It used to be easier to pretend that an album was its own perfectly self-contained artifact. The great records certainly feel that way. But albums are more permeable than solid, their motivations, executions and inspirations informed by, and often stolen from, their peers and forbearers. It all sounds awfully formal, but it's not. It's the very nature of music — of art, even. The Six Degrees features examine the relationships between classic records and five… more »
Don Cherry began to make his mark with his first recording session, on February 10, 1958, as foil for freebopping alto saxophonist Ornette Coleman on music recorded for Something Else! Their bebop forebears Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker favored rough-sounding unison melodies, a departure from the swing era's smooth blends, but the Coleman-Cherry mix was scrappier still. As soloist, Don took cues from how Ornette's solos didn't track a tune's harmonies too closely. They didn't… more »
You can count the people who changed the language of jazz on one hand: Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker, (some would include Dizzy Gillespie here) and last, but not least, Ornette Coleman.
As happened when Parker, Gillespie, Monk and others broke through with bebop in the 1940s, Coleman's then-revolutionary music at the close of the 1950s polarized listeners by challenging them to listen to jazz with fewer preconceptions. Derided as noise by many and defended under the… more »
