Ornette Coleman (1930–2015)
Born in Fort Worth, Texas, Coleman began his musical career playing in local R&B and bebop groups. During the 1950s he developed a profoundly original music. His influence dates from the autumn of 1959 when he took his quartet to play at the Five Spot in New York. Here ‘free jazz’ became an established fact.
Coleman devised a musical theory of harmolodic playing. His quartet had no chordal instruments, piano or guitar, and his music was non-harmonic and not based on chord changes. This new approach polarised opinion: to some he was the Messiah who had come to save music, to others, at best a charlatan who could not really play.
His debut was so stunning that the rest of his career, going in fits and starts, with long reclusive episodes, seems something of an anti-climax. His most intensively creative period was in the 1950s and thereafter there was little development in his acoustic music. A foray into rock experimentation with his band Prime Time produced patchy results, with his compositional flair seemingly absent.
He was also a talented composer, and a great admirer of European classical music, although his compositions in this vein have had scant recognition in classical musical circles. His legacy lies with his work for small groups, several of which have become standards.
Biography by David Goodridge
Different kinds of things
In two interviews with Les Tomkins from 1968 Coleman explains his musical philosophy, his early years in music, how he progressed despite early criticism, and his dislike of playing in clubs.
Read the original article in Crescendo, April 1968, pp12, 14.
Ornette Coleman: Interview 1
Image Details
| Interview date | 1st January 1968 |
|---|---|
| Interview source | Jazz Professional |
| Image source credit | |
| Image source URL | |
| Reference number | |
| Forename | Ornette |
| Surname | Coleman |
| Quantity | 1 |
Interview Transcription
Our concert at the Royal Albert Hall on February 29 was a very good success, musically and socially, and we hope to do it again. It was really a challenge all the way, from the amount of time in which we had to get it together to the actual performing of the music.
We try, at least, to stay in the concert field. We haven’t been in any clubs this year so far, and it doesn’t seem like we’re going to be in any. Which I prefer, because you get a chance to do more different kinds of things. If you want to use violins on a concert, people are familiar with those. In night clubs they’re not. A variety of instruments doesn’t necessarily fit in the mood of cabaret listening. I could never have had done what I did Thursday night in a club, with the singer (Yoko Ono) and everything. At least, that’s what I think. And this wider scope has got to be healthy musically.
That unusual–sounding instrument I played is called a musette. I got it in New York City, in Chinatown. Yes, it’s a very intriguing sound, I’ve had lots of comments about it. The public in general likes the sound, which is very nice. I’ve been using it, oh, maybe seven months. Not real long. I have to learn how to play it better.
Yes, I’ve been working at the violin, too. Well, I always say if you can play one bad, you can play ‘em all bad! The increased range, that’s because of the amount of time I’ve been exposed to it. I still don’t put in enough time on it, as I used to, because I spend more time writing music than playing it. And writing music is what I like best.
The way I play, I couldn’t do it every night. One reason is that we use a much broader format to the music. In other words, if you’re playing “Melancholy Baby” you have a different attitude towards what you’re trying to express. You know exactly what the key, the changes and the melody are all about, in some kind of way. If you do that every night, it’s like social survival. You know, it’s just a matter of punching the clock so you can get off. But some people don’t believe that’s music - and I’m one of them.
I think that music has to do with trying to give everybody the full pleasure of the opportunity to hear and feel whatever someone does musically. You shouldn’t ever fit music to a social class. Just because they don’t work in a bank or something, it doesn’t mean that they can’t appreciate music. You’re a human being, projecting human emotions.
The music should try to be as sincere as you can express, whatever it is that has meaning to you and to people. And the more human that is, the more meaningful it is. There is a definite reason for my using two basses now. One is harmonic and the other is melodic. In other words, I find that the bass fiddle has always had one function. Which was to be, like, a translator for other instruments. Well, since I don’t play from a strict form of chord patterns, I don’t need the bass to spell out everything that I’m going to do before I do it. So if I have two bass players, is just opens up the scope much wider concerning the direction you wish to take when you’re playing with what are known as rhythm instruments.
In fact, I’ve never regarded the bass and the drums as ‘rhythm’. To me they have the same function as I have when I play the saxophone or the violin or the trumpet - just another instrument playing in a different register. I don’t think any instrument is inferior to another. The others in the band reproduce the effects and sounds of their instruments, and have the same authority as I have. Their own expressions have an equal share in the total expression. The only thing I do is to write most of the music.
Yes - we rehearse, every time we get a chance. Because when I write new music we have to find out what it is that we should do and shouldn’t do. I guess I’ve, as they say, “paid my dues”. Looks like I’m still paying ‘em.
As for having proved my point- I’ve never tried to prove that I had a point. I think I was always trying to do what I could do. If it had that connotation, then that’s just the way things have to be, I suppose. But as far as I’m concerned, I’ve just always tried to get better. Maybe if I’ve gotten better, some people think that constitutes proving my point. However - apart from any technical improvement - there’s nothing different in my music from the way it was years ago, when they say I wasn’t doing what I’m doing today.
I just wanted to play because I liked the sound of the saxophone, and I liked several people that were playing it. But then when I tried to play with them. I found out it was more than just picking up a horn, that you had to know some music. I thought that all they had to do was just blow into the horn and out would come beautiful music.
That story about my fingering the alto wrongly for the first couple of years - that’s something I told Gunther Schuller and the Press picked it up. But actually, what happened is that when I was studying music they said the first seven letters of the alphabet were the musical notes.
Which is true, but it doesn’t mean that is the same way instruments are built. Mostly they’re built, from middle C upwards - if it’s a wind instrument. What I was doing was using a fingering as if my first seven notes on the saxophone started with A.
Actually, those first seven notes are considered concert notes, which mean that the saxophone would have to play a different set of notes. In a way, I learned something from being that naïve though, because it turned out to be the same thing. I mean, when you go into harmony you find that C natural is really A natural.
Which is exactly what I was doing at the beginning. But I didn’t know enough about harmony to realise that I was wrong as regards unisons but right as regards harmony. Harmony is the ability of taking a note and giving it a new name; unisons is taking the same note and giving it only one name, So, in a way, the only thing I was wrong about was not knowing harmony.
I grew up in Fort Worth, Texas in an all–Negro neighbourhood where you’re not allowed certain privileges if you’re Negro that you would have if you were white. Well, the white people were the law. It was just like any other place where people that are non-white have certain laws applied against them to harness their behaviour.
I used to think that the reason why that was happening was because I came from a very poor family. Which meant that white people could be prejudiced against white people, if they were poor. I thought that prejudice was related only to poverty, but I later learned that it’s many, many things. Prejudice is people’s opinions and values that have to do with their own existence.
Listening to music, I didn’t know jazz from anything. Whenever I heard a saxophone, whatever context it was played in, it sounded good. Regardless of what someone else said he was playing. I used to like to hear Jimmy Dorsey, Johnny Hodges, anybody that played the saxophone very well. Of course, Charlie Parker to me was, and is, the master of the modern expression of music on the instrument. I don’t think anyone has done any more for free expression than Charlie Parker did, playing the saxophone. And Bud Powell.
Another thing I didn’t realise was that there were people writing music for other people to play. It never dawned on me when I heard a song played that somebody else had written it. I used to think that everybody made up their own music in their own minds.
I did many kinds of jobs, including rhythm-and-blues bands. I enjoyed it. I have enjoyed all music. It is just that I prefer to express more than just one part. No, to me music is music and categories are another thing.
Yes, I heard a lot of musicians modelling themselves on Charlie Parker. I just felt that in order for them to have something to play, and since Charlie Parker represented playing good, if they played like him it meant they were good. They just wanted to be a part of that acceptance.
I don’t think that’s important these days, though. People are trying to say: “Listen to me. I might not be well known, but I’ve got something just as important to say.” And that’s a very healthy attitude.
I’ve always tried to play the way I’m playing now - without thinking that I was doing something to offend anybody.
I used to hang out with all the guys in California and they liked the tunes I wrote. So Red Mitchell suggested I go and see if I could get Lester Koenig of Contemporary, to buy some of the tunes I had written. When I went out there, he said: “Well, if you wrote them, you probably know best how to play them.” That led to an audition, and I made two records for him. Which I haven’t ever made a dime from. They’re ten years old.
I hope everybody’s not that concerned about being known. There’s something that makes everybody sell out … but what it is you - can only know that when you sell out.
Copyright © 1968 Les Tomkins. All Rights Reserved.
