But empathy evolved from Haden’s extensive rehearsing with Coleman, and in the 1959 Atlantic sessions you can hear how well Haden understood the general directions of Coleman’s and Cherry’s harmonic motions. Haden chooses bass tones that relate ambiguously or consonantly to the soloists‘ phrases, in lines that derive from the soloitsts‘ movement (including the times when he creates harmonic counterpoint). Haden has credited Wilbur Ware’s major influence on his own style, and in amplifying the good humor of Coleman in „Music Always,“ haden proves to be another virtuoso of rhythmic spontaneity. The Coleman Quartet anticipates some of the Ayler groups‘ independence in „Change of the Century,“ in which Haden arrives at an apex of spontaneous contraditions; the soloists advance despite his insults. It’s the bass solo that begins the distortion of reason and emotion in „Focus on Sanity“; the unstable dissonances that rise in his solo are the suppressed form of the mad yelps and lashing trills in Coleman’s. (S. 37)
[…]
What’s happening is thematic improvisation. It’s not the Rollins way, in which motivic recall is central among the linear and dramatic solo elements, but more like the way of Benny Carter in Swingin‘ the 20s (1958) or such earlier solos as „Crazy Rhythm“ (1937), in which the essense of a motive informs every phrase of the improvisation. Coleman’s motivic evolution is a matter of continually reshaping the initiating cell. Even if specific intervals become approximate, the rhythmic shape remains, intact, compressed, or extended; far less commonly, the intervallic shape remains while the rhythmic shape is distorted; the cell motive is heard at the beginning, within, or at the end of phrases; it is upended, turned on its side, and viewed from different perspectives again and again; its meaning is altered and renewed. (S. 38)
[…]
The Coleman Quartet’s „Ramblin'“ is quite different from the 1958 „Ramblin'“ by the Bley Quintet. This new performance certainly recalls Kenneth Rexroths’s often-quoted remark about Coleman: that „the whole group is from the Southwest, and behind them you can hear the old bygone banjos and tack pianos, and the first hard moans of country blues.“ Though „Ramblin'“ remains a blues, the freely substitued-upon changes stretch to irregular lengths, even in the theme; bravado begins, answered by the strummed bass; reality confronts the bravado, then another bass reply; the third theme phrase is two bars by the horns in unison, after which they separate to ride their ramshackle ways on the frontier of myth. In solo, Coleman’s phrases come from Kansas City and country music, excitement and singing appear, and a growl becomes a dynamic motive. Responding to this prairie solo, Cherry is witty and personal, his jaunty lines spitting tobacco as he rides the landscape. Haden’s strummed replies in the theme are a Bo Diddley vamp which then alternats with walking choruses in his accompaniments; the vamp reminds us this frontier is vast and lonely, even if the loneliness is as stylized as a cowboy song of abandoned love. Moreover, this syncopated drone is exttracted whole from folk musc — Haden had been inspired by his brother, a bassist in country music bands — and his bass solo in „Ramblin'“ is even a strummed bluegrass song. Even the fleeting satires of Coleman and Cherry are a feature of folk humor; like a Jimmy Yancey solo, the folk sources of „Ramblin'“ are not betrayed but parodied, distorted, or otherwise set at a distance: „Ramblin'“ is folk myth. It fades on trumpet and chirping alto surrounded by the Western panorama and ends by snapping out the abrupt reality phrase, and you take for granted that „Ramblin'“ does not end in these final notes. (In jazz, as in history, the sequel to „Ramblin'“ came seventeen years later, in Charles Tyler’s Saga of the Outlaws.) (S. 39f.)
[…]
[H]ere is a bit of trivia from Dorothy Kilgallen’s New York Journal-American gossip column that captures the flavor of the period’s publicity: „Leonard Bernstein took his family to the Five Spot to hear Ornette Coleman, who seems the musician most likely to affect the history of jazz this season, although many of his fellow players … maintain that his offbeat style won’t have a lasting effect. More objective aficionados think he’s fabulous.“ (S. 40)
[…]
Coleman himself saw no reason why any music that was as natural as his should continue to be so controversial.
The crisp, precise drummer Billy Higgins left the quartet in the spring of 1960 and was replaced by Edward Blackwell, from the New Orleans bop underground. Blackwell advances the New Orleans tradition of not just accompaniment but, as pioneer Baby Dodds would have said, „playing for the benefit of the band.“ His time provided the quartet a subtle, behind the beat, and almighty swing, while his palette of sounds added new depth of color. And now an element of black humor entered their expressive capacities. The major result of their three midsummer recording sessions was This Is Our Music, and much of the rest is on To Whom Who Keeps a Record, issued only in Japan. (S. 41)
[…]
Coleman says, „… I realized that if I changed the harmonic structure or the tempo structure while someone else is doing something, they couldn’t stay there, they’d have to change with me. So I would bring that about myself a lot, knowing where I could take the melody and then show the distance between where I could go and still come directly back to that melody, instead of trying to show the different inversions of the same thing.“ Here is an orchestral work that’s improvised without tempo or meter, that moves into abstract tones and tonalities, yet that develops a detailed musical conception to its conclusion. Even though „Beauty Is a Rare Thing“ was recorded as early as 1960, the doors it opens would not begin to be explored in jazz for several years yet. (S. 43f.)
[…]
The album with LaFaro, Ornette!, has the three longest solos Coleman had recorded to date, all in the same medium-fast tempo, all organized via motivic evolution. These January 1961 solos may have modified the spontaneity of his earlier improvising in favor of formal unity, but in terms of rich variety of phrasing and lyricism nobody else in jazz at the time approached the quality of Coleman’s playing. (S. 44)
[…]
Free Jazz is a collective improvisation by the Ornette Coleman Double Quartet: Coleman, Cherry, LaFaro and Higgins on the left stereo channel, and Freddie Hubbard, trumpet, Dolphy, bass clarinet, Haden, and Blackwell on teh right. Each player „solos“ for several minutes while the others create lines inpsired by the soloist or are silent if they choose to be; also, the soloist may choose to improvise upon what he hears in the others. The objective is spontaneous ensemble structure achieved through responsive, simultaneous motivic development. Textures continually change from one to all four horns, over the rhythm. Don Cherry proves the readiest, most varied player here, and during his „solo“ section the collective ideal is most nearly realized; twice Cherry permits Coleman to assume the lead voice and concludes by playing obbligato to a Coleman-Dolphy game of phrase catch. (S. 47f.)
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aus: John Litweiler, The Freedom Principle: Jazz After 1958, New York, 1984, Chapter 2: Ornette Coleman: The Birth of Freedom, S. 31-58
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