First off, a big thank you to Dan for letting me “sit in” on this gig while he moved to Philly. I hope I can continue the great work he’s doing here and engage you in a close listen of some excellent music. Thanks for reading!
Caleb
Listening
To listen to this album for free, visit Tomorrow Is The Question @ Last.fm. To play a song, click the round play button next to its name.
Nitty Gritty (Reference Section)
Recorded January-March, 1959. Line-up: Ornette Coleman (alto saxophone), Don Cherry (trumpet), Percy Heath (bass, tracks 1-6), Red Mitchell (bass, tracks 7-9), Shelly Manne (drums).
Personal Connections
I have been trying to be conscious of the prevalence of thought-terminating clichés in general human discourse around me, and Ornette strikes me as a figure who has inspired his fair share of demagoguery since his emergence as an enigmatic saxophone stylist and bandleader in the late 1950s. His critics have too easily dismissed him as a player devoid of technical ability (“He’s just bad at his instrument”) with a penchant for randomness or primitiveness that is a far cry from true innovation (“His music is an insult to the listening intelligence”). Meanwhile, many of his enthusiasts have been too quick to proclaim a complete break with the bop era and disdainfully dismiss those jazz musicians who continued within that framework as commercial traditionalists out of step with their time. The thought-terminating capacity of these cliché arguments is a minefield for those of us who hope to listen to the music with open ears and minds free of expectations. So, I will cast off the weight of these past shouting matches and rely on my personal faith that the music itself is the most important authority.
Before I turn to the music, however, I will say a few words about my own context for listening to this album. My personal taste in jazz is broad, and it certainly includes a generous dose of pretty far out music that would not have been possible without the innovations of Ornette. I am fascinated by the magic that happens when a strong individual artist pours his or her spirit into a composition or improvisation, so I am predisposed toward music that is deeply personal or urgent. At the same time, the intimacy within a well-balanced ensemble can be a beautiful aspect of jazz.
The selection of this album was challenging with regard to this last point, since the rhythm section on Tomorrow Is The Question! is not particularly well-suited to Ornette’s harmony-stretching aesthetic (more on this later). Unfortunately, I couldn’t find free streaming recordings of The Shape of Jazz To Come or Change of the Century, both of which pair Ornette with more resonant partners and offer a stronger set of compositions. This album does, however, include Ornette’s soulmate Don Cherry on the trumpet (probably the cornet actually), a partnership that is beautiful to hear unfold.
A Bit of History
Ornette Coleman’s roots can be traced to the Texas rhythm and blues scene of the early 1950s. The “Texas tenor” sax sound, including a hard, muscular approach and an affinity for bluesy honks and squeals, must have been the prevalent sound in his ears as he learned to play (see Illinois Jacquet, Booker Ervin, David “Fathead” Newman, Billy Harper, etc.). After getting kicked off numerous stages in his early gigging career (or so the story goes), he finally landed a record contract at the age of 28 on the merits of his compositions and his simpatico with Don Cherry. Tomorrow Is The Question is his second album, and the first to eschew the harmonic services of a piano player (i.e. their ability to play chords). This piano-less format became a defining characteristic throughout Ornette’s recording career, and it is shared by much of the free and exploratory jazz recorded since.
The Music
Okay, time for the fun to begin. This album, perhaps more so than his more cohesive (and more famous) albums that were yet to come, shows Ornette’s sound emerging from the dual influences of blues and bebop. His composed melodies (all the tunes are his own) are presented as unison lines between trumpet and sax (i.e. they play the same notes as one another). This is a hallmark of bebop. Compare the opening head of Mind and Time, Rejoicing, or Endless with the following clip of bebop masters Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie.
The soloing throughout Tomorrow Is The Question! is based on melodic themes, with disregard for the harmonic demands of a chord progression. This was an enormous departure at the time. By abandoning the chord progression as fundamental skeleton for improvisation, Ornette frees himself from the limitations of worrying about “wrong notes” in his personal statements. As we can hear in his improvised phrases, he uses this freedom to liberate his melodic muse, rather than abusing it by employing more randomness in his solos. Listen to his solo in Endless—at 1:25 a melody emerges fully formed.
Endless is a great example of Ornette’s aesthetic in action, particularly his use of blue notes and articulation techniques such as smears and glisses. As we heard with Albert Ayler (who was undoubtedly influenced by Ornette), every note has the capacity to be a blue note, and intonation is a tool for communication rather than a normative system of rules that must be followed. This creativity is particularly audible from 0:50-1:20, where he intones a series of overblown and pleading high notes separated by phrases that strike me as pure blues. Also listen to his solo on Turnaround, starting at 5:30.
Speaking of pure blues, check out Tears Inside, one of three 12-bar blues (along with Turnaround and Giggin‘) that put Ornette’s playing into the context of a very traditional jazz form. You can hear him playing the blues throughout the track, even though the individual notes he plays may not fit with the harmony. It’s a beautiful solo combining the familiar and the unfamiliar in an organic and extremely swinging way.
One thing that is amazing to me is the straight face that the bass and drums keep throughout the recording, despite Ornette’s presumable encouragement to stretch out. Percy Heath, whom you may remember from Cannonball Adderley’s “Know What I Mean?“, provides a fairly unimaginative walk through the first six tracks, sounding a bit at a loss for what to do with his newfound freedom. He plays well when given specific instructions, like during the stop-time in the first chorus of Don Cherry’s solo on Tears Inside.
I also love the little Charleston hits in the opening track (first around 0:17), cued by a wail from sax and trumpet that I can’t help but hear in my head as a yell of “Dance!” Percy Heath does not get a solo on the album, although his replacement for the last three tracks, Red Mitchell, offers a tasteful solo on Endless that includes some nice Ornette-y riffs. Mitchell sounds a bit random in his extended solo over the blues Turnaround.
Another highlight that I wouldn’t want to omit is the dirge Lorraine, featuring a pleading melodic style that would become (in my opinion) one of Ornette’s singular strengths in the years that followed this album.
I regret that I wasn’t able to touch on Don Cherry’s playing at all in this entry, but the awful reverb on tracks 1-6 during his solos drove me away. That said, I particularly enjoy his solo on Tears Inside.
Conclusion
Ultimately, Tomorrow Is The Question! is both an engaging personal statement by a great creative mind and a document of the extension of a style. Since it is impossible to hear it today with all the impact it had at the time, we must instead hear it in the context of the music that was to follow it. I actually hear much of Ornette Coleman’s playing from this album as basically tonal, but he incorporates little by little some of the vocabulary (the bends, the wails, the abandonment of harmony in allegiance to melody) that will become an expanded range of legitimate expression for future jazz improvisers (think Albert Ayler).
