I read a book on Ornette, by Maria Golia, that I got at Politics and Prose in DC, on a visit to my brother. It is an ok book, though a bit weak on the music itself. More attention paid to background and context.
It made me want to listen again to Ornette. What stands out to me:
The early albums with piano, like Something Else! We have a more traditional chord-change structure, but Ornette's compositions are superb, like "The Blessing," which has been covered by many other artists.
The original quartet, with Haden (or LaFaro), Billy Higgins (or Ed Blackwell), and Don Cherry. The Shape of Jazz to Come and the other classic albums of this period.
Free Jazz, with a double quartet structure. Ornette's two bassists and two drummers, Eric Dolphy and Freddy Hubbard alongside Ornette and Cherry.
In All Languages: a reprise of the original quartet, + recordings of the same tunes with Ornette's electric group Prime Time.
The Song X Album, with Pat Metheny. I saw this group in Ithaca. It had Haden and two drummers, Jack DeJohnette and Ornette's son Denardo. Metheny admired Ornette from early on and also recorded some wonderful things with Haden later on, like Under the Missouri Skies.
Sound Grammar. Ornette's prize-winning late masterpiece.
I saw an Ornette based group (without Ornette) in Davis, CA in the 1970s, called Old and New Dreams. It had Dewey Redmond, Cherry, Charlie Haden, and Ed Blackwell. So it was like Ornette's quartets, but with Redmond on sax instead of Ornette himself.
Think of Coltrane's album, The Avant-Garde. It has Cherry, Haden, and Blackwell, and features compositions by Ornette, Cherry, and "Bemsha Swing" by Monk.
(When I think of LaFaro, I think of someone who was in two key groups of jazz history, Ornette's quartet and then Bill Evans's trio. Then he died in a car accident very young. Some say Haden is better suited to Ornette's music than LaFaro, but I'm glad we have both bassists!)
Making all these connections among Ornette and all the other musicians he influenced. I think too of Haden and his recordings with Keith Jarrett or Hank Jones...
2 comments:
It’s great to see the amazing “In All Languages” in this list. In summer 1987 at KZSU, I did my usual morning-jazz show, but I also did a more hybrid show in the evening called “Dancing in Your Head”, after the Ornette tune and album, but the theme song I always started with was “Music News” from “In All Languages.”
I think that was meaningful to me because I could buy it just as it came out, as opposed to the early quartet recordings that came out when I was a fetus or infant.
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