Beauty Is A Rare Thing- The Complete Atlantic Recordings

Perhaps it's superfluous to comment closely on the music inside. I once commented to a friend that it's music that seems to me strikingly _complete_. That perception is hard to unpack entirely, perhaps, but speaks of how the music seems both coherent & integral & yet surprising & raw after even many listens. While certainly it's a long distance from the aggressive "energy" playing of the mid-1960s of Coltrane, Sanders &c, every time I listen to Coleman's music it still sounds almost alien, with a strangeness at its heart that is hard to dispel.

The first two discs, _The Shape of Jazz to Come_ & _Change of the Century_, were recorded with the Cherry/Haden/Higgins band in 1959; they remain his most popular quartet discs, & contain most of his best-known compositions--"Ramblin'", "Una Muy Bonita" & the immortal "Lonely Woman". These three tracks are exemplary showcases for the brilliance of Charlie Haden: "Ramblin'" for instance is a classic dissection of the blues, where Haden ignores the codified 12-bar form but instead marks the divisions between choruses by switching between rhythmic stops & a walking line. "Lonely Woman" is an intricate exercise in multiple rhythmic layers, a desolate ballad performed by the horns, who float over Haden's out-of-tempo stops (which sonds like they're coming from some middle-eastern instrument) & the unexpectedly fast & tense rhythms of Higgins' drums.

Coleman may have arrived in New York with his concept fully formed, but his recordings are anything but static expositions of this concept, & the 3rd album, _This Is Our Music_, is already stranger & more alien than the previous recordings. The key to this is the replacement of Higgins with Ed Blackwell, a drummer who sounds unsettlingly different from any other drummer of the period. This date (actually three sessions from July & August 1960--the nearly 2 CDs' worth of tracks from this date, including 5 previously unreleased ones, are the key recoveries of this boxed set) is especially notable for his one quartet rendition of a standard, "Embraceable You"--one of those versions of a much-loved standard which is both a desecration & elevation, rather like Charlie Parker's "All the Things You Are" or Coltrane's "My Favourite Things".

The set presents the next bit of material out of order. Disc six contains two "third-stream" scores by Gunther Schuller from December 19th & 20th of 1960, performed by a large ensemble including a stirng quartet, Jim Hall on guitar & Bill Evans on piano. The first is "Abstraction", a palindromic musical construct which cracks open to yield an acappella Coleman solo; the 2nd is a 15-minute set of variations on Monk's "Criss Cross". These two tracks form a suggestive context for the date recorded the next day (the 21st), which is Coleman's own effort at a large-scale music: _Free Jazz_ (on disc 4). This features a double quartet: Coleman, Cherry, Dolphy, Hubbard, La Faro, Haden, Blackwell, Higgins. It's hard to comment on this, some of the most difficult music Coleman recorded in his career. Even those who find it hard going should persist--not least because of the conclusion, one of the best moments in recorded jazz: the alternate bass solos & drum solos remain unrivalled for vibrancy, colour & imagination.

The increasing abstraction of Coleman's music at this point is marked by _Ornette!_, a quartet with Cherry, La Faro & Blackwell. By now the more obviously blues-based early music has been replaced by something much more oblique & enigmatic, a change felt both in La Faro's quizzical, unpredictable bass playing, & in Blackwell's prominence in the music. Though the music swings forcefully, both bass & drums often break from a conventional time-keeping role, & the music has a raw, almost primitive edge to it that wasn't as apparent with the warm-toned Haden & the sweet cymbal work of Higgins. "C. & D." is a drum feature, & Blackwell's performance sounds like something off an ethnographic recording, not a jazz disc. This is potent & disconcerting music, & it's fortunate that another 10-minute track has been rediscovered, the previously unknown "Proof Readers".

The last music included here is _Ornette on Tenor_, which besides the change of the leader's instrument features a change of bassist--Jimmy Garrison, who didn't last much longer with the group (he famously quit onstage in frustration one night, & later that year began work with Coltrane). His driving, uncomplicated bass playing is appropriate to an album which emphasizes the R&B element in Coleman's music.

In addition to the principal albums, this set includes the contents of several earlier albums that contained previously unused material from these sessions, _Twins_, _The Art of the Improvisers_, & _To Whom Who Keeps a Record_ (the last is very rare, a Japan-only release from 1975). The most important track among these is the "First Take" of _Free Jazz_ (half the length), though really all of the material is just as good as the original albums.

This set is not the best way to begin acquaintance with the music--rather like Parker's infinite variations on the blues & "I Got Rhythm" when collected into a mammoth boxed set, the music here can seem too much of a piece to the uninitiated. But the more it's explored, the more this music seems almost limitless in its nuance & range.