Ornette Coleman: Classic Or Dud?

Oh yeah, that's good, and Crisis was one of the first jazz records I bought, a fave right away. My buddy xpost John_W just found this at a university radio station---I'd never heard of it:

(from discogs)
Ornette Coleman Quartet, The ‎– The 1987 Hamburg Concert
Label:
Domino Records (7) ‎– 891214
Format:
2 × CD, Album
Country:
Europe
Released:
2011
Genre:
Jazz
Style:
Modal, Free Jazz
Tracklist
1-1 Chanting 2:24
1-2 Africa Is The Mirror Of All Colours 10:46
1-3 Word For Bird 10:52
1-4 Lonely Woman 10:24
1-5 The Art Of Love Is Happiness 8:13
2-1 Storytellers 10:12
2-2 Peace Warriors 6:11
2-3 The Sphinx 10:23
2-4 Latin Genetics 7:03
2-5 Today, Yesterday And Tomorrow 6:54
2-6 City Living 10:07
2-7 Turnaround 9:22
Credits

Alto Saxophone, Composed By – Ornette Coleman
Bass – Charlie Haden
Cornet – Don Cherry
Cover Photo – Guy Le Querrec
Drums – Billy Higgins
Liner Notes – Leo Urban

Notes
NDR Jazzworkshop 219, Hamburg, Germany, October 29, 1987.

Also from '87, quite a diff situation: Big O has reposted downloads of Skies of American live, at the Verona Jazz Festival, performed by OC & Prime Time x Symphony Orchestra of the Verona Arena:
http://bigozine2.com/roio/?p=119

And from 2009, the Meltdown Festival set:

Disc 1
Track 101. Intro 2:39 (4.5MB)
Track 102. Following The Sound 3:25 (5.7MB)
Track 103. Blues Connotation 4:50 (8.1MB)
Track 104. Jordan 4:59 (8.4MB)
Track 105. Sleep Talking 4:12 (7.1MB)
Track 106. Chronology 5:43 (9.6MB)
Track 107. Bach, Cello Suite No. 1 5:40 (9.5MB)
Track 108. Turnaround 5:00 (8.4MB)

Disc 2
Track 201. Call To Duty 4:58 (8.3MB)
Track 202. Peace 7:44 (13.0MB)
Track 203. Untitled (with Patti Smith) 9:19 (15.7MB)
Track 204. Congeniality 9:06 (15.3MB)
Track 205. 911 (with Master Musicians of Jajouka) 18:38 (31.3MB)
Track 206. Theme From A Symphony (Song World) 5:49 (9.8MB)
Track 207. Song X 8:30 (14.3MB)
1 hour 41 mins

Lineup:
Ornette Coleman - sax, trumpet
Bill Frisell - guitar
Tony Falanga - dbl bass
Al MacDowell - bass guitar
Denardo Coleman - drums

http://bigozine2.com/roio/?p=1721

i think i forgot about that complete sci-fi cd set! i probably wasn't looking for it 15 years ago. i might buy that online cheap when i have the money. i see some on ebay.

yeah that 2 cd complete sci fi set (science fiction + broken shadows + i think a few other things) is maybe my most listened to ornette. covers a lot of ground!

Yeah picked up the 2cd Science fiction a few years ago whyich is why I thought you could get it. But a lotof things slip out of print , which is why I wasn't sure.

Dime has been having several sets upped to it. A lot of the mid 60s trio as well as prime Time and a bit of whatever the band is in '72.
I have a live set somewhere that I think has James Blood Ulmer very early on and not sounding that great. There was a video from Italy from that tour up on Youtube for ages

actually on finding it Iit turns out to be '74
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=na_3r_bf5gA
which I think was when the live set I have is from.

& I was thinking about the Paris '71 set when I was thinking of that year. Still not sure what that is. Did he reunite an earlier band in the early 70s before going electric?

ornette coleman records (save for the early atlantic stuff and the most recent ones) seem to float in and out of print randomly. esp. a whole bunch of grey-market live CDs, most of which i've managed to get over the years.

not sure if "ornette at 12" ever was on CD, but i really adore that one.

btw the shirley clarke documentary about coleman is critical viewing, and it's on blu-ray now so no excuses folks:

http://www.milestonefilms.com/collections/shirley-clarke/products/ornette-made-in-america

has a 30 minute interview w/ denardo

Did he reunite an earlier band in the early 70s before going electric?

guessing this would have been the same tour that produced the (probably non-legit) get back release whom do you work for?. band for that was haden, blackwell & dewey redman.

have this on another semi-legit lp that i think got an official fuller release later, love it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJePdnU_bwc

So it is reunited late 50s/early 60s rhythm section & new horn. Since I think that was Don Cherry in the Atlantic era?

Robert Wyatt on Ornette the Wire:

http://www.thewire.co.uk/in-writing/essays/ornette-coleman-1930-2015_robert-wyatt

I'm really enjoying the week-long WKCR tribute but damn Phil Schaap like to hear himself talk...

**likes**

He's spent about 20 minutes talking about mono and the history of stereo. "We have two ears." Yes. Yes, we know, Phil.

speak for yourself!

http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/gogh/self/gogh.bandaged-ear.jpg

WKCR just finished Art of the Improvisers, the outtakes collection. Always did love a couple tracks, but don't remember the rest as being nearly this good! So robust, intricate, and immediately engaging, in an almost off-handed way. just rolling right out and taking me with it. Even ff they were just warming up with some of this, they succeeded.
Could have something to do with HD sound and decent headphones, compared to my old set-up. Also maybe my ears have grown out a little more.

Listened to In All Languages yesterday. The stuff with the reunited 1959-60 quartet is terrific; the compositions are all bite-sized (I don't think there's a track over 4 minutes), with really strong melodies, and the sound is just slightly '80s-ized (mostly on Don Cherry's part - he's playing through a lot of echo and reverb at various points and it sounds great). The Prime Time material, though, just doesn't work for me. Prime Time never does. I feel about them the way a lot of old jazz critics felt when Miles Davis went electric - what the hell is this clattering shit, get back to what you're good at, etc., etc. Oh, well.

but it's so beautiful!

Came back to the 1971 Paris concert, in progress: really good acoustics, and Ornette sounds good on trumpet and even violin, in a way (kind of a truly juicy juice harp effect at the moment, like he's chewing it); Redman on musette as well as sax (rich, contoured sax tones right now), Haden and Blackwell great of course---as described here (OMG return of the musette):
http://www.allmusic.com/album/live-in-paris-1971-mw0001208289

("Rock The Clock")

The Empty Foxhole! I've never heard this one before either. Denardo's already good, really listening, OC's trumpet is good again, though obv. fairly new to him in '67. Haven't heard much violin yet. Alto slow & soulful right now. Good sound quality re bass, especially.

denardo is like ten there isn't he?

yeah, i think so!

been reading a lot of well-intentioned but very poorly written and ahistorical "tributes" to OC recently, probably by people who don't know much about jazz.

Managed to get "What Reason Could I Give" played by request on a local jazz show last night -- sounded great on the car radio! (In Ornette Coleman Heaven, there is a radio station that plays nothing but Science Fiction.)

http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2015/jun/20/torrential-ornette-coleman/

i) he doesn't like free-playing (he calls it 'still new-sounding' which tells me he doesn't listen to a lot of it), ii) calling current R&B pap is the usual bogus. Especially from a guy that struggles with anything too 'far out'.

also: torrential, especially about Ornette who was so good with melodies.

Wanker.

yeah... i think he's thinking of albert ayler or something.

like i said upthread, ornette's death has occasioned a lot of clueless "tributes"

Wow did you guys misread that piece.

I love Ornette and I think "torrential" is a great way to describe him.

Dyer's But Beautiful is a lovely book.

I like Dyer generally (it's hard not to warm to someone who reps hard for Raymond Williams and John Berger) but he has a lot of wrong-headed ideas about avant-garde jazz (see also his NYRB piece on the late Coltrane) and the idea of freedom. He's clearly swallowed a lot of Stanley Crouch and Wynton Marsalis's arguments. His comments about the Art Ensemble representing the nice guys and not the scary black revolutionaries is really problematic. Somebody should beat him over the head with a copy of George Lewis's AACM tome.

Posted by Vernon Reid -- Cecil Taylor's tribute at Ornette's memorial service.

https://www.facebook.com/vernon.reid.75/posts/10206661142824181:2?fref=nf

Yeah and his Instragram of the line-up performing "Lonely Woman"---incl. Al McDowell, Lovano, Denardo, Charnette, David Murray--is a reminder that OC's music and influence extends to generations of artists not yet in their 70s (liked Dyer's piece, but he presented it as still-fresh sounds of the ancient ones). Also a sound and sensibility sometimes extending beyond the jazz world, though would love to see Guerilla Toss, for instance, getting Newport Jazz to dance in heads and all other parts.

nice piece in the lrb

Was just catching up w/that. Need to listen to Cecil performing at his funeral later.

And a very rouching report of the funeral by Howard Mandel in the new Wire.

touching, even

Dude, I read that as Howard Mandel's funeral and was very confused

yeah that post was not my finest piece of work, sry

From '75, an Arista 2-LP I don't remember at all, though I called myself keeping up with him in the 70s---anybody heard it? Several other OC LPs here, ones I've got, and ones from other artists:
https://soundsoftheuniverse.com/product/ornette-coleman-the-great-london-concert

Some Saturday nights there were barn dances, way out in Elgin or Sonoita. In barns. Everybody from miles and miles would go, old people, young people, babies, dogs. Guests from dude ranches. All of the women brought things to eat. Fried chicken and potato salad, cakes and pies and punch. The men would go out in bunches and hang around their pickups, drinking. Some women too, my mother always did. High school kids got drunk and threw up, got caught necking. Old ladies danced with each other and children. Everybody danced.
Two-step mostly, but some slow dances and jitterbug. Some square dances and Mexican dances like La Varsoviana. In English it's "Put your little foot, put your little foot right there," and you skip and whirl around. They played everything from "Night and Day" to "Detour, There's a Muddy Road Ahead," "Jalisco no te Rajas" to "Do the Hucklebuck." Different bands every night but the same kind of mix.
Where did these raging wonderful musicians come from? Pachuco horns and guitar players, big-hatted country guitarists, bebop drummers, piano-players that looked like Fred Astaire. The closest I ever heard anything come close to those little bands was at the Five Spot in the late fifties. Ornette Coleman's "Ramblin'." Everybody raving how new and far-out he was. Sounded Tex-Mex to me, like a good Sonoita hoedown.

------Lucia Berlin, "Homing"

http://www.ebay.com/itm/ORNETTE-COLEMAN-HUMAN-FEELINGS-ANTILLES-AN2001-STEREO-LPs-/331961376705?hash=item4d4a709fc1:g:crYAAOSw7s5Xgs5s

This excellent record is only $5, someone should buy it

Or if you have a bit ore money: https://thebluemoment.com/2016/09/13/harmolodics-the-truth-at-last/ (this is interesting I think, though I'm nowhere near musically knowledgeable enough to make proper sense of it).

was just jamming To Whom Keeps A Record this morning
Side A
1. Music Always
2. Brings Goodness
3. To Us
4. All

Side B
1. P.S. Unless One Has
2. Some Other
3. Motive for Its Use

saw the Made in America doc recently, captures his essence nicely it seems

yeah! i just rewatched that -- some really great stuff in there, and an appropriate overall approach. aways surprised when i hear ornette's speaking voice for some reason.

love that movie- it really cemented my love for him

just watched that last night, a bunch of stuff I had no idea about like the connections to Fuller and Gysin and um circumcision vs. castration

Got two live albums - Live in Paris 1971 and 1987 Hamburg Concert - on the way. That 1987 one is from when he reunited with the 1959-60 quartet (Don Cherry, Charlie Haden, Billy Higgins) and recorded In All Languages. The 1971 disc has Dewey Redman, Haden, and Ed Blackwell.

Premium box set, vinyl & CD/DVD: all performances (incl. his, unscheduled), from Celebrate Ornette, along with all from the memorial: http://www.ornettecoleman.com/#section-premium-box-set

Nice! That's mighty tempting.

I really hope the price drops on this:
http://www.amazon.com/Free-Jazz-Harmolodics-Ornette-Coleman/dp/1138122947/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1483915727&sr=1-1&keywords=ornette

I'm intrigued by the site's teaser of future releases of as-yet unrleased material. Hopefully it will help fill some of the huge holes in Ornette's career in the latter years.