BST 84287

Ornette Coleman - New York is Now! Volume 1

Released - 1968

Recording and Session Information

A&R Studios, NYC, April 29, 1968
Ornette Coleman, alto sax, violin; Dewey Redman, tenor sax; Jimmy Garrison, bass; Elvin Jones, drums.

2099 tk.2 We Now Interrupt For A Commercial
3000 tk.8 The Garden Of Souls
3002 tk.14/15 Toy Dance

A&R Studios, NYC, May 7, 1968
Ornette Coleman, alto sax, violin; Dewey Redman, tenor sax; Jimmy Garrison, bass; Elvin Jones, drums.

3019 tk.5 Round Trip
3016 tk.12/16 Broadway Blues

Session Photos

Photos: © Francis Wolff/Mosaic Images 

https://www.mosaicrecordsimages.com/

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
The Garden of Souls	Ornette Coleman	April 29 1968
Toy Dance	Ornette Coleman	April 29 1968
Side Two
Broadway Blues	Ornette Coleman	May 7 1968
Round Trip	Ornette Coleman	May 7 1968
We Now Interrupt for a Commercial	Ornette Coleman	April 29 1968

Liner Notes

...

1989 CD Reissue Liner Notes

The music contained on NEW YORK IS NOW and LOVE CALL was conceived from the outset as two albums. The second album was by no means a set of leftovers. With the Compact Disc release of these sessions, a number of nice discoveries have come into play.

Just prior to these dates, Ornette, who had essentially not been working with another horn since the departure of Don Cherry in 1962, added Dewey Redman to his working quartet (with Charlie Haden on bass and Denardo Coleman on drums). Actually, Redman and Ornette had known each other and played together in their high school days back in Dallas/Fort Worth. But this was their first recorded meeting in their later professional years and the association lasted until 1974.

For this, Coleman's final sessions for Blue Note, the guest rhythm team of Jimmy Garrison and Elvin Jones, half of the great John Coltrane Quartet, was brought in. Garrison had played with Coleman during the summer of 1962 in an unrecorded quartet with Bobby Bradford and Charles Moffett. It is likely that this was Elvin's only encounter with Ornette. And make no mistake about it, this is not Coleman's music set against Coltrane's rhythmic conception. Everyone came to play Ornette's music and they succeeded. All three of Ornette's sidemen here are individualists who facilely move from the conventional to the unorthodox with artistry and logic.

None of Coleman's compositions here have had the lasting impact 'Ramblin"' or "Lonely Woman" had, but several stayed in Ornette's book for a while. The quartet with Redman was playing "Airborne" as late as 1971 and a later quartet with guitarist James Blood Ulmer in 1974 included "The Garden Of Souls" and "Love Call" in its regular repertoire. Perhaps the biggest exposure of all came from Pat Methany who recorded "Round Trip" and "Broad Way Blues" in the seventies, helping to establish the latter as one of Ornette's best known pieces.

"Just For You" has a long history. It was first recorded by the original Coleman quartet with Ornette on alto and Don Cherry on trumpet for Atlantic in 1959 (though that version was not issued until the mid seventies). Around '67, Ornette began performing it again, but this time on trumpet. For this recording with Dewey on tenor and the composer on trumpet, the two versions make an interesting study in role reversal. Incidentally this tune was never a part of the two issued albums. It first saw the light of day in a European anthology collection in 1979.

These four men recorded eight titles on April 29, 1968. Ornette and Frank Wolff selected takes for all of them. on May 7, the same band went back to record two new titles and remake three. Those remakes were the ones which made it to release. The chosen takes of "Love Call, Broad Way Blues" and "Check Out Time" from the first session are now issued here for the first time on these CDs as alternate versions. The early version of "Broad Way Blues" is decidedly slower, while the original "Check Out Time" is much less frantic than the master. The early take of "Love Call" is more compact but essentially the same as the master in approach.

Since the original four-track analog tapes existed on all of the performances in these two CDs, we took the opportunity to remix them to digital to remove tape hiss, limiting and other compensatory factors that affected mixes in 1969. In the process, we discovered that there was another minute and a half at the end of the master take of "Love Call" which is restored and that the band, primarily Dewey Redman, did the voice bits on "We Now Interrupt For A Commercial" live. On the LP version, the voice of Mel Fuhrman was overdubbed. We have used the original, untampered version here. They may be off mike at times, but the spirit and intent come through more powerfully.

Michael Cuscvna