Ornette RIP

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

Just now on the Guardian web....

"Ornette Coleman , one of the most
influential and innovative figures in
jazz history, has died at the age of 85.
He suffered a cardiac arrest, according
to his family, and died in Manhattan,
where he lived."

BN.

I'm sure there will be a lot of coverage and tributes etc. One of the genuine giants.

[PUSB]

Just now on the Guardian web....

"Ornette Coleman , one of the most
influential and innovative figures in
jazz history, has died at the age of 85.
He suffered a cardiac arrest, according
to his family, and died in Manhattan,
where he lived."

BN.

I'm sure there will be a lot of coverage and tributes etc. One of the genuine giants.

Yes, absolutely one of the giants - like all of the greats, the music always seems distinctive and somewhat mysterious.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Yes, absolutely one of the giants - like all of the greats, the music always seems distinctive and somewhat mysterious.

A great, great loss to the world(s) of Music.

[Serial_Apologist]

Just now on the Guardian web....

"Ornette Coleman , one of the most
influential and innovative figures in
jazz history, has died at the age of 85.
He suffered a cardiac arrest, according
to his family, and died in Manhattan,
where he lived."

BN.

I'm sure there will be a lot of coverage and tributes etc. One of the genuine giants.

Thanks for letting us know, BN.

Do people recall the first time they heard Ornette Play? For me it was in the "jazz hole" - a school storage room which we took over, whitewashed the walls, installed a stereo and a beat-up upright piano, lined with pics of our heroes ripped out from various periodicals, and educated ourselves through our respective little record collections. We're talking 1962/3. Anything stylistially pre-bop was a no-no - "Humph Lyttelton - nah, too mainstream mate" - yet I can remember us hearing "Blues Connotation" and thinking that the improvisation hadn't much to do with the tune, and why was the saxophonist mostly dragging behind the tempo?!

Years later, when I grabbed every available opportunity to chat with jazz musicians, one question I nearly always remembered to ask those who had lived through the 1950s and '60s was: what did you first make of Ornette? "Well it was a bit strange, to begin with", Trevor Watts told me, "until you realised that breaking away from chord changes was what you had been waiting for somebody to do". Trombonist Paul Rutherford told me that Ornette Coleman had never presented him with any difficulties, and that he had cottoned on right from the start. Ian Carr made the point that the improvisation, however free, always took place against a rhythm section that swung like crazy, this making Coleman's concept easier to grasp from the start than, say, Cecil Taylor's. In my own case I think I got to appreciate the improvising before Ornette's ability to create melodies of great novelty and individuality that were at the same time beautiful and memorable, especially the ballads, and we can all probably name our favourite. Later on I figured out that breaking free of repeat structures enabled greater egalitarianism between all participants, and that everybody being thus drawn into where the music was going amounted to a political statement that could be applied to music making worldwide.

The more one thinks about Ornette the greater seem to be the implications of what he did for music.

R.I.P. Ornette.

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

Really strange, I was listening to "Something Else" last night for the first time in years and the first Ornette I bought. It struck me how trapped and hesitant he sounded (unlike Don Cherry) by the "prison of the chords" and Walter Norris's piano.

The next album "Tomorrow is the question" (no piano) Shelly Manne on drums, was "99% it" and he was off and flying.

He really DID change the course of this (and other) music. I watched an old interview with Jack Bruce and he said it was Ornette that spun him around, not Coltrane. Ornette to blame for Cream?!

Richard Williams has just said it will be very difficult to find the right words to do justice to his achievements.

It certainly will.

BN.

I had Ornette's 1959 "Lorraine" played on JRR R3 for my 60th birthday. Now I feel much older. And immensely sadder.

[eighthobstruction]

I never enjoyed Ornette Coleman....Like Bluesy wrote (not that he was criticising) , I always found he didn't play the notes that I wanted....but I realise OC's importance....Calum da Ja would be particularly sorrowed by his passing....RIP Ornette....

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

There was such an obvious "joy" in his playing. Clifford Brown had the same in a vastly different style and epoch.

Immensely human. Immensely 'blues' in Ornette's case.

BN.

[Alyn_Shipton]

BN time to dust off the C120s of the Ornette Jazz file series from 2000. What a charming, lovely man he was. And every time I heard him in concert, as surprising as he was familiar. Went to his Meltdown night at South Bank with Master Musicians of Joujouka which was pretty weird, but my best memories will be a storming quartet set at Cheltenham, and the Naked Lunch live projection at the Barbican.

[Roehre]

I haven't got that many Jazz recordings but Ornette Coleman is well represented, the 6CD set Beauty is a rare thing on Rhino/Atlantic prominently among them.

A great musician has gone
RIP Ornette Coleman

[doversoul1]

Good-bye to another name from my youth (quite a bit later than James Last) . I don’t listen to jazz these days but I am glad I came across his music when I had the right kind of energy to absorb and enjoy it. R.I.P.

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

Yes Alyn, THAT should be repeated. US jazz stations are breaking schedules to run tracks, tributes and reviews. I know its R3 and I no longer have any expectations of anything civil but given his standing?

BN.

One of my favorite non musical Ornette moments was his being interviewed on the Today programme by John Humphreys! I have the tape, I have the broken ribs! Surreal ain't the word.

BN.

[teamsaint]

Amazing talent.

"This is our music."

RIP

[Alyn_Shipton]

R3 is putting the GSJ Ornette edition out on Saturday night as a tribute - can't see the series getting a repeat...

[Ian Thumwood]

Ornette was typical of those musicians who were once considered "avant garde" but through their shear melodic ability eventually win over a doubtful jazz audience. This seems to happen time and time again in jazz starting from the likes of Thelonious Monk but also including musicians like Herbie Nichols and Lester Bowie. For me the great thing about Ornette Coleman was that he may have been radical yet I think he was still deeply rooted in the blues and very much part of the same milieu that produced someone like Charley Patten. It is interesting how he jettisoned the reliance on chord changes and scales for improvisation and perhaps returned jazz to it's earlier method of melodic improvisation whilst making the music far more radical. As startlingly original as he was, his music was always connected to what the music should be about with the ability to swing and strong sense of the blues being key ingredients.

Part of the appeal of someone like Ornette Coleman is the fact that he was startlingly different and discovering his music is like belonging to an exclusive club. It took me a while to get in to his music but once you're in, the whole approach makes immediate sense. It is weird that he has enjoyed a reputation that has mirrored someone like Monk in that the compositions were initially treated with scepticism yet they have very much moved in to the mainstream. I've lost count of the musicians I've heard perform his music who might have been considered to be part of a tradition opposed to Ornette's ideas yet the hummable nature of his writing and the sing -song approach of his improvising can easily be appreciated by someone who might otherwise be in to Lester Young.

I only managed to hear Ornette Coleman perform live on one occasion and it was hugely compelling listening to his improvisatory lines bounce off the two basses as well as the jollity of Denardo's drumming. At first, it takes a degree of adjusting your ear just as you do when hearing someone perform Shakespeare but allowing yourself to plunge in to the experience makes you realise how naturalistic his approach was - something I think he had in common with the play-right.

My introduction to his music was through the "Song X" album with Pat Metheny with "Kathelin Gray" and "Mob Job" being absolute favourites. When he embarked on his Harmolodic experiments, the music may have moved with the times and inspired a whole new generation of musicians, yet the same sense of good-natured fun pervaded his music.

Free Improvisation is a double edged sword. When it works well, there are few things more compelling. It is also capable of being spectacularly dull. In being so keenly indebted to the jazz that had gone before, I felt that Ornette Coleman epitomised the joy of this spirited music in a fashion that perhaps only the Art Ensemble of Chicago have matched. I think his towering genius and originality will be missed but the humility with which launched this revolution is unlikely to be seen again. Without doubt, jazz can be considered to have been all the better as a consequence of his music.

[eighthobstruction]

....I'm pretty sure R4 Six O'Clock News just played some free jazz trumpet as a example of Ornette....