“Lonely Woman” is considered Ornette Coleman’s first major composition. It has an altogether original melody, derived from nothing that preceded it. Coleman’s alto and Don Cherry’s cornet have deeply personal sounds that have the quality of human voices. Billy Higgins’s double-time drumming under the song introduces a sense of forbidding and urgency while Charlie Haden’s deep double stops give the piece weight and gravity. The song would soon be recorded by the Modern Jazz Quartet and by vocalist Chris Connor (with Margo Guryan’s lyrics). But nothing rivals the haunting, raw power of the original version.

-Michael Cuscuna

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“I guess in jazz music, there are two horns and a rhythm section, that’s what Charlie Parker and all the guys followed. But what happened with me is that I never was thinking about the format as much as I was thinking about the melodic line not having to be just played with that small structure. So what I was doing was to try and write a melodic line that sounded like it was structured orchestraredly. I was trying to play orchestrated music in a small combo context. I realized that if I changed the harmonic structure or the tempo structure while someone else was doing something, they couldn’t stay there. They’d have to change with me. So I’d more or less bring that about myself a lot, knowing where I could take the melody. In other words I could create a showcase of the melody and then show the distance between where 1 could go and still come directly back to that melody . Instead of trying to show the different inversions of the same thing.” - Ornette Coleman about “Beauty Is A Rare Thing” from The Harmolodic Life by John Litweiler

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Well, there you have it. For your ears and eyes, a perfectly conceived, totally improvised solo on “All The Things You Are” by the maestro himself Charlie Parker.

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Dan Morgenstern once remarked to me that whenever he heard a recording by Louis Armstrong or Fats Waller it was sure to bring a smile to his face. I agree. This clip was one of the reasons I used to comb through the TV Guide each week (before the days of VHS, DVD and YouTube) to see when the next viewing of “Stormy Weather” would be shown on WPIX-TV in New York just to catch a glimpse of the great Waller. The musicians are Benny Carter (tp), Alton Moore (tb), Gene Porter (cl), Irving Ashby (g), Slam Stewart (b) and Zutty Singleton (d). Ada Moore sings and Bill “Bojangles” Robinson dances a bit and waits on tables!

- Scott Wenzel

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