Ornette Coleman, Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation

[Guy Berger]

I've generally slotted this into the "historically important, but not especially good" category. I love much of Ornette's music, and have nothing against this particular "format" - Ornette did it a lot better on "Happy House" over a decade later, and I think Don Cherry's Symphony for Improvisers is great. But while I respect it for taking a big first step, I think it is primarily of historical interest. (I would pass similar judgment on Ascension, but for different reasons.)

Opinions?

Guy

[Rooster_Ties]

Personally, I like it a fair bit better than Ascension, but I hear what you're saying.

I think it's an important recording, and one that I can enjoy a lot. That said, I don't think it showcases the very best of what I like in the rest of Ornette's music -- which is really great tunes (writing), with incredible and imaginative melodies - both the heads, and the soloing (as a near organic extension of the heads).

In that way, I see "Free Jazz" as an extension of the other kinds of things Ornette did around that time - but one that is better enjoyed 'viscerally' (almost as a sound collage), than with a keen ear towards every detail. For instance, I'm not sure there's quite the level of nuanced interplay to be found in Free Jazz, as in other smaller-group Ornette recordings from that timeframe.

"Free Jazz" is a marvelous thing. But I understand and can even sympathize with Ornette fans who find it to be somewhat lacking, in comparison with a lot of other Ornette and similar extensions (Cherry, etc.).

FWIW, I think "Happy House" is just a damn great tune, so I think it works better. Plus, to my ears, I don't think it sounds like two independent groups playing at the same time - quite like "Free Jazz" does.

Haven't heard either one in a while, so this is all based on my memory of the recordings.

Edited May 11, 2011 by Rooster_Ties

[JSngry]

I think it's a fine album, although I heard it literally for decades on LP before CD, so I'm used to the break between sides, which might be coloring my perception.

Having said that, I don't think either trumpeter is heard to any particular advantage, although having said that, what happens behind both of them is pretty nifty.

And actually, I do find plenty of nuanced detail in the overall work, although it might take a while to get it out of the overall mass of sound. It's a lot like Bitches Brew in that regard.

Either way, once you get past Cherry, Side Two, the rhythm section spots are just stunning, I think.

No, it's not as "well-formed" as Ornette's small group work of the same time, but given the time and place, I wouldn't expect it to be. That book hadn't been written yet!

[Rooster_Ties]

And actually, I do find plenty of nuanced detail in the overall work, although it might take a while to get it out of the overall mass of sound.

It's a lot like Bitches Brew in that regard.

That could explain why it took me a good 10 years really, to finally get inside the Bitches Brew studio recordings (and even now, I'm not always sure I did). The funny thing is - I took to nearly everything Miles did in the 70's (even "On the Corner"), before I felt like I even "half got" those Bitches Brew sides.

Edited May 11, 2011 by Rooster_Ties

[JSngry]

Densities are funny things. Some yield easier than others, especially when you have a lot of "solo lines" going on at the same time (even if they are functioning as backgrounds/background fragments), as is the case with both of those albums.

I for get if it's behind Hubbard or Cherry, but at one point, Ornette and Dolphy get into this exchange of "vocalized" phrases that is just delirious. But it's only one thing going on at the time, and it's not the "featured" thing at the time.

[marcoliv]

It took me 2,5 years to connect myself with Bitches Brew.

I haven't found a way yet with Free Jazz...and i'm trying since 2003...

MCO

[JSngry]

I came to it backwards, in a way,,,in the space of about a year, went from Beatles/Hendrix to Zappa, to jazz in general, "avant-garde" in particular, and actually, swear to god, heard both Bitched Brew & Free Jazz for the first times on the same night, while visiting one of my Dad's Army buddies in Louisville, Kentucky. Bit of a story, that one, already told on Board Krypton, and not worth repeating, point being just that all that "weird" stuff was very much in my wheelhouse when I came to it. Different time then, it was...

[7/4]

I love it. Doesn't seem all that weird to me at this point, hasn't in years.

[jazzbo]

I still need to explore Free Jazz more, I haven't played it nearly enough to mine its rich veins. It's quite an accomplishment, and I know I'll find much to enjoy about it in the future.

Bitches Brew was something I heard much earlier in my listening world and that hit me immediately. And still offers me much in the way of listening joy and intellectual prodding.

[AllenLowe]

important recording - when I was at University of Michigan in 1971 I took a composition class and tried to emulate the form of this record, which I first listened to when I was 14. It didn't work out too well (the Prof was somewhat bewildered) but, to this day, this record can still surprise me as it surprised them in '71.

[Tom Storer]

I loved "Free Jazz" the first time I heard it, and still do. I love the rich double rhythm section, the mix of personalities among the horns, the whole free-association liberty of the thing. I would take it to the desert island (but not "Ascension").

[jeffcrom]

"Free Jazz" is not without its weaker moments, but it's still brilliant. Scott LaFaro's solo near the end is one of the most beautiful improvised melodies I've ever heard.

[Rooster_Ties]

I never 'got' Ascension, but I took to Free Jazz fairly quickly. The playing on Free Jazz seems a touch more restrained, slightly "less chaotic" chaos - if you want a soundbite to describe it. Not having my copy with me at the moment, I wanted to remind myself of the personnel...

Left channel

• Ornette Coleman – alto saxophone
  
• Don Cherry – pocket trumpet
  
• Scott LaFaro – bass
  
• Billy Higgins – drums

Right channel

• Eric Dolphy – bass clarinet
  
• Freddie Hubbard – trumpet
  
• Charlie Haden – bass
  
• Ed Blackwell – drums

I've forgotten, are the channels isolated well enough that one can listen 'mostly exclusively' to one half of the group without the other? - and vice versa? Maybe that's the dumbest idea ever (probably not a first for me!), but I think I would have tried that trick years ago, when I first discovered the piece.

Edited May 12, 2011 by Rooster_Ties

[JSngry]

The LP I've got has the two quartets in separate channels, but not discretely so. You do get some bleed.

But it's ok.

RE: Free Jazz vs Ascension the long-time comparison is that one is "light" & the other "dark", but to me, one is a family picnic, the other a church service.

Of course, those two things often go together, so...

[clifford_thornton]

Always liked it, though it's been a few years (at least) since it's been on the turntable. Honestly, to me it swings pretty hard and is melodically inventive - especially among Ornette and Dolphy. Even though the group didn't perform, I would be curious to hear what the version with Bobby Bradford and Steve Lacy would have sounded like!

Ascension is one I've also logged a lot of hours with, and I dig it very much - more for the soloing than the collective screams.

[Guy Berger]

My "issue" with Ascension is with the soloists which are IMHO a mixed bag - I love the ensembles, love Trane's solo - would have rather had an avant-garde concerto for Trane.

Guy

[Joe]

Have not spun FJ in some time either... what stands out in my memories of the record are Dolphy's contributions. IIRC, this was the record where I first encountered Dolphy, and Dolphy's bass clarinet. I'd never heard anything like it, and it prompted me to purchase OUT TO LUNCH without idea #1 as to what it actually sounded like. Hearing OTL so soon after FJ has since probably colored my opinion of the latter; I preferred the spaciousness of the Dolphy session to the density (superb descriptor, Jim) of the Coleman.

If only Bradford had been available for the final recording...

[Rooster_Ties]

If only Bradford had been available for the final recording...

My CD's are 1,000 miles away (else I'd look myself) -- can somebody remind me of the details?

I'm not sure I remember anything about Bradford having supposed to've been on FJ.

[clifford_thornton]

I think it was the fall of 1960 that Ornette called me to New York to make the Free Jazz album (Atlantic) and that was right in the middle of the semester. I told him I wouldn't do it—I talked to professors and they all said I'd fail or get an incomplete that I couldn't recover from. I wanted to finish my education, get a job, and provide for my family, so that was the answer. At any rate, I didn't go in 1960 and in 1961 I dropped out of school for a bit because I needed to work full time. Ornette sent for me again (he and Don Cherry had parted ways) and this time I decided I would go to New York.

Interview here.

[ep1str0phy]

I think that Ascension's mixed bag of personnel is just part of the flavor. There's a bit of a manifesto quality to it, Trane being the intersection of, one the one hand, this logical conclusion of mainstream/post-bop virtuosity and, on the other, a father figure and icon of the maturing but still new and hairy avant-garde. It gets a little schizophrenic in a way that Free Jazz is not--the differences in approach/shift in rhythm section feels getting wildly divergent from solo to solo toward the end--but that sense of mania, the sheer heterogeneity encompassed within it, plays into this very dialogic, Diasporic sense of music-as-community-ritual/social polyphony. I don't think Ascension's approach is in any way more valid that Free Jazz's, but I think it makes its point as a period earmark much more dramatically and powerfully. In other words, Free Jazz feels at all points like Ornette's music, but there are times--and wonderfully so--that Ascension gets close to a music that is not Trane's.

Speaking to that a bit, I think that my negative feelings about Ascension have to do with my personal distaste for a couple of the soloists' approaches (rendered much more vividly here than on Free Jazz, if only because the everyone gets a distinct soloist + rhythm section moment). Everyone showed up to play, and the tutti passages are fittingly big and explosive. At the same time, I think the sense of disjunctness that is one of Ascension's strengths is at times its weakness. Freddie Hubbard was a monster trumpet player who was wonderful in a straight ahead context, but (with the exception of Components and maybe Out to Lunch) he never played a convincing free solo to me; he just pops back into this weird pseudo-Speak No Evil mode when his solo starts, which suggests (but doesn't quite go there) this mainstream-y reluctance to make a full-on void dive. It's a buzz kill.

On the other hand--and this really isn't a problem with Free Jazz--avant-garde egalitarianism dropped Dewey Johnson into the party, which I'm still out to lunch on. There's no doubt that one of the "iconic" free jazz trumpets, like Don Cherry, Donald Ayler, or even Eddie Gale at that time, could have cut a lot harder. As it is, Johnson's solo sags in a way that shows the weaker parts of the "all-in" aesthetic. I don't really have this issue with any of the other soloists, but when you have Pharoah, Shepp, Tchicai, and Marion Brown as your other horns, I'd rather you better bring a weapons-grade trumpet to your knife fight.

I think what turns me off to Free Jazz, on the other hand, is the unrelenting sense of rhythmic stasis. The Science Fiction sessions will often get the clear vote because (1) the pieces are shorter and Higgins and Blackwell get to play in plenty of different time feels and (2) what the rhythm section is doing, Haden included, is much weirder and more open-ended on the big band Sci-Fi stuff. Free Jazz has this incessant walk, walk, walk and ride cymbal pulse that is attractive as a sort of idiomatic "statement" (very clearly superimposing a lot of bebop tropes onto a non-bebop situation, or, rather, suggesting the notion of slapping two bop rhythm sections on top of one another), but it gets to a little overbearing after a while. Even with Prime Time--by the 70's, Ornette's group music had learned to breathe a bit.

I do love how interactive and on an even plane the horns are--in a way that wasn't foregrounded as consistently and obstinately in a lot of the Science Fiction stuff (with the exception of, IIRC Elizabeth, which may be totally collective--need to listen again)... even during the "solos," there's this sense of density that is really unique. Also, title be damned, I don't get the sense that Free Jazz was anything more than a sized-up experiment on Ornette's part (like Ascension was "just" a big band album--but that one still has a manifesto-like weight that I'm not sure Free Jazz has); it's not a logical conclusion, but rather a goal that was reached, assessed, and developed. Taken as a fluid piece of work--or, rather, guys working stuff out--Free Jazz is awesome.

Edited May 12, 2011 by ep1str0phy

[jeffcrom]

I spent a (mostly) enjoyable hour tonight listening to "First Take" and "Free Jazz" from the Ornette Atlantic box set. During "First Take" I thought, "Wow - this is not nearly as good as I remembered." But then the real deal came up next, and I still think that it's brilliant - superior in every way to the first attempt. I agree that Freddie Hubbard is not a great free-jazz soloist, but his solo on the master take is so much better than his attempt on take one - that one is an incoherent mess. And while Don Cherry's spot is not his finest moment, that section has the most interesting interplay among the horns. I enjoyed hearing FJ again for the first time in a while.

And ep1str0phy, I don't agree with everything you said, but I thought that your post was a great one.