This pioneer of Free Jazz directly influenced that movement on two fronts - as a virtuoso Bassist and a Composer. Interestingly, he seems to have not been very impressed either with the Free Jazz movement or his influence on the next generation of Bassists working in that idiom. Litweiler, in his book, ‘The Freedom Principle’ states that Mingus ‘despised’ Free Jazz and looking back in 1974 Mingus stated: “I used to play avant guard bass when nobody else did.
Now I play 4/4 because none of the other bassists do” …rather ironic considering his impact on that particular music.
Mingus developed musically in marked contrast to John Coltrane. While Coltrane evolved stylistically over a period of time - moving further from his starting point - Mingus fused the widespread areas of his musical influences into a personal whole. This truly personal idiom was not a stylistic aggregation of influences but a unique fusion of the ensemble sound of the Ellington Orchestra, the collective improvisation of Dixieland, the call and response of Gospel Music, bebop phrasing, and folk music.
He was a virtuoso on his chosen instrument - with a unique conception that set him apart from the Bassists of the ‘50’s. So strong was this instrumental esthetic that his playing would influence the likes of Charlie Haden, Scott la Faro, and Steve Swallow. Most of the outstanding Bass players of the period - Paul Chambers, Sam Jones, Doug Watkins - worked within the Ray Brown school. It was a ‘4 to the bar’ time keeping role and solos were rare - either in an ensemble style without the ensemble or technical displays [frequently with no relation to the original musical context]. Mingus partly dispensed with the time keeping role and worked with rhythmically independent lines running contrapuntally to the melody - both as a foundation and a counterpoint.
These innovations were only incorporated superficially at the time - Hard Bop had no room for this style within its particular set of conventions.
Compositionally, most of his advanced ideas were introduced by the summer of 1957. Like Ellington, he composed for the particular personnel in his groups - but went one step further. He did not so much compose for them but rather with them - working from sketches outlining the basis of the compositions - he provided space for individual contributions and fostered an atmosphere of spontaneous interactions within the group: “As long as they start where I start and end where I end, the musicians can change the composition if they feel like it. They add themselves, they add how they feel while we’re playing” [Hentoff liner notes Atl.1377].
One of the notable consequences of this approach is that the outward features of his music changed with the musicians. These ‘Jazz Workshops’ provided the setting for his contributions as Free Jazz Pioneer - it was his musical individuality as a composer which set the stage for later developments.
His concept of form rarely fit the formal structures of the ‘50’ and ‘60’s - for the most part he still worked in the traditional 12 and 16 bar blues forms and the 32 bar song form. But, while accepting these formal patterns he filled them with new content - breaking the ‘theme/improvisation/theme’ convention.
In expanding these short forms he often juxtaposed several contrasting themes which provide a differentiation to the musical structure - and change the emotional levels as the form unfolds.He further provided variation with his concept of tempo. Hardly one piece keeps the initial tempo throughout - either by double time in the Bass and Drums or a constant accelerando with a sudden ‘pull back’. This was often combined with an alteration of the basic rhythm and sometimes meter. It created a powerful and driving performance.
It was the use of collective improvisation - one very notable aspect of Free Jazz - which firmly establishes his pioneer role. While a practice of the Cool School and used by the likes of Gerry Mulligan, Al Cohen, and Zoot Sims - it was usually confined to a two horn dialogue before the return of the last theme [out chorus]. Mingus’s use of this technique had much of the vitality of early Jazz and often formed the emotional climax of a composition. It was also the method through which he brought his musicians into a process of spontaneous co-creation - either against a written theme or a fixed and repeated rhythmic ostinato.
He died after a period of increasingly ill health in 1979.
Ornette Coleman - born March 19, 1930 in Fort Worth, Texas - started working at 14 with local R amp;B bands throughout the South West. A recording for Contemporary in February, 1958 actually started his career in Jazz and it happened by ‘accident’. He had approached Lester Koenig to offer some of his compositions for recording and Koenig, after hearing Ornette play through some of them, offered to record Coleman for Contemporary.
Two LP’s resulted - ‘Something Else! The Music of Ornette Coleman’ and ‘Tomorrow is the Question’.
Both of these were made with Don Cherry who played a decisive role on both recordings. Shortly after, both went east and studied at the School of Jazz in Lenox, MA and it was here that Coleman studied with Gunther Schuller and John Lewis [of the Modern Jazz Quartet] - at the same time, they were put under contract with Atlantic Records.
It was a Five Spot engagement in 1959 that introduced them to the Jazz community - but typically with a great deal of musical controversy. As Nat Hentoff observed: “For months, grimly skeptical jazz men lined up at the Five Spot’s bar. They made fun of Coleman but were naggingly worried that he might, after all, have something to say - and in a new way”.
Much of the reaction was due to Coleman’s instrumental technique - or rather lack of technique [he was not a virtuoso player] - and his apparent appearance ‘out of nowhere’ onto the NYC Jazz scene and in one of the most sought after venues.
His musical statements presented ‘in a new way’ were truly, Coleman’s way. The group appearing at the Five Spot included Don Cherry, Charlie Hayden, and Billy Higgins and it is evident, that Coleman schooled this group with his own Jazz esthetic: “It took me a long time to get them interested in studying with me, and staying…because when I met Charlie [Hayden] and Billy
[Higgins] and Don [Cherry], they were into Bebop. They got very interested in the things I was trying to write to play. So when we got together, the most interesting part is: What do you play after you play the melody if you don’t have nothing to go with? That’s where I won them over…”
Coleman didn’t provide chord changes on which to improvise - so what do you play? Ornette clearly stated: “usually, when you play a melody, you have a set pattern to know just what you can do while the other person’s doing a certain thing.
But in this case, when we played the melody, no one knew where to go or what to do to show that he knew where he was going”
This new music was not about ‘changes’, but about emotional expression: “I finally got them to where they could see how to express themselves without linking up to a definite maze…I think it was a case of teaching them how to feel more confident in being expressive like that for themselves. It was the innovations that Coleman developed which allowed that ‘expressive confidence” and these innovations are essential elements of a new musical language spoken by a new generation of jazz musicians - for the New Jazz started when Coleman and this Five Spot unit began playing together.
He basically negated the use of a stated harmonic framework to provide a base and form for improvisation. This harmonic framework was not replaced by another ‘way’ but actually not present in his conception - the recordings for Contemporary reflect this with his and Don Cherry’s struggles with the rhythm section on ‘Something Else! The Music of Ornette Coleman’ [Bassists Red Mitchell amp; Percy Heath, Drummer Shelly Manne, Pianist Paul Bley]. In a ‘traditional’ jazz setting, these accomplished players would have been ideal but for Coleman and Cherry it was not. Both were forced to improvise over set changes but with a conception which did not accommodate such a fixed harmonic structure.