"I don't know what he's playing," said Trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, "but it's not jazz." "He's doing the only really new thing in jazz since the null says Pianist John Lewis.
The object of this controversy is a slight, fringe-bearded alto saxophonist named Ornette Coleman. No jazzman has created such a stir since Charlie Parker started packing them in at the Three Deuces on 52nd Street 15 years ago. Last week, insiders of the cool world were flocking to a shabby cave in Manhattan's
Greenwich Village known as the Five Spot Café to learn just what kind of wind Ornette is blowing and why.
Something Else. Like many a modern jazzman, Coleman is trying to enlarge the content of jazz by allowing for a greater degree of improvisation. Bop musicians, most notably Parker, attempted the same thing in the 1940s by ignoring traditional rests and introducing low-volume rhythmic subtleties that freed soloists from the slogging swing beat. In the late '40s came the cool style pioneered by Miles Davis, with its lagging beat and light, dry sound.
But some of Coleman's critics feel that he has not only stretched jazz structure but has totally demolished it. Improvisation, to Coleman, means music not limited by standard rhythms, harmonies, or even tonality, but based instead on a kind of free association of sounds.
Up to now. Ornette's surprisingly wide and uneven reputation has been built chiefly on three albums whose titles sug gest the experimental nature of his work: Atlantic's The Shape of Jazz to Come, and Contemporary Records' Tomorrow Is the Question! and Something Else! (jazz lingo for a musician whose work is highly inventive, as compared to one who is merely "taking care of business"). What the Five Spot audiences heard last week was clearly "something else"—music compounded of wildly asymmetrical melodies, lurching and truncated rhythms, tone colors as varied and highly personal as the sound of a human voice. The Coleman Quartet plays mostly Ornette's own compositions—pieces with odd private titles such as Invisible, so named because the song's key (D-flat) is hard to detect, and Congeniality, suggested by the personality of a wandering preacher he once knew.
What Makes Sense. Playing with Coleman, who uses a white plastic sax with a warmer tone than the conventional metal instrument, are Charlie Haden (bass), Edward Blackwell (drums) and Don Cherry (trumpet). They all seemed to be going their own ways. The direction of any tune might change from bar to bar, depending on which musicians happened to have "the dominant ear at that moment." The drummer repeatedly shifted his rhythm, forcing concessions from the other players. At best, the result evoked an abstract expressionist painting whose dots, slashes and blobs are miraculously knitted into a pattern.