Marion Brown / Ornette Coleman

Hey everyone -- It's been a while. Grad school is no walk in the park. But fortunately I've been keeping up with my tune transcribing, for various shows and groups. Here are a couple new ones:

Marion Brown - "Capricorn Moon"

A nice little tune, used as a vehicle for extended modal/free solos (the album version is more than 20 minutes long). This is the opening track on The Marion Brown Quartet (1966), featuring trumpeter Alan Shorter, drummer Rashied Ali, and bassists Reggie Johnson and Ronnie Boykins (from Sun Ra's band). Bennie Maupin also plays on the album, but is not on this track.

A few towering figures often define the New York jazz avant-garde of the 1960's: John Coltrane, Albert Ayler, Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, Pharaoh Sanders... we often forget about figures like John Tchicai, Don Pullen, Alan Silva, Bill Dixon and Marion Brown, who were engaged with similar lines of inquiry: new ways of approaching improvisation, and new ways of blending it with composition. ESP-Disk' is an indispensable source for documentation of this very important musical scene.

Ornette Coleman - "Street Woman" 

Recorded in the early 70's, released on Science Fiction (1972). This album is a hodge-podge of elements tossed together, and slow-cooked to perfection. We hear many of Ornette's frequent collaborators like Charlie Haden, Ed Blackwell, Billy Higgins, Don Cherry and Dewey Redman, as well as a few fairly uncommon collaborators. For example, trumpeter Bobby Bradford, and New York Philharmonic trumpeters Gerard Schwarz (1973-1978) and Carmine Fornarotto (1962-1994). Additionally, two tracks feature the remarkable singer Asha Puthli, in some of her earliest recordings (she can also be heard on Peter Ivers' Take It Out On Me, and she has numerous excellent solo albums). Poet David Henderson can be heard on the title track. The album's production team is to credit as well, for they help to create the strange aural space that much of the album possesses. Engineers Stan Tonkel, Russ Payne, and producer James Jordan: props. James Jordan, also produced Coleman's Skies of America, as well as his most recent release Sound Grammar (check out this blog's very first post for a transcription of "Jordan" from this album)

Also, I haven't forgotten about "Splashdown"! In fact, it's almost done. I just need to figure out the weird keyboard/bass interlude... In the next post, I'll share a couple transcriptions of tunes by Giuseppi Logan, to me one of the oddest figures from the ESP-Disk' scene.

More Ornette!

Happy November! Time for some more charts. These two tunes come from the 20th anniversary edition of Ornette Coleman's collaborative album with Pat Metheny Song X:

Ornette Coleman - Police People

Ornette Coleman - All Of Us

 

Why doncha buy it?

http://www.amazon.com/Song-X-Twentieth-Anniversary-Metheny/dp/B000A2FHCE/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1320867754&sr=8-2

Ornette Coleman & Collin Walcott [Updated 10/12/11]

It just occurred to me that I have not updated this blaaaggh in a month! Here are some oldies that I've had in the can for a while, but I haven't shared them before.

Ornette Coleman - Macho Woman

This one was recorded by Ornette's Prime Time quintet, and released in 1978 on Body Meta. I will probably be sharing some more tunes from this album from time to time.

Collin Walcott - Margueritte

[Chart updated 10/12/11. Please make sure you download the new version to replace the old.]

This is a beautiful tune, the opening track on Walcott's first album Cloud Dance. I remember reading somewhere (maybe the liner notes??) that Margueritte was the name of Walcott's wife, but I could be just completely making that up.

A different version of this tune was recorded on Oregon's 1974 album Winter Light. I'll post that in the future.

The tune is one of two quartet tunes on the album, with Jack DeJohnette playing drums. I posted the other one at an earlier time; click the "Collin Walcott" label below to find it. The rest of the album consists of duos and trios with Dave Holland and John Abercrombie. This is a really good, very accessible 70's jazz album that I can't recommend highly enough.

I've got a pretty busy July but hopefully I'll get around to doing some serious transcribing at some point. I noticed a couple requests for "Splash", which is definitely encouraging. I'll give it a try soon.

On a side note: readers of this blog might be interested in a series I've been working on over at my other blog. This is a series of the earliest recorded examples of free improvisation that I've been able to find, with the point of demonstrating the wide variety of approaches that have led to it.

Ornette & Collin Walcott

Ornette Coleman - Word From Bird

A short bop head from Ornette Coleman. (Updated 5/20/11)

Appears on:

Ornette Coleman - "In All Languages"
Pat Metheny / Ornette Coleman - "Song X [20th Anniversary Edition]"

Collin Walcott - Cloud Dance

The final track off of Walcott's debut album on ECM Records, also called Cloud Dance. The album features Jack DeJohnette, John Abercrombie and Dave Holland. Two tracks have the full quartet; the rest are duos or trios. The whole album is excellent.

Walcott was a marginal, but important figure on the jazz and improvised music scene. He started out in the Paul Winter Consort, a band that got some commercial and critical acclaim in the late 60's and early 70's. They played adaptations of folk melodies from foreign countries, worked with ethnic instruments, and experimented with free improvisation. Four members, Ralph Towner, Glenn Moore, Paul McCandless, and Walcott, went on to form Oregon, which eclipsed the fame and influence of the Consort. Walcott played sitar and tabla in the band, in addition to many other instruments.

In the late 70's and early 80's, Walcott worked with Don Cherry and Nana Vasconcelos in a trio called Codona, which released three albums on ECM. In addition to "Cloud Dance", he had another album on ECM called "Grazing Dreams" with Cherry, Abercrombie, Dom Um Romao, and Palle Danielsson. He also worked with Meredith Monk, David Darling (who was also a member of the Consort), and others. He was killed in an automobile accident in Germany in 1984, while on tour with Oregon. Check out his work, he was an important and talented artist.

Annette Peacock, Miles Davis & Ornette Coleman

Well it's the first post! Here goes.

Annette Peacock - Dreams (If Time Weren't)

This tune has appeared on quite a few recordings since it was written, including

Paul Bley & Scorpio (Milestone MSP 9046)
Paul Bley - Alone Again (Improvising Artists Inc, IAI 373840)
Paul Bley / Annette Peacock Synthesizer Show - Revenge (Polydor, 2425 043) [BEAUTIFUL version, with eerie processed vocals by Annette]
Marilyn Crispell - Nothing Ever Was, Anyway (ECM 1626/27)

Know of some others? Let me know. Every version is going to be slightly different, but I think the overall picture is there.

The introduction (first two lines) is left out on many versions for some reason. It's on the Crispell recording. I'm working on the lyrics, hopefully I'll update this post later on.

Miles Davis - Mademoiselle Mabry

The last song on Miles' Filles de Kilimanjaro, with Chick Corea at the RMI Electrapiano. I'm not sure about the bass note in bar 4, it may be a B-natural, not B-flat. Thoughts?

I left out chord symbols to reduce clutter. Most of the harmonies are triadic anyway, easy enough for the soloist to figure out. Chick plays different chords almost every time, especially in bars 3 and 4, but as with the Peacock tune, the general idea is there.

The form of the tune is strange. Every third time, they play the first bar a little differently by resolving to an F-major triad. Very unusual. But it happens consistently throughout the tune, from what I can tell.

Ornette Coleman - Jordan

Featured on his recent CD Sound Grammar. (Transcription updated on 5/20/11). Take a look, give it a listen, follow along... post your comments!