ZIG ZAG
THE EMPTY FOXHOLE
Ornette Coleman
The Empty Foxhole
Blue Note : 1966
OC, alto sax, trumpet; Charlie Haden, bass; Denardo Coleman, drums.
On Christmas night, 1962, Ornette Coleman presented a self-promoted concert at New York’s Town Hall, a cozy, old-fashioned theatre that is something like a very compressed Carnegie Hall on the intimacy-o-meter. As Coleman told Howard Mandel, that evening there was a transit strike, a taxi strike, and a newspaper strike. The night nevertheless survives, brilliantly, as the ESP-Disk recording Town Hall 1962, just reissued in a remastered edition.
Forty-six years later, Ornette returned to Town Hall, having last stopped by in the late 1980s. And though there was no striking to speak of, there was unfortunately next-to-no promotion. Were we just looking in the wrong direction? Did this thing get any pre-concert coverage at all?
The current incarnation of Coleman’s current quartet had Tony Falanga on acoustic bass, Al MacDowell on electric bass, and Denardo, of course, on traps. Unlike the last time we saw Ornette, an effusive, wide-ranging outing at Carnegie Hall in ‘06, this concert had more of a compact feel, with shorter, deliberate tunes. Ornette remains in tremendous voice on alto, and his turns on trumpet and violin retain their power to surprise. Falanga was in particularly good form (we were on his side of the auditorium), though we missed hearing the back-and-forth between him and Greg Cohen. MacDowell added some fine counterpoint to Coleman’s lead statements, and at other times filled in with chords like a free-form Joe Pass.
Despite the lack of buzz, the Town Hall hit generated some solid write-ups: Nate Chinen captured it for the New York Times (be sure to click this one for a look at OC’s snazzy plaid suit); Hank Shteamer was also there and did his usual aces job of describing what we heard; and Gary Giddins, in a rare New Yorker appearance, put down his thoughts, too.
Shteamer in his post focuses on Denardo’s drumming as a weak spot on this particular date. For a sense of how far Denardo has come, we offer a couple of tracks from Ornette’s Blue Note offering, The Empty Foxhole, which features a ten-year-old Denardo behind the kit. This, of course, was no gimmick, with Coleman sincerely believing in his son’s musical gifts, his ability to create spontaneously, unbeset by preordained notions of how jazz drumming should sound. “Zig Zag,” one of the few tunes on the disc to feature Ornette on alto, has something of the bebop feel that Chinen describes in his concert review. It’s almost as though the Englewood Cliffs studio lent a certain free-boppish air (as it also did several months later, in 1967, when Ornette appeared as a trumpet-playing sideman on a Jackie McLean date, New and Old Gospel). The fairly brief title cut suggests an alternate universe Sketches of Spain (Sketches of Pain?), the martial beat and muted trumpet redolent of Miles, without ever sounding imitative. If anything, it’s a puckish jab — payback for a Miles dis some years back? Haden stays with Coleman Sr. for most of the ride, but every once in a while the trio gels.
The curious can download a couple of songs from this album via a compilation highlighting Ornette’s best of the Blue Note years.
peter breslin // Apr 15, 2008 at 12:18 pm
Denardo’s aesthetic of the drums kept me away from the Ornette at 12/Empty Foxhole period for several years. I simply couldn’t change gears from the elegant rudiment-based propulsion of Billy Higgins or the equally tasty street beats of Ed Blackwell to Denardo Coleman’s concept. Now, I’m not always in the mood for DC but when I am it gets to me like nothing else. Maybe Mark Nauseef? Except that Nauseef also has the obvious chops. But DC is absolutely liberating from the drum set as a dinosauric accretion of f-ing boring flash and cliches. Musicality and freshness on an instrument that is so thoroughly conventionalized is a sweet, sweet thing.
PB
godoggo // Apr 15, 2008 at 2:22 pm
Well, I think his main strength is his chemistry with his father; they feel rhythm in much the same way, with the same gently joyful bounce. The 1st Ornette I ever heard was Song for Che with Denardo, and it’s always sounded good to me. I don’t like to hear him try to play funk, though.
Derbyseville // Apr 16, 2008 at 6:16 pm
I chose to go to a Wayne Shorter Quartet concert that night. I don’t regret my choice, but I do wish I could be in two places at the sam time. The Shorter Quartet seemed a bit edgier and more dissonant than the last time I saw them at the JVC festival in ‘03.
Yulun // Apr 16, 2008 at 10:27 pm
It´s interesting how Ornette now prefers to play with so many bassists. When he played Carnegie Hall in 2006 he played with three: Falanga, McDowell AND Cohen! James Blood Ulmer tells me that back in the early 1970s, Ornette only wanted him to play high notes and follow his alto parts. After a while, Blood started to get bored and started to utilize the full range on the guitar. That´s when Ornette fired him and replaced him with Bern Nix, who went on to play high notes for the band for the next 15+ years.
Fine interview in the January DownBeat by Ethan Iverson with Charlie Haden available at DTM. Lots of interesting Ornette observations: http://thebadplus.typepad.com/dothemath/2008/03/interview-with.html
The recent Town Hall concert was pretty well publicized, but at $105 and $90 for tickets, was way too rich for me.
Vincent // Apr 17, 2008 at 7:24 am
Always wondered about ‘The Empty Foxhole’ – and the ‘untutored’ (a reviewers word, not mine) drumming. Seems to me that it ADDS to the music, you accept that there won’t be a metronomic pulse and it probably sounds better for it.
I like – a lot!
Matt Weiner // Apr 17, 2008 at 9:38 pm
The listing for Ornette’s concert in Burlington says he and Denardo will be playing with Tony Falanga on acoustic bass and two electric bassists, MacDowell and Charnette Moffett.
http://www.discoverjazz.com/tickets-events/artists/ornette-coleman.php
Derbyseville // Apr 21, 2008 at 5:55 pm
by the way…could you be persuaded to make the Ornette recording form Carnegie Hall available again? I hadn’t started reading this site when that was posted, but I’d really love to hear it.
charles // Apr 22, 2008 at 9:26 pm
I think I like Denardo’s drumming better when he was ten…
Actually this album totally blew my mind when I first heard it in the 1980s…I had already heard Coleman with Blackwell and Higgins and even Moffett, but this was PUNK…so what if he was ten… this really connected to me in the same way punk was at the time in that it was not about technique but message…or something like that. I love the tweaked out fills and solos on this album. Seeing them live has occasionally made me wonder about Denardo’s heavy handed backbeat, but I love that he keeps it in the family. Denardo also continues to play with his mother, poet Jayne Cortez.
godoggo // Apr 24, 2008 at 1:30 pm
Well, punk for me was mainly about opposition to the mainstream culture at a time when it was particularly loathsome…and friends…and, yeah the anybody-can-do-it thing was a huge part, too, but I was always quixotically searching for a bit of what I loved about jazz in punk, more than the other way around, and, you know, drumwise there was Billy Zoom (who these days plays vibes with people like Justo Almario), George Hurley, Chuck Biscuits…
godoggo // Apr 24, 2008 at 1:34 pm
…Tony Cicero…
godoggo // Apr 24, 2008 at 1:53 pm
…oops, obviously I meant Billy Zoom’s drummer…Sorry, it always happens that I come with the intention of making one brief comment…
charles // Apr 25, 2008 at 11:36 am
I appreciate Mr. Bonebrake et. al. (and actually I think Zoom has some jazz background in there somewhere too) but I didn’t (and don’t) make that much of distinction between jazz and anything else from a listening perspective. I am not sure I would have appreciated Denardo’s drumming if I hadn’t had heard the liberating quality of less technical drummers. And on the other hand, I could appreciate X because they weren’t just whacking away on major chords, which I wouldn’t have got if I didn’t already hear and understand that in say Thelonious Monk (or Alban Berg?)
cjc // Apr 28, 2008 at 12:53 pm
Derbyseville –
Just about the ONLY thing we can’t repost from older entries is that Ornette @ Carnegie Hall. Drop us an email for more info, if you like.
Charles – Always heard Denardo’s drumming on Foxhole as fairly punk as well. Especially in terms of the gesture but also somewhat in the actual playing itself.
Matt – thanks for info about that Ornette gig. Interested that the three bass line-up is gearing more towards the electric now.
Betty // Apr 29, 2008 at 3:31 am
I find the fact that there was no promotion for this concert really annoying!
were they testing the “you blink you miss theory?”
Well, I must have blinked…
godoggo // May 2, 2008 at 12:52 pm
Re: Zoom: (btw, is that the right way to punctuate? Seems like a lot of colons): This is one of the most awesome interviews I’ve read since the day I burst from my mother’s chest, squawked, and scurried across the floor of the sickbay, or however it happened.
godoggo // May 2, 2008 at 1:31 pm
Oh, and as long as I’m highjacking, I have to say that Biscuits was a stretch in retrospect. Purge him.