Ornette Coleman

Featuring: Ed Blackwell, Don Cherry

condition (record/cover): NM / EX- (minimal ring wear on bottom) 

1961: the quartet with Don Cherry, Ed Blackwell and - crucially - Scott LaFaro in the bass chair, months before the accident that took him at twenty-five. LaFaro's presence changes the whole weather of the band: where Haden grounded and testified, LaFaro converses, questions, counterpoints, and Ornette Coleman responds with some of his most quicksilver playing on record, the phrases tumbling and rebalancing in real time. "W.R.U." and "C. & D." are harmolodic logic at full gallop, joyous and rigorous at once, with Blackwell's New Orleans dance keeping the whole laboratory swinging - proof that the revolution never needed to abandon the body to free the mind. Among the essential Atlantic titles, and the primary document of one of the great might-have-been partnerships in the music: what these two would have built given years instead of months remains one of jazz's aching questions.

Atlantic reissue pressing, ready for the turntable rather than the vault, which is where Ornette belongs.