BST 84356

Ornette Coleman - Love Call

Released - 1971

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.

3001 tk.12 Open To The Public
3004 tk.18 Airborne

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

3018 tk.4 Love Call
tk.13 Check Out Time

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Airborne	Ornette Coleman	April 29 1968
Check Out Time	Ornette Coleman	May 7 1968
Side Two
Open to the Public	Ornette Coleman	April 29 1968
Love Call	Ornette Coleman	May 7 1968

Liner Notes

"He's positively mellowed," said Down Beat writer Sammy Mitchell, "since the innovative stir he roused more than a decade ago."

He was referring, of course, to Ornette Coleman. The occasion was a concert at Berkeley. California, but a similar observation could have been made with respect to Coleman's New York Is Now! album, released while ago on Blue Note 4287. Not only was the reception warmly favorable, but critics and public alike were quick to seize on the words 'Volume 1" as an indication that this was no one-shot exercise. Love Call is the eagerly awaited follow-up, recorded with the same personnel.

Much of the previous set's success could be attributed to the singularly felicitous grouping of talents. Dewey Redman, a relative unknown at the time, was a perfect foil for Coleman; indeed, there were those who heard in him elements reminiscent of Ornette's own persona, eclectically blended with sounds that summed up- all 'the turbulent developments of the 1960s.

As for Jimmy Garrison and Elvin Jones, they had of course established their own rapport in the John Coltrane Quartet. Working as part of a Coleman entourage, they contribute in large measure to the effectiveness of the group. Garrison at times walks proudly in an orthodox four, but at any given moment he may suspend or vary the beat. Similarly Jones, rightly admired as an indomitable and Subtle timekeeper, establishes an urgent stylistically personal yet totally empathetic groove. A passage in Airborne, during which they alone dominate the scene, is perhaps most illustrative of the teamwork between the two of them, though I would point to Check Out Time as a definitive example of the degree to which both men functioned essentially as contributors to the ensemble.

All this, of course, is a preamble to the business of focusing on the central figure, it has become increasingly apparent that over the years, just as our ears have adapted themselves with the changing times and the revolution that took place in sound during the past decade, so has Coleman himself matured and found new avenues of communication, more effective mixtures consonance and dissonance than were revealed in his early works.

Airborne in particular offers an illustration of what Sammy Mitchell characterized as "the splintered romanticism of Coleman's alto flights- a lyrical launching into ferment and atonal tangents, and back to a melodic base." One passage, not far from the beginning, moves in fairly conventional eighth-note lines before plunging into a series of short, stabbing phrases, wildly swirling triplets and tumultuous interplay with Garrison and Jones. Redman, in his foray toward the end, is even more defiant of convention than Coleman, in terms of departure from the normal concepts of the saxophone's tonal capabilities.

Love Call, with Coleman on trumpet, maintains a blistering intensity as the two horns are not merely supported but engulfed in the rhythmic by the rhythmic pressure furnished by Garrison and Jones. Note particularly the passage, beginning about two thirds of the way through the track, when the two horns engages in a rapier-like exchange, each seemingly feeding on the other's insatiable energy.

Open To The Public demonstrates Coleman's spare, terse capacity to-thematic mood-setting. What we have here in essence is a series of short, jagged phrases for the two horns, played twice, with a brief drum passage in between. Throughout the performance, Elvin's freedom cry is demonic, impassioned and technically masterful. Coleman's best formulated and most effectively sustained solo work will be found in the course these eight kinetic minutes.

Check Out Time, with its five-note introductory motif, somehow suggests a Latin concept, though no Latin beat is in fact present. Coleman's upward bent tones and euphoric rising phrases are heard before Redman, using harmonics, coaxes hollow, eerie sounds from his horn.

In an examination of Ornette Coleman's contribution to the direction of modern music during the past ten years, Mann Williams, who was among his earliest supporters, observed: "Coleman's music represents the first fundamental reevaluation of basic materials and basic procedures for jazz since the innovations of Charlie Parker...When someone does something with the passion and deep conviction of an Ornette Coleman, I doubt if there could be any turning back; it seems mandatory somehow for others to follow and explore in the direction he indicates." History, of course, continues to reveal how right he was, and ergo, how right Coleman was himself.

— LEONARD FEATHER
(Author of The Encyclopedia of Jazz in the '60s, Horizon Press)

1988 CD Reissue LinerNotes

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 Cuscuna