SoundGround >> Ornette

Thought I'd bump this thread up, & for good reason: a friend of mine just saw this Ornette doc at a film fest.  The band KILLS at 26 seconds in.  Damn I wanted more.

"...and there are as many unisons as there are stars in the sky."

- Ornette Coleman

Here's the other reason I wanted to bump the thread.  Just watched the 1st couple of minutes.  This is a doc about a soundtrack Ornette did with David Izenzon on bass & Charles Moffett on drums for a Belgium film called "Who's Crazy?".

Ali - That last video... "Who's Crazy?", is high-larious, with the Euro-Beatnick invasion as the band plays.

That trio was the "Live at the Golden Circle" band -- when Ornette was on Blue Note. Really great musicians. This is just very conventional opinion, but I am of two minds about Ornette's violin playing. And mostly when I see it coming I wish he wouldn't. But then, that and his reed-mouthpiece trumpet are just more colors, and I'm overall glad he used them some. In general. ;-)

That documentary looks like a treat. Except I'm thinking it's the one that Ornette's son, the drummer, cut out mention of some of the more important drummers in Prime Time? (Ronald Shannon Jackson for one....) Is it that documentary, do you know?

I'd love to see the whole thing, anyway, for whatever live footage and whatever Ornette had to say.

The reading by Burroughs at the beginning reminds me... Ornette did the soundtrack to David Cronenberg's "Naked Lunch". That's a very good record.

I need to see the rest of the "Who's Crazy" video.  Curious to hear his violin & trumpet playing.  Miles HATED Ornette playing the trumpet & thought it was disrespectful.  Then again, Miles was a world-class hater.

Yep,  you nailed it: that's the doc where Denardo (Ornette's son) cut Ronald Shannon Jackson (& probably others) out of the film.  There's a doc on Albert Ayler that was either recently made or is in production that excludes Shannon as well.   Aggavating, & unbelieveable.  

I heard the "Naked Lunch" soundtrack is one of Ornette's better records.  I saw the film 20 years ago & remember thinking the music was weird but interesting.  This was obviously before I drown in the Kool Aid that is avant garde jazz.  I need to check it out with my new set of ears.

Ali - I don't think there's trumpet in the clip... I was just grouping it in with Ornette's "off" instruments. Violin is very prominent indeed, however.

I wish documentaries would document a bit more accurately. That's about all I have to say about cutting out Prime Time's first drummer....

And, always, the history of recorded jazz is not the same as the history of jazz. In the early days that was because things were made for 78rpm records, and so all that early Armstrong and Basie and Ellington and Jelly Roll Morton etc etc. was three minutes long. In performance it wasn't that way.

I think it's a bit different for Ayler, but similar in that people don't really recognize Ronald Shannon Jackson as the drummer on that stuff, because he was really only on the Live at Slug's, which was recorded horrifically badly. Later releases sound better, and the box set that was released in the 90s sounds better.

A documentary film ought to "fix" that, I think, if it were conscientious. But most people think of recordings, first. Anyway, I don't want to make excuses. But I think it's more understandable, even if it sucks, in the case of the Ayler movie. For the Ornette? No excuse.

Great point, & I agree 100%.  Put in perspective, the Ayler exclusion makes sense.  But no mention of RSJ in an Ornette film?!?

I can't imagine having a trail blazing genious for a father like Ornette Coleman, or what that could to a developing self esteem.  Either way, it does not excuse leaving Prime Time's first drummer out of a documentary.  And yes, Ronald Shannon Jackson deserves his own film.  And what a film it would be...

We talked a bit about Ornette's trumpet & violin playing a few posts up. I found this last night & though it was worth sharing. Here it is in one tune. The YouTube comments say it's "Theme From a Symphony," from the "Dancing in Your Head" album. Pretty noisy stuff, but gripping. Then again, you could say that about a lot of Ornette's music. Personally, I enjoyed the trumpet playing a little more than the violin.

And a reminder to myself to watch the last 15 mins of that "Who's Crazy?" doc.

More live Prime Time, from 1978, with James Blood Ulmer & Ronald Shannon Jackson.

Ali - "Theme from a Symphony" - One of those strangely nagging melodies on the head, with all this super dense polyrhthmic groove underneath. I love what Tacuma (I think) is doing n bass during that. But then Tacuma (I think) plays that nagging melody underneath Ornette's improv on the bass.... these players are really sensitive listeners, the way that gets shuttled around and modulated to different keys as comping. "Everybody soloing at once" requires huge ears. This band had it.

I'm not sure who the main drummer is -- might be a young Grant Calvin Weston. It was RSJ on the original recording.

Music is weird as hell, I guess. I don't even bother trying to get other people to listen to this stuff, usually. I love it.


That 1978 clip -- I'm not sure what to think, yet. The sound quality makes all the density sound a bit like mud... but they're playing pretty sludgy stuff for long sections of it, too. The "drum duel" is not something I've heard done with this band before, and just when I'm deciding I think it's gone on long enough, evidently Ornette agreed. But his manner of agreeing is interrupt with that "beginner's trumpet" at 5:34.... I guess you just have to laugh.

Some of it is very groovy, and it's cool to see those guys at that stage. Ulmer looks like a king, just being that big a guy and the way he's dressed. I have to listen to the whole thing, still.

Majic Sam - Denardo's pads...Mid-80's tech abuse to the max!