From KUTX:
On December 21, 1960, Fort Worth alto saxophonist and composer Ornette Coleman assembled not one but two quartets for a studio date that produced one of the most pivotal records of the post-bebop era: Free Jazz, A Collective Improvisation by the Ornette Coleman Double Quartet. An album-length free improvisation with only a few pre-conceived themes, Free Jazz harkened back to early New Orleans-style improvisation while signaling an emerging modernist avant-garde.
Ornette Coleman had already disrupted the New York jazz scene’s status quo when his quartet with Don Cherry, Charlie Haden, and Billy Higgins took over the venue the Five Spot in 1959 for an extended stay that galvanized audiences and critics. Coleman’s music rejected conventional harmonic models in favor of rhythmic and melodic freedom and blues-oriented compositions, already apparent in 1959’s prophetic album The Shape of Jazz to Come.
And while Ornette and company’s early records on Contemporary and Atlantic certainly predicted the future, few could have anticipated what the double quartet would produce in the winter of 1960.
Featuring Ornette along Eric Dolphy on alto and bass clarinet respectively, Don Cherry and Freddie Hubbard on trumpet, Charles Haden and Scott LaFaro on bass, and Billy Higgins and Ed Blackwell on drums, the double quartet showcased Coleman’s stable of collaborators and their modes of instant composition. Free Jazz also offered a rare collaboration with Ornette and Eric Dolphy, one of the few reed players whose musical advances were as adventurous as Coleman’s.
The resulting album was one where, in Ornette’s words, “We were expressing our minds and emotions as much as could be captured by electronics.”
Sources:
Maria Golia. Ornette Coleman: The Territory and the Adventure. London: Reaktion Books, 2020.
Dave Oliphant. Texan Jazz. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996.
Martin Williams. Liner notes for Ornette Coleman’s Free Jazz, recorded December 1960, Atlantic Records, vinyl LP.
