Ornette Coleman and The Bad Plus
The story thus far:
In 1959, Ornette Coleman and his group gave jazz harmonic and melodic freedom.
Coleman’s concept was so advanced that it remains widely misunderstood to this day. However, Sonny Rollins, Charles Mingus, Miles Davis, and John Coltrane all seized on this notion almost immediately, and all made recordings either with Coleman’s sidemen or very much inspired by Coleman. This must be only time in jazz history when so many major artists reassessed their music based on a recent arrival:
Sonny Rollins with Don Cherry, Bob Cranshaw, Billy Higgins: Our Man In Jazz (on CD it’s On The Outside)
Charles Mingus with Ted Curson, Eric, Dolphy, and Dannie Richmond: Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus
John Coltrane and Don Cherry with Percy Heath/Charlie Haden and Ed Blackwell: The Avant-Garde
Miles Davis with Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, Tony Williams: Miles Smiles
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As good as the early Ornette Coleman records are, his music reaches a kind of apex in the years 1969 to 1972, mostly because Charlie Haden has become louder and stronger. While there is still no pre-conceived harmony, the soloists play with Haden almost if there are chord changes throughout. (This is due to Haden’s gigantic ears.) Ed Blackwell is stronger too, and the bootlegs of the Coleman Quartet with Dewey Redman, Haden, and Blackwell from that period makes it clear that this was one of the greatest jazz groups, up there with the Coltrane Quartet.
The one studio document of this period is Science Fiction, which is a joyous assemblage of all the best musicians associated with Ornette. Vocalist Asha Puthli sings beautifully on “All My Life” and “What Reason Could I Give”. Here are the Ornette’s words to “What Reason”:
What reason could I give
to live
only that
I love you
How many times
must I die
for love
only when
I'm without you
Where will the clouds be
if not in the sky
when I die
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After Science Fiction, Ornette Coleman formed “Prime Time,” his response to rock and fusion. Don Cherry, Dewey Redman, Charlie Haden and Ed Blackwell wanted to keep exploring the language they learned with Coleman and created “Old and New Dreams.” This group played Ornette pieces but also explored a few “world music” concepts. Of the several records they made, Old and New Dreams (on Black Saint, not ECM) and Playing (on ECM) are at the level of the best Ornette.
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When we talk about our debt to Ornette, we are really speaking about our debt to this whole circle: Dewey Redman, Don Cherry, Ed Blackwell, Billy Higgins, and Charlie Haden. Via Haden and Redman, Keith Jarrett and Paul Motian enter the circle too. Our favorite Jarrett band is the “American Quartet” with Redman, Haden, and Motian, which owes a heavy debt to Ornette but really had its own vibe too—and it is a very TBP vibe in some ways. (When we met Stephen Cloud, Keith Jarrett's manager, in Santa Barbara a few months ago, almost his first words were, "You guys are like the "American Quartet." We were most pleased.)
Haden is the really crucial musician on all these records. In fact, the only Ornette record without Haden we find quite as good is Ornette on Tenor, with Jimmy Garrison throwing down. (Any Ornette album is worth checking out, though, Haden or no Haden.)
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All three of us in The Bad Plus grew up on Ornette’s music. Improvising without changes has been part of the group language since we started performing together.
In 2002, TBP was asked to play in Edinburgh at the summer festival with a collaborator. We figured that Ornette wasn’t available so we requested Dewey Redman. As it worked out, Ethan played duo with Dewey (including Ornette’s ballad “Broken Shadows”) and Reid and Dave played trio with him.
The next spring we went to Scotland again, this time to collaborate with five good local horn players. What did we want to play? How about Ornette Coleman music from Science Fiction? The tunes were “All My Life,” “Street Woman,” “Law Years,” and “What Reason Could I Give”. Reid sang the last with massed horns and apocalyptic drums and piano behind him.
This was so fun we added “Street Woman” to our normal repertoire, recording it later that year for our album Give.
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This past year, The Bad Plus participated in the Dancing In Your Head festival at the re-opening of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. It was three days of music. Day one: Ornette’s music played by other groups. Day two: Ornette’s quartet. Day three: All day interesting music marathon. Ornette attended day one and three, and even played with Bang On A Can at the end of the third night.
(Here is the Walker interview with Dave about Ornette and the Festival.)
On the first day, both of Dave’s jazz groups, The Bad Plus and Happy Apple, played Ornette Coleman music separately and together under the name “Bad Apple”. Happy Apple played “Free,” The Bad Plus played “Street Woman” and “Broken Shadows,” and Bad Apple played “Una Muy Bonita” and “What Reason Could I Give.”
In this month’s DownBeat, the man on the cover gave his review of this performance. “The performance that I enjoyed the most was [Reid Anderson] singing ‘What Reason Could I Give,’” Coleman said. “They all had their own imprint on the information and they were trying to express what I have been doing in music. They all sounded like individuals in the way they expressed it for themselves.”
Of course this praise means a lot to us. During the Suspicious Activity? sessions we recorded a version of “What Reason Could I Give” that will hopefully be available some day.
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Last weekend TBP opened for the Ornette Coleman Quartet at NJPAC. (Read Nate Chinen’s review in the Village Voice here.) At soundcheck, we heard Ornette play some amazing piano! Parallel fifths in the bass, melodies we had never heard on the top. (There is a little bit of his piano playing in the so-so documentary Who’s Crazy.) That night in the concert Ornette sang and sawed away (the violin bit was fabulous—better than ever) with no sign of his age (75). He was wearing a blue silk suit with gold dragons that he got in Hong Kong 20 years ago, reminding us that it never hurts for modernism to be stylish. We chatted with him a little bit, and he was (as always) incredibly gentle and soft-spoken.
He invited us to drop by for a harmony lesson at his house anytime. Well. Only Ethan was in New York last week, and he called on Ornette Wednesday. Over cornflakes with sliced bananas, Ornette showed him a way to generate the 12 tones with three jazz chords (C major-seventh, Eb minor-seventh, and D half-dimished), complained about the minor-seventh chord, and said of The Bad Plus:
“It seems the three of you have found something you can’t tell anybody about.”
HOPEFULLY, TO BE CONTINUED…
(UPDATE: Brock Walters pointed out that the "12 Tones" in the above paragraph add up to 11. See this post for our flustered response.)
(FURTHER UPDATE is here.)
