099: The Shape of Jazz to Come, by Ornette Coleman

Ornette Coleman (USA)
The Shape of Jazz to Come (1959)
6 tracks, 38 minutes
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The second album from Ornette on this list, the first being the ground-breaking Free Jazz for double quartet. This album is from a couple of years earlier, but it is no less ground-breaking. You can really hear Ornette’s movement from the post- and hard-bop styles to what became free jazz.

The structure of the pieces on The Shape of Jazz to Come are still pretty much standard, with a head, rounds of solos and a return to the head at the end. And those heads really are sublime. Just take the first three pieces, ‘Lonely Woman’, ‘Eventually’ and ‘Peace’: the gut-wrenching emotion of the first, fashioned from the growls and bends of the saxophone and trumpet; the break-neck bop of the second that tumbles around like a train always at risk of derailing; the thoughtful, heavily chromatic figures of the third that break out into fragile harmonies. I love it. And then the solos come along and we get glimpses of the not-yet-termed ‘free.’ The melodies the players create take on a life of their own, often breaking free of the expected harmonies to pursue other meaningful directions that would otherwise have been out of bounds.

I think this freedom on the part of the soloists comes at least somewhat from the band’s set up. They’re a quartet of four top-notch players: Don Cherry on cornet, Charlie Haden on double bass, Billy Higgins on drums and Ornette himself on alto sax. There’s no piano or guitar there to play the changes; not that the changes aren’t there, but that they are left to be inferred from the bass and the winds’ head melodies, and thus are much more open to continuous interpretation and reinterpretation when necessary.

With that in mind, you have to admire the sheer ballsiness of that album title, and just how warranted it is. The Shape of Jazz to Come…a prophecy that came true, of Ornette’s own doing. You get the feeling that he probably had his musical journey all mapped out from the beginning, and this album was where he staked his flag. The title also reflects the era of jazz at the time too. Not only can it refer to Ornette’s personal voyage, but it seems to say ‘jazz is changing – get ready.’ And as it was released in 1959, that was true. The amount of game-changing albums released in that one year is ridiculous: Coltrane’s Giant Steps, Miles’ Kind of Blue, Mingus Ah Um, Time Out by Dave Brubeck – they were all taking jazz from the same sources but off in their own directions. What an exciting year 1959 must have been to be in the jazz scene. Ornette told it like it was – this is the music of the future – and created an astonishing album while he was at it.