Search - Ornette Coleman :: Free Jazz 1960

The joy of jazz

Funkmeister G | 08/16/2000

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I picked this cd up @ the markets for a very reasonable sum, having only heard FREE JAZZ itself before but had been immersing myself in that & was flabbergasted to see that as merely 1 track [all 37 minutes of it] on this collection of material from 1960, & decided it was very much worth the purchase + I could see what his regular songs sounded like. The packaging looked slightly 'unofficial', a multicoloured drawing of the man & his sax & obnoxious writing over it. I love Revolving Doors where you can picture Ornette running about the city w/ a briefcase in a mad rush. I tried to find out what albums this & tunes like Rise & Shine were from only to find most of them were previously unreleased until the 1993 box set Beauty Is A Rare Thing & it would be very tempting to invest/indulge in that set which this would then seem to be a sampler of. There are liner notes giving a timeline of Ornette's life from being born in Forth Worth, Texas in 1930 to having his instruments damaged by angry crowds in 1950 who couldn't handle his playing to heralding a new era w/ his avant-garde stylings. It goes on to say nowadays he is accepted & the music not too controversial, well this is hardly true when you play it & find ignorant idiots commenting "oh is that Lisa Simpson & friends? haha". The reason these comments annoy me is because Ornette Coleman is a true artist w/ a vision & the ability to craft something beautiful & unique, here being helped by players such as Don Cherry, Eric Dolphy, Freddie Hubbard & more. This music comes thoroughly recommended from me & as another Ornette fan Captain Beefheart said "IF YOU GOT EARS, YOU GOTTA LISTEN!"."