Ornette RIP

[Quarky]

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.

....Tantric Jazz? Explains to me why Ornette can be appreciated at many different levels. Lonely Woman just requires affinity to Blues/ Soul music. But added advantages for free jazz aficianados.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=337Aumt3bkg

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

Sonny Rollins
@ sonnyrollins
Jun 13

"My man Ornette, the great"

BN.

[Jazzrook]

Sonny Rollins
@ sonnyrollins
Jun 13

"My man Ornette, the great"



BN.

Albert Ayler talking about Ornette & Sonny in 1970: www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6RWMHVwKhk

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

Albert Ayler talking about Ornette & Sonny in 1970: www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6RWMHVwKhk

Many thanks for that! First time I've heard Albert speak. Totally unlike how I thought he would sound. I imagined more somber or reserved. Great stuff.

BN.

[Jazzrook]

Ornette Coleman was always singing the praises of tenor & alto saxophonist Red Connor who "was doing in the mid-'40s what Coltrane was doing in the '60s but in a gutbucket style".
As far as I know, Red never recorded but Prince Lasha, another associate of Ornette recorded this tribute to him from 'The Cry':

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_37hKAM7yRQ

[Serial_Apologist]

Ornette Coleman was always singing the praises of tenor & alto saxophonist Red Connors who "was doing in the mid-'40s what Coltrane was doing in the '60s but in a gutbucket style".
As far as I know, Red never recorded but Prince Lasha, another associate of Ornette recorded this tribute to him from 'The Cry':

www.youtube.com/watch?v=_37hKAM7yRQ

Fascinating track - taking up from Ornette's "Free Jazz" possibly inasmuch as having two basses - Gary Peacock and the, for me, unknown Mark Proctor. And who is drummer Gene Stone? One assumes maybe an assumed name for contractual niceties?

A bit off-topic but how many know that in 1966 Prince Lasha recorded "Insight" on CBS with a bunch of British guys, including Stan Tracey. Here's a precis of the album, now available apparently!

http://www.allmusic.com/album/insight-mw0001786001

Wiki says Lasha was living in Kensington in '67, which was when I was bedsitting there - we could have crossed paths!

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

“Red Connor was a very fine musician with a
sound somewhere in between Sonny Stitt and
Gene Ammons, or Wardell Gray and Dexter
Gordon, with a little Don Byas or Chu Berry in
there,” he recalls. “Booker Ervin listened quite a
bit to him, as you can hear in Booker’s playing. I
don’t know of any other players that had Red’s
particular style and his sound; he was very much
his own person and didn’t particularly pattern
himself on any of the forerunner tenor players.
Red knew all the Bebop tunes, he was playing
Bebop always, and I got a thorough training by
playing with the Red Connor band when I was in
high school." - David "Fathead" Newman.


Itzsa small (jazz) world.

BN.

[Jazzrook]

“Red Connor was a very fine musician with a
sound somewhere in between Sonny Stitt and
Gene Ammons, or Wardell Gray and Dexter
Gordon, with a little Don Byas or Chu Berry in
there,” he recalls. “Booker Ervin listened quite a
bit to him, as you can hear in Booker’s playing. I
don’t know of any other players that had Red’s
particular style and his sound; he was very much
his own person and didn’t particularly pattern
himself on any of the forerunner tenor players.
Red knew all the Bebop tunes, he was playing
Bebop always, and I got a thorough training by
playing with the Red Connor band when I was in
high school." - David "Fathead" Newman.


Itzsa small (jazz) world.

BN.

"Red Connor was one of the best saxophone players I ever heard in my life. He was a Fort Worth guy. But he was a great player. And I didn't realise how great he was until I listened to John Coltrane and Dexter Gordon etc. Red Connor was a great player. I heard him play many times and he had charisma. I mean, he would be playing bebop and people were coming off the streets and listening to him".

Dewey Redman from 'Texas Blues' by Alan B. Govenar

Such a shame that there are no Red Connor recordings.

Jazzrook

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

Change of program...Jazz on3 Monday night.

Ornette tribute...

"Jez Nelson is joined in the studio by John
Fordham to chart Coleman's career through
key recordings. The show includes favourite
tracks and personal reflections from some of
the musicians who worked closely with or
were inspired by him, including singer Neneh
Cherry, pianist Paul Bley, saxophonist
Branford Marsalis and bass player
Jamaaladeen Tacuma. We also hear
exclusive archive interviews with trumpeter
Don Cherry, and from the man himself:
'There's only 12 notes that satisfy the whole
world - either you make something out of it,
or you don't."

BN.

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

"A very moving funeral service for Ornette
Coleman took place earlier today in NYC, with
performances by Cecil Taylor, Henry Threadgill
and Jason Moran, Geri Allen and Ravi Coltrane,
Joe Lovano and David Murray, Jack DeJohnette
and Savion Glover and more. Coverage coming
soon to JazzTimes.com."


Copied from Richard Williams @ twitter.


BN.

[Jazzrook]

John Cage - "I don't like jazz but I like Ornette"

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

"...the only reason you need a key is to lock
your house when you go out." (Laughs)

Ornette, 2010.

So no cages?!

BN.

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

‘One of the most baffling things
about America,’ Amiri Baraka
wrote in 1963, ‘is that despite its
essentially vile profile, so much
beauty continues to exist here.’
Perhaps, he wondered, ‘it is
because of the vileness, or call it
adversity, that such beauty does exist.’.....

Tribute to Ornette in the current LRB by Adam Shatz.

"Dancing in your head"

BN.

BTW, just heard that Bob Whitlock, the bassist with Gerry and Chet, Art Pepper and a shed load of West Coast others has just died. High regarded by other bassists.

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

Alyn's JRR tomorrow 18/7, seems to be devoted to Ornette requests for the second half or so. And not the usual suspects. but tracks from "Something Else" (Jayne) on through his career, inc the Croydon Concert...

Set your Ferrographs....


BN.

Charlie Haden on "Jayne"...

CH: Yeah, Walter Norris and Don Payne played
those "Out of Nowhere" changes behind Ornette.
You can't do that!
EI: If I had heard that song, "Jayne," on the
radio in the fifties, I would have thought that
Ornette was a charlatan instead of a genius. He
needs to be supported the right way.
CH: They didn't know what he was doing. Not
that they couldn't play: Walter Norris was great,
man. I loved this gig I had back then playing for a
burlesque with Norris, Frank Butler, and a great
alto player who died too young, Joe Maini. But
as much as he knew about harmony, Norris
couldn't forget it when he played with Ornette.

- from Do the Math.

Its a very catchy tune, kind of Caribbean, something that Joe Harriot might have also composed. Interesting what he would of made of it in 1958.

[Lat-Literal]

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)

A very good piece on an admirable and brilliant musician.