Free Jazz

1	Free Jazz / Ornette Coleman 37:03
2	First Take / Ornette Coleman previously unreleased / Bonus Track 17:06

Barnes & Noble

Don't be frightened. Free Jazz may be, as its original front cover stated, "A collective improvisation by the Ornette Coleman double quartet," but that doesn't mean that chaos rules. There are unison melodies, discernible rhythms, distinct solo sections, riffs, and cues. What there isn't is a guiding harmonic structure or song form that the musicians have to follow; nor are there restrictions that stop a player from spontaneously commenting on what someone else is playing. That it all comes together for 37 riveting minutes is due to Coleman's innovative vision and eight cutting-edge players who found themselves on the same musical wavelength. Dynamic passages abound: Eric Dolphy's steaming bass clarinet spot, Coleman's own lengthy solo. Yet subtlety and lyricism also show their face in the amazing duets between bassists Charlie Haden and Scott LaFaro and drummers Ed Blackwell and Billy Higgins. The addition of the first rejected take of "Free Jazz," included on this CD, reveals how much form actually underlines this supposedly "anything goes" piece. Steve Futterman

All Music Guide

As jazz's first extended, continuous free improvisation LP, Free Jazz practically defies superlatives in its historical importance. Ornette Coleman's music had already been tagged "free," but this album took the term to a whole new level. Aside from a predetermined order of featured soloists and several brief transition signals cued by Coleman, the entire piece was created spontaneously, right on the spot. The lineup was expanded to a double-quartet format, split into one quartet for each stereo channel: Ornette, trumpeter Don Cherry, bassist Scott LaFaro, and drummer Billy Higgins on the left; trumpeter Freddie Hubbard, bass clarinetist Eric Dolphy, bassist Charlie Haden, and drummer Ed Blackwell on the right. The rhythm sections all play at once, anchoring the whole improvisation with a steady, driving pulse. The six spotlight sections feature each horn in turn, plus a bass duet and drum duet; the "soloists" are really leading dialogues, where the other instruments are free to support, push, or punctuate the featured player's lines. Since there was no road map for this kind of recording, each player simply brought his already established style to the table. That means there are still elements of convention and melody in the individual voices, which makes Free Jazz far more accessible than the efforts that followed once more of the jazz world caught up. Still, the album was enormously controversial in its bare-bones structure and lack of repeated themes. Despite resembling the abstract painting on the cover, it wasn't quite as radical as it seemed; the concept of collective improvisation actually had deep roots in jazz history, going all the way back to the freewheeling early Dixieland ensembles of New Orleans. Jazz had long prided itself on reflecting American freedom and democracy and, with Free Jazz, Coleman simply took those ideals to the next level. A staggering achievement. Steve Huey