Ornette Coleman - This Is Our Music

my favorite coleman album so far

I have yet to buy 'Ornette' but I heard it once and I recall listening to it - and I think it was good but not quite as good as 'This is our music'. This album shows us a quartet with no inhibitions and going into some interesting directions. 'The shape of jazz to come' and 'change of the century' were perhaps more groundbreaking and exciting - but this one has such a perfected beautiful sound to it - I could add a lot of superlatives to what I just said - but I will spare you. P.S. Blackwell on drums is truly one of the highlights of this album. January 6, 2006

Business as usual for Coleman & co.

"This is Our Music" is Ornette Coleman's third album on Atlantic, significant as his first with drummer Ed Blackwell. Blackwell, who first met Coleman in the '50s, provided a drum voice of extraordinary personality and diversity, and in many ways was a better partner for Coleman than the superlative Billy Higgins, who played on the first two Atlantic sessions. The quartet, rounded out by trumpeter Don Cherry and bassist Charlie Haden, performs well enough on this record, but it's starting to feel like a settled groove. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but one of the things that made Coleman's first Atlantic album, "The Shape of Jazz to Come", as powerful a record as it is was the looseness and searching quality to it. "This is Our Music" finds a band totally indoctrinated in their sound.

Of course, this can yield extraordinary benefits-- opener "Blues Connotation" is a churning, upbeat, swinging blues, full of ecstatic playing from all four with loose soloing over a Haden walk and Blackwell swing, sounding traditional and modern at the same time, and "Beauty is a Rare Thing" is full of passion and energy, particularly from Coleman, whose humanistic moans are something to be heard (curiously enough, Haden and Blackwell seem to miss Cherry's attempt to shift tempo), and standard "Embraceable You" (I think the only standard performance in Coleman's catalog) is beautifully read, with Cherry providing lovely counterpoint to Coleman's theme and the leader soloing effectively.

Still, the lack of edge does cocasioanlly yield something like "Poise" or "Humpty Dumpty", rolling pieces that are decent enough, well executed, but just don't really create too much excitement.

In all, its a decent album, though newcomers should start with "The Shape of Jazz to Come", anyone who enjoyed that will want this as well. August 31, 2005

Ornette reunited with Ed Blackwell

"This Is Our Music" is one of the essential discs Ornette Coleman recorded for Atlantic from 1959 to 1961, and the most important thing about it is that it reunites Ornette with Ed Blackwell for the first time on record. Blackwell was the first drummer to collaborate in making Ornette's music, and played a critical role, but was not able to play on the first several albums. Billy Higgins is a phenomenal drummer, and added something special of his own to "The Shape of Jazz to Come" and "Change of the Century," but Blackwell's New Orleans polyrhythms are documented for the first time with "This Is Our Music." As the story goes, Ornette, from Ft. Worth, was touring the South with an R&B band. Some locals objected to his innovative style, beat him up, and threw his tenor off a hill, leaving him stranded in New Orleans in 1949. He stayed with a friend's family for several months, borrowing his friend's brother's horn so he could practice while he tried to secure another gig. It was during that time that he met Ed Blackwell, and they played together as Ornette first developed his innovative style. Later in the mid-50s they were both in L.A., and played together, practicing Ornette's large and growing number of compositions, along with Don Cherry and Charlie Haden.

It takes some effort to piece together the chronology of Ornette's recordings, and so here is the list of the Atlantic records (the first two on Contemporary, "Something Else!" and "Tomorrow Is the Question" were compromises, not featuring Ornette's regular band):

The Shape of Jazz to Come -- recorded 5/22/59, released October, 1959

Change of the Century -- recorded 10/8-9/59, released June, 1960

This Is Our Music -- recorded 7/19, 7/26, 8/2/60, released February, 1961

Free Jazz -- recorded 12/21/60, released September, 1961

Ornette! -- recorded 1/31/61, released February, 1962

Ornette On Tenor -- recorded 3/22, 3/27/61, released December, 1962

Blackwell played drums on the last two dates, "Ornette!" and "Ornette on Tenor," and both Blackwell and Higgins played on "Free Jazz," with a double quartet. One of the tracks on "Ornette!" features a long Blackwell solo. Higgins, with a solid background in swing and bop, went on to play with many a jazz leader over the years. Blackwell was always associated with Ornette, playing with him later in the 1960s, and then forming "Old and New Dreams" with Don Cherry, Charlie Haden and Dewey Redman in the 1970s to play music that extended the Coleman Quartet in the direction of pan-African styles. Cherry and Blackwell made two excellent duet albums as well, "Mu" in 1969 (see my review) and "El Corazon" in 1982. Ed Blackwell, who suffered from kidney disease and underwent kidney dialysis for many years, died in 1992. Don Cherry died in 1995.

Anyone who decides that they seriously dig Ornette's music should save up and get "Beauty Is a Rare Thing," a 6-disc box that contains ALL the Atlantic recordings, not only the 6 original releases, but all the additional tracks that were collected in the later "Art of Improvisers" (released in 1970) and "Twins" (released in 1971), as well as tracks that were released only in Japan and some that were never released in any form. The summer 1960 sessions with Blackwell that produced "This Is Our Music" include more rare and never-before-heard tracks than any of the other dates. (A warehouse fire in 1976 destroyed tapes of additional Atlantic sessions, perhaps twice as much material as was saved.) The 70-page booklet, with great black-and-white photos, includes a 28-page essay by Robert Palmer, which is my source for much of the above information.

One further note to those interested in Ornette -- start with "Free Jazz" at your peril. It is the most difficult of his recordings, not his most successful, and should be heard only after hearing his fantastic quartet sessions. Personally, I recommend beginning with "The Shape of Jazz to Come" with Billy Higgins and "This Is Our Music" with Ed Blackwell. Peace. July 8, 2003

DO NOT FORGET THE FIFTH MEMBER...

There's Coleman, Haden, Cherry and Blackwell - it definitely sounds wonderful, ah?

But there is also the underrated NESUHI ERTEGUN ruining the great music played by this group - this is definitely his worst producing job I have ever heard (out of MANY other horrible sessions - check out his 'cut-and-paste' approach on Mingus' 'Blues and Roots'...).

I myself have got the 'complete-Coleman-atlantic' sessions and the sound of these sessions are 'audibly' worse than the others, far worse, so much that I can't really stand listening to this music, like many other absolute masterpieces (awfully)produced by Mr. ERTEGUN.

R.I.P., Mr. Ertegun. February 5, 2003

a great work available for a new generation

Ornette Coleman was the first artist to really get me interested in jazz. I already had Kind of Blue and a couple Coltrane albums before I encountered Free Jazz, but was not too interested in the genre. Coleman changed that for me. This cd is representative of Coleman's work in the late 50s and early 60s which to me were the height of his brilliant career (also the height for a great many others, as well.) This album, for me, has a very similar vibe to Tomorrow is The Question and is just as good. I'm pretty sure this is the first place you'll find Coleman's quartet playing on a standard, "Embraceable You", which is excellently done, and very distinct from any other rendition I've heard.
Some jazz fans may be scared off by Coleman's association with the "free jazz" labeling, expecting chaos and lack of structure, but Coleman's improvisation is heavily rooted within a solid structure. The higher pitched playing of Don Cherry may take some getting used to, but all in all, this cd is an excellent representation of Coleman's work and deserves a place amongst the many landmark recordings of the era. April 8, 2002

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