Ornette RIP

[Jazzrook]

Bluesnik - Was interested to read Richard Williams' blog and his experience with a Grafton white plastic alto sax. Remember seeing one in a Portsmouth music shop window just after the 1965 Croydon concert and have always regretted not buying it!

Peter King playing Bird's Grafton white plastic alto sax("Now play Cherokee!"): www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjY1NPUUp9U

JR

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

Bluesnik - Was interested to read Richard Williams' blog and his experience with a Grafton white plastic alto sax. Remember seeing one in a Portsmouth music shop window just after the 1965 Croydon concert and have always regretted not buying it!

JR

As I understand it, the mounts for the keys and pads etc were metal and the plastic (bakalite?) would eventually fracture at the fixing.

But they must have been pretty sound to stand up to Bird and Ornette's blowing? Maybe they carried a large tube of Jazz Evostik.

BN.

[burning dog]

? Maybe they carried a large tube of Jazz Evostik.

BN.

Perhaps that's what confused the barracker at Fairfield Hall?

He saw Ornette had a tube of Jazz Glue and thought he was attending a concert by "The Earl".

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

Perhaps that's what confused the barracker at Fairfield Hall?

He saw Ornette had a tube of Jazz Glue and thought he was attending a concert by "The Earl".

That reminds me of Earl Hines's plastic looking wig!

Great story that when Miles showed up at Birdland with his first "big hair" weave, Art Blakey shouted at him from the bandstand, " Hey Miles, Earl has just died, you could have his!"

BN.

[Serial_Apologist]

Hair splitting is indeed common in jazz circles.

[Jazzrook]

I looked in vain for a tribute to O.C. in the arts pages of The Observer.
Why is that paper so anti-jazz?

[Honoured Guest]

I looked in vain for a tribute to O.C. in the arts pages of The Observer.
Why is that paper so anti-jazz?

I think that Thursday late afternoon is after their Arts section deadline.

[Ian Thumwood]

There was a very good obituary in yesterday's Telegraph which offered an overview of his career as well as the reaction of other musicians. I had realised just how skint he was whilst out at the height of his powers. The author also commented about the fact that Ornette's music has more "musicality" than a lot of the "New Thing" players that followed in his wake and how Coleman was effectively divorced from these musicians who often didn't share his technical command of his instrument. In the light of much of what followed in the late 60's, as much as I like players like Ayler and have listened to players like Archie Shepp and Pharoah Sanders, none had the ability of Ornette Coleman nor produced anything as new as musical.

There was a comment about his revolution being so startling that it was permanently "avant garde" insofar that it was an approach which was also too radical to be embraced by the mainstream. The obituary suggested that OC was so radical that it marked a dividing line whereby his music clearly separated what had come before from what came after like no other musician. I'm not convinced by this as I think Ornette Coleman's music still have "shock value" nearly 60 years on but I think many musicians have been influenced by him including more "popularist" artists like Pat Metheny and John Scofield. The latter is a really good case in point.

I think that the issue is far broader. The repertoire of Ornette Coleman is certainly getting more and more coverage as jazz musicians increasingly latch on to the fact that this music is extremely catchy. This counts for the fact that OC's music is not exactly obscure. However, any inability to absorb these innovations might be more likely to be due to the fact that jazz is increasingly becoming conservative. Anything worth it's salt in wanting to consider itself to be "contemporary" will have to take on board post-OC styles of jazz. This kind of jazz is almost the acid test for what is good in today's jazz and why the music made by musicians like Joe Lovano, William Parker, David Murray , etc are producing "genuine" music whereas those musicians who made pay heed to these changes seem less important. To my ears, an attachment to the avant garde aspect of jazz these days is likely to pay more dividends that many more polished / polite acts. Ornette Coleman's certainly came up with ideas which have been embraced by the musicians that matter so I'm not too sure about his music never gaining widespread influence like Coltrane. I'd agree that it has taken along time to be absorbed but opposed to representing a divide between the mainstream and avant garde, it is more a case of separating the men from the boys.

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

I looked in vain for a tribute to O.C. in the arts pages of The Observer.
Why is that paper so anti-jazz?

Well, in its prime, it published critically informed gems like this...

"Coleman begins with what might
laughingly be called an alto saxophone
solo at fast tempo, brief and to the
point, lasting say 10 or 15 minutes, in
the course of which both harmony and
melody are given the brush. Next comes
a change of mood, that is to say the
same thing is played slow instead of
fast. The violin interlude which follows
is even more startling. Coleman staggers
through some mysterious pattern of his
own devising, sawing away with a
ferocity which belies the dolorous
expression on his face." -

Benny Green, Observer jazz critic, April 1966.

Ornette, a con artist. His audience, "sycophants".

BN.

[Ian Thumwood]

These kind of criticisms are new and have probably been applicable to every style / innovation / movement in jazz. Some people just don't get it, others do. You can hardly expect a newspaper to be able to properly "get" this music when it was so new although it is interesting to see that it was actually written by a musician. That said, some people who you thought would have dug Ornette likes Miles hated his music whereas ones you thought might have hated it like Roy Eldridge were fans .The obvious thing is that the music eventually gets accepted even if it is a challenge to begin with.

I'm currently listening to the AEoC on Youtube and been really digging this for the past week. When I first heard them as a teenager I truly hated it but within a few years was a massive fan of Lester Bowie's Brass Fantasy. There is something about listening to music like this as it is so divisive yet you know that your opinion is ultimately right at it is great music even if hard to appreciate at the time. Jazz needs more groups like AEoC.

[Ian Thumwood]

Totally different, but no Ornette, no AEoC.

I think AEoC are probably more strident but still, read the comments on any website to see just how much this ensemble was loved by true fans. Ditto for Ornette. People who are in to this music are the true believers.

Watching clips like this you can more fully appreciate that these musicians are charlatans and the more fully-thought out style advocated by Ornette rather renders Benny Green's criticism obsolete.

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

The point was that Green wasn't just a hack. He came up with Club 11, and played with all the young "modernists" of the day. But it was against the background of the Brit dance and variety band tradition and training that took til the 60s, and the next generation, "untainted" to break.

You can see something of the same with Steve Race and Roland Kirk. Even Ronnie and Tubby Hayes to a large degree had this backstory and quite conservative judgements. In the Thomkins interview with Roland and Ronnie, Kirk appears sharp but open minded, Ronnie, very distrustful and in the mold. That old British suspicious thing with "art", you can't fool me.

BN.

And just a final point from me as I disappear, I wouldn't want all jazz to be like Ornette or shaped by him, much as I admire and love his music. Others who have had no such ambitions can equally move and communicate their humanity.

[Ian Thumwood]

Hope you are going to disappear for the night and not going to quit the board.

I agree there is room for alternatives and different possibilities to Ornette but I'm think that all the best jazz seems to have an "uncomfortable" element within it whether it concerns Freddie Keppard or Albert Ayler. The "British" attitude is true and my old piano teacher used to comment about the wretched dance bands he grew up playing in and how shocked his generation was the likes of Dizzy Gillespie and the likes. At a recent concert John Surman talked about how the " lid really came off " in the 1960s and I think it is fair to see that the likes of Ornette represented more of a schism than Be-bop 15-20 years earlier. Easy to appreciate why Green's generation was so behind the curve.

[charles t]

A tribute from Small's JazzClub, NY

NEWSLETTER & SCHEDULE
June 15th, 2015
I’d be remiss if I didn’t say a few words about the passing of Ornette Coleman. Ornette Coleman was a giant of this music. In Buddhism he would be called a “wheel-turning king” - a great spiritual force that comes only once in several generations and invokes a great change in the fabric of the Dharma. Our Jazz Dharma was fundamentally changed by Ornette’s trailblazing musical mind.

I had the inexplicably good fortune of being invited to Ornette’s Chelsea loft to play a session with him and some other musicians. This was thanks to photographer John Rogers who had a friendship with Ornette. When Ornette was in town with some time off he liked to play and John would suggest guys for him to play with. That afternoon I was there with drummer Anthony Pinciotti, bassist Gregg August and saxophonist Stacy Dillard. Ornette’s loft was awesome – a huge space with highly modern design and décor (would you expect anything less?). Ornette himself was shy and soft-spoken almost like a child, but his smile disarmed any nervousness and one immediately understood what a beautiful soul he was. Ornette greeted everyone cordially with soft handshakes and took us to a rehearsal studio section of the loft. There was no piano, which made sense, but he did own a pretty good keyboard. We were cowed to silence not knowing what to expect, but set up our instruments and waited to see what would happen.

But before any playing started, Ornette began to speak. His voice was gentle and somewhat high pitched. He had a mischievous twinkle in his eye and began to speak about the metaphysics of music. He had an elaborate theory about the relationship of sexual energy and each note of the scale. I wish could have recorded this but can only paraphrase from memory. Somehow, middle C represented the female sex organ and all the other tones where subjugated to this tone. For Ornette, sexual energy was musical energy and thereby the Universal Energy. It all made perfect sense to me at the time but we were dumbfounded and could only listen. We sat around him on the floor like the disciples with the Great Sage.

Finally we began to play. Nothing was said and no instructions were given. We just started playing – no preconceived idea, no tune, no chords, no imposed structure or rhythm – completely open. We started tentatively. Ornette didn’t play but just listened as we searched, trying to find something and uncertain what we were doing. And then – Ornette played a simple phrase that shattered us! Something so simple and yet it directed us immediately to a musical place where we then began to dwell. It went on like this: we would play and Ornette, every now and then, would play one or two little things which would direct us and set a new vibe, a different slant. He was like a shepherd herding his lambs and we followed and gamboled in his musical landscape. This improvisation lasted for more than one hour with out pause. In this hour I found myself in a musical world, which I never knew before. It was like being at a cocktail party with different groups of people holding different conversations and one wandering from one to the other seamlessly. The hour passed so quickly! Ornette, the entire time, smiling his secret smile and guiding us along in his dream-like music world.

This musical experience at Ornette’s loft is one that I constantly refer to and think about the most in my musical studies. What I learned that day has forever changed my personal approach to jazz and what I think it is. He freed me from my personal box and made me understand the nature of spontaneity as the essential essence of true jazz music – the ineffable unconscious that must appear with out contrivance. If you can connect to this than you have achieved the goal. In the brief time that I got to experience Ornette Coleman (which was only twice), he impressed me as a true artist, a true thinker and a philosopher. In addition I perceived him to be a near angelic-like spirit. My profound thanks to you, Mr. Coleman, our world is far the better because of you!

Regards,

Spike (Wilner)

[Serial_Apologist]

Thanks very much for this newsletter from Spike, Charles; what he writes concurs with my own impressions as to the parallels, if not convergences, between free jazz and free improvisation, and Zen, and I was immediately struck by what he says about Ornette's soft-spokenness, reminding me as it does that this was one of the most immediately apparent things about John Cage, who brought Zen ideas into the avant-garde western musical sphere after WW2.

From what I remember, Cage was somewhat skeptical of drawing parallels, but I once dropped them into a conversation with the British bass player Daryl Runswick, whose musical career has crossed the categorical divides between jazz, free improvisation and avant-garde concert music, remarking to my knowledge that he was the only person I could think of who had worked both with Ornette Coleman and John Cage (among many other names I'll refrain from dropping). Daryl replied that this might well be true, and he asked me if I minded if he used this likelihood in any of his future self-publicity!

I said no. Of course.