{"id":13910,"date":"2022-06-14T09:52:12","date_gmt":"2022-06-14T14:52:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/?p=13910"},"modified":"2022-06-14T09:52:12","modified_gmt":"2022-06-14T14:52:12","slug":"ornette-colemans-first-two-albums-resurface-and-reveal-the-genesis-of-genius","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/?p=13910","title":{"rendered":"Ornette Coleman’s first two albums resurface and reveal the “genesis of genius.”"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Album review: Ornette Coleman, The Genesis of Genius: The Contemporary Albums<\/em> (Contemporary)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Prepare to be haunted by a voice. Now, step inside the realm of Ornette Coleman. Few instrumental voices betray their player\u2019s innards as deeply. The person inside that sound, strange to some, became fast friends with me when I first heard it. It\u2019s a voice I\u2019ve always felt close to, every time I hear it again. It tickles a brotherly bone in me, though we\u2019ve never met personally.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s one of the rare qualities his saxophone playing evinces. And his mind and soul are on synchronistic display on his first two albums, finally re-issued as a box set on the Contemporary label. You readily hear and feel it all: a huge heart, a natural wit and strong empathy with his fellow players, his rhythm section as true fellows.<\/p>\n

Trumpeter Don Cherry, at this juncture, almost as distinctive a voice, unlike any trumpeter you\u2019ve heard. His trumpet tone splatters and smears at times. He sounds like a man talking and singing at once. Part of the singularity of both players was their unusual axes. Ornette’s white plastic alto sax and Don Cherry’s pocket trumpet (see photo below).<\/p>\n

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Ornette Coleman (left) and Don Cherry. Courtesy Pinterest. <\/em><\/p>\n

Ornette\u2019s sound is conversational and declamatory, but was also controversial at the time, the ultra-avant-garde. Some conventional players thought he didn’t know how to. Yet, he swings marvelously, as do his bandmembers which belies why this sounded so alien to so many people back in the late 50s (or was it mainly certain critics?). Plus, bluesiness also permeates this music. helping immerse it in a grand jazz tradition even as he\u2019s like nobody you\u2019ve ever heard.<\/p>\n

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Ornette’s “Genesis of a Genius” re-issue box set is available in CD (upper left) or vinyl LP.<\/em><\/p>\n

The music is artistically direct, but never simplistic. Coleman said “Let’s play the melody not the background,” suggesting his one big step beyond conventional chord changes (after the first album here, he jettisoned piano in his groups, though much later added electric guitar). However, pianist Walter Norris on the first album comps with suitable harmonic ambiguity and solos with boppish elan.<\/p>\n

Drummer Shelly Manne, who plays on the first album, once said Ornette’s saxophone “is the sound of someone laughing and crying.” Ornette\u2019s voice is also one of the most amiable I\u2019ve heard on a horn in a long while and here the voice and style are fully formed on his first two albums.<\/p>\n

The tune \u201cCompassion\u201d is reflective as much as an outpouring of feeling with a sense of wry irony within the sound of suffering. So he creates his own substantial “background” straight from his melodic soul.<\/p>\n

This reissue is especially a find, a revelation, because these two were over-shadowed by his ensuing series of superb albums for Atlantic Records, now collected in a 6-CD box titled Beauty is a Rare Thing: The Complete Atlantic Recordings. <\/em>That collection reveals Ornette\u2019s full flowering as a composer, with a number of now-classic tunes, including \u201cRamblin\u2019,\u201d \u201cLonely Woman,\u201d \u201cUna Muy Bonita,\u201d \u201cPeace,\u201d and the epic 37-minute \u201cFree Jazz,\u201d with a \u201cdouble quartet\u201d that included Eric Dolphy and Freddie Hubbard.<\/p>\n

If you love that stuff, or still tread through it with uncertainty or curiosity, you ought to hear where it comes from. That\u2019s Genesis of Genius<\/em>, this Contemporary set. The compositions are well-crafted but not as maturely as the Atlantics. And one technical complaint: Don Cherry\u2019s trumpet is sometimes too low in the mix so it’s then difficult to hear his full phrasing on his solos. But his quite audible extended solo on “Angel Voice” is a buoyantly lesson in amiable, accomplished boppish storytelling.<\/p>\n

\u201cLorraine,\u201d on the second Contemporary album Tomorrow is the Question!<\/em>, is a languid, yearning yet witty ballad that ought to be a classic. Akin to the soon-famous Atlantic ballad “Lonely Woman,” it\u2019s titled for the late pianist Lorraine Geller, \u201cbecause she was a wonderful piano player,\u201d Ornette explains in the liber notes. Don Cherry notes correctly that drummer Shelly Manne\u2019s all-brushes solo is \u201cas musical as drum solo can be.\u201d<\/p>\n

Try this out:<\/p>\n