Ornette Coleman: Classic Or Dud?

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.

Yeah, I don't know what they've ("they" being Denardo) got in mind, but I know, for example, that a 2003 concert I saw at Carnegie Hall - which was the debut of the Ornette/Tony Falanga/Greg Cohen/Denardo band - was recorded and had been planned for release, but was scrapped. Maybe that will emerge now.

Yeah I hope it's not just a one-man operation that peters out due to percieved lack of interest. By the look of the typography, the recent RSD re-release of The European Concert was a Song X release as well, so mayb e it's a bit more put together than I'd think.

A fine discovery and comment from the original interviewer:

I had no idea this, from 1972, had survived in the BBC archive. Ornette Coleman was a pure and gracious spirit, and a marvellous talker. Sorry about the dumb questions, but at least I kept them short. https://t.co/fA92s4q5xJ

— Richard Williams (@rwilliams1947) April 8, 2018

yeah! never seen this clip before ... Richard Williams' blog is always full of good stuff: https://thebluemoment.com/

Oh, don't do that to me...

"now, back to manfred mann's earth band ... "

I think Richard Williams must be the only decent Sports writer I've ever seen who is also brilliant on music as well.

That was a great interview, and I'm especially fascinated because it's about Skies of America, and I just wrote a piece about Ornette's chamber and orchestral music a couple of weeks ago.

I found myself spinning Skies of America this morning for the first time in a long while and came on to see how others rated it, and just read Phil’s write up of it along with the chamber pieces, which I’m listening to now. Very illuminating!

It's probably the album I've listened to the most over the past four years. Make of that what you will.

the Ornette Coleman I've listened to most in recent years is Crisis .. and it grows and grows every time I listen to it, what a fucking band.

I don’t know that I’ve ever heard it! I need to remedy that.