Ornette Coleman - Ken Burns JAZZ Collection: Ornette Coleman

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Music reviews of Ken Burns JAZZ Collection: Ornette Coleman

Music Review: A handy introduction to a great original
Rating: 4 Stars

This CD is a shrewdly selected survey of Coleman's music, mostly focussing on the brief period where Coleman recorded for Atlantic in the early 1960s; the Atlantics remain the cornerstone of his oeuvre. "The Sphinx" comes from his mid-1950s work for Contemporary--a lesser body of work, certainly, though perhaps deserving of a little more representation, as those albums are where you can find some of Coleman's most famous tunes, such as "Turnaround", "The Blessing" and "Tears Inside" (a blues that became one of the first Coleman tunes to be covered--by Art Pepper, on _Smack Up_). No arguments with this compilation's choice of "Congeniality", "Embraceable You", "Lonely Woman", "Blues Connection" & "Ramblin'" from the seminal Atlantics; these are classics, no less than Armstrong's "West End Blues", Parker's "Parker's Mood" or Rollins' "Blue Seven". Kudos go to this compilation for including the "First Take" of _Free Jazz_, a risky move: this is a 18-minute track that samples some of Coleman's most daring but difficult music, a double quartet of musicians assembled in the studio who were given the task of creating a large-scale piece from the most skeletal of fanfares as the only pre-composed material; the original _Free Jazz_ had just the 38-minute master version but the much shorter first take was first issued in the 1970s & is a useful pocket-sized version with its own contours. Difficult but necessary listening. -- One criticism I'd have here is that room might have been found for Coleman's quartet from the Atlantic period with the doomed virtuoso bassist Scott LaFaro on _Ornette!_, an album that also features some of Ed Blackwell's best playing. -- After the Atlantics this compilation quickly moves through the rest of Coleman's career. That's perhaps inevitable, given that that career has been somewhat erratic & uneven since the mid-1960s. As usual with the Ken Burns project, there's a distinct implication that jazz took a wrong turn after the mid-1960s, especially with electrified jazz-rock, funk & fusion (there's only one track here from this aspect of Coleman's oeuvre). The compilation would have given a fairer impression of Coleman's career by representing recent work--for instance, the incendiary encounter with Pat Metheny in the 1980s, _Song X_, or the fine 1990s duets with Joachim Kuhn on _Colors_. -- But these are nitpicky points: this is about as good a one-disc job as could have been done.

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