood. This is the stronger of the two evenings, but they are both fine records by an under-recognized band in Coleman's development.

Tracks:
v1:
01. Announcement 1:09
02. Faces And Places 11:37
03. European Echoes 7:53
04. Dee Dee 10:38
05. Dawn 8:05
06. Faces And Places (Alternate Take) 8:31
07. European Echoes (Alternate Take) 14:13
08. Doughnuts 13:30
v2:
01. Snowflakes And Sunshine 10:43
02. Morning Song 10:41
03. The Riddle 9:54
04. Antiques 12:36
05. Morning Song (alternate take) 8:16
06. The Riddle (alternate take) 12:40
07. Antiques (alternate take) 13:00

Personnel:
Ornette Coleman- Alto Sax
David Izenon- Bass
Charles Moffett- Drums

sample & buy v1
sample & buy v2

rc