Ornette Coleman

4 1/2 STARS ALL MUSIC GUIDE

Something Else!!!! (1958) marked the debut recording by the Ornette Coleman Quintet, which featured the saxophonist/leader (playing a white plastic alto), Don Cherry on trumpet, Billy Higgins on drums, Walter Norris on piano, and Don Payne on bass. The date also marked Coleman’s first recordings ever in any context. The album shook up the jazz world, and particularly those musicians and critics who had entered the hard bop era with such verve and were busy using the blues as a way of creating vast solo spaces inside tight and short melody lines. Something Else!!!! is anathema to that entire idea, and must have sounded like it came from outer space at the time. Coleman’s interest was in pitch, not in “being in tune”. But what is most compelling is a revitalization of the blues as it expressed itself in jazz. Coleman refurbished the blues framework, threaded it through his jazz without getting rid of its folk-like, simplistic milieu. While he would record numerous times with both Cherry and Higgins, no further recordings exist by this exact quintet, and the saxophonist would never record again with either Norris or Payne. Born in Fort Worth, Texas, on March 9, 1930, Ornette Coleman is 83 at this writing.

PERSONNEL:

ORNETTE COLEMAN, alto sax
DON CHERRY, cornet
WALTER NORRIS, piano
DON PAYNE, bass
BILLY HIGGINS, drums.

All compositions by Ornette Coleman.

Contemporary Studio, Los Angeles, February 10 (A3, A4 & B3),
February 22 (A1, A2, B1, B2 & B5) & March 24 (B4), 1958.

Original sessions produced by Lester Koenig.

Side A:
1 INVISIBLE 4:17
2 THE BLESSING 4:49
3 JAYNE 7:23
4 CHIPPIE 5:41

Side B:
1 THE DISGUISE 2:52
2 ANGEL VOICE 4:24
3 ALPHA 4:15
4 WHEN WILL THE BLUES LEAVE? 5:03
5 THE SPHINX 4:16