Ornette

[erhodes]

Just curious about what people are using these days as a discographical reference for Ornette Coleman.

I have the old David Wild discography which is good through the end of the 70's, though David has told me that he has newer information that he hasn't gotten around to publishing.  I also have the Litweiler book but the discography after 1979 is pretty threadbare.  I'm showing 11 entries for the entire 80's and 1 London date in August 1991.  Nothing after that.  Plus Litweiler doesn't really do unissued material that is known to exist.

Jazzdisco.org has 9 entries after the August '91 date that take you through 2005.  But I'm on record that this site is at the very least unreliable, though I use it as a starting point if I have nothing else.  I don't find the J-Disc site to be very useful as I have some of the same criticisms that have been recently leveled at Lord in the "Monetizing" thread.  And I don't subscribe to Lord.though I take note that the print version stops at 1987.

Thoughts...and questions...

Is Ornette's discography really that light after the 70's or is it just that no one has really covered it?

Who, if anyone, is covering it?

Has anyone attempted to sort out the discographical details on the '65 material that has circulated since Wild such as Bremen or Berlin and the seeming conflict with some of the Stockholm dates?

Is there no unissued material from the 80's and 90's?

Stuff like that...

Any thoughts, ruminations, leads, references would be welcome.

[JSngry]

My hunch is that there was a buttload of recording going on at Prince Street, and that it's probably a mess to sort out.

[kh1958]

These are the post-1970s Ornette Coleman recordings that I have:

Prime Design Time Design

Opening the Caravan of Dreams

In All Languages

Song X (with Pat Metheny)

Naked Lunch soundtrack (with Howard Shore)

Hidden Man

Prime Time Live in Berlin (bootleg)

Sound Grammar

Sound Museum

Tone Dialing

Colors (with Joachim Kuhn)

Virgin Beauty

 

[JSngry]

New Vocabulary

and he did those two cameos on that Geri Allen record...

Eyes in the back of your head, that one

[erhodes]

1 hour ago, kh1958 said:

These are the post-1970s Ornette Coleman recordings that I have:

Prime Design Time Design

Opening the Caravan of Dreams

In All Languages

Song X (with Pat Metheny)

Naked Lunch soundtrack (with Howard Shore)

Hidden Man

Prime Time Live in Berlin (bootleg)

Sound Grammar

Sound Museum

Tone Dialing

Colors (with Joachim Kuhn)

Virgin Beauty

 

Thank you for this.  I'll compare it with the lists I have.  Without checking this seems like a bit more than what I could account for.

Is it your sense that his output diminished in the 80's and later?  I mean...there are 11 items documented for 1965 alone, 6 for 1966, 2-4 for every year after that up to 1971, 14 in 1971 and 5 each in '72 and '73.  Is there nothing like that for the later years?

1 hour ago, JSngry said:

My hunch is that there was a buttload of recording going on at Prince Street, and that it's probably a mess to sort out.

Yeah...

I've seen some third party sets are supposed to originate from there.  But is anyone on this the way that Wild was on the earlier stuff?  Do you know of anyone who is trying to sort it out?

[JSngry]

Denardo?

[kh1958]

1 hour ago, erhodes said:

Thank you for this.  I'll compare it with the lists I have.  Without checking this seems like a bit more than what I could account for.

Is it your sense that his output diminished in the 80's and later?  I mean...there are 11 items documented for 1965 alone, 6 for 1966, 2-4 for every year after that up to 1971, 14 in 1971 and 5 each in '72 and '73.  Is there nothing like that for the later years?

Yeah...

I've seen some third party sets are supposed to originate from there.  But is anyone on this the way that Wild was on the earlier stuff?  Do you know of anyone who is trying to sort it out?

I know that a lot more was recorded at the Caravan of Dreams than was released. A version of Skies of America with the Fort Worth Symphony was performed and was announced but never released. And they recorded a number of live Prime Time sets. Also, the set he played there with the Charles Moffett Family Band was filmed and perhaps recorded. He and Prime Time also performed live music there accompanying a play; that might have been recorded, it should have been because it was really good.

I don't believe his output diminished in the sense of number of public performances. I would suspect he might have played the most concerts of his career in his post-1970s decades. His willingness to release that music seems to have diminished. 

 

Also, Of Human Feelings was released in the 1980s, but recorded in 1979.

[erhodes]

3 hours ago, JSngry said:

Denardo?

There's a Frank Wright date from 1972 and a Sunny Murray date from 1973 that purport to be from Artists House.

[erhodes]

19 hours ago, kh1958 said:

I know that a lot more was recorded at the Caravan of Dreams than was released. A version of Skies of America with the Fort Worth Symphony was performed and was announced but never released. And they recorded a number of live Prime Time sets. Also, the set he played there with the Charles Moffett Family Band was filmed and perhaps recorded. He and Prime Time also performed live music there accompanying a play; that might have been recorded, it should have been because it was really good.

I don't believe his output diminished in the sense of number of public performances. I would suspect he might have played the most concerts of his career in his post-1970s decades. His willingness to release that music seems to have diminished. 

 

Also, Of Human Feelings was released in the 1980s, but recorded in 1979.

This is insightful and helpful.

Many thanks.

[Gheorghe]

On 17.3.2021 at 1:12 AM, kh1958 said:

I know that a lot more was recorded at the Caravan of Dreams than was released. A version of Skies of America with the Fort Worth Symphony was performed and was announced but never released. And they recorded a number of live Prime Time sets. Also, the set he played there with the Charles Moffett Family Band was filmed and perhaps recorded. He and Prime Time also performed live music there accompanying a play; that might have been recorded, it should have been because it was really good.

I don't believe his output diminished in the sense of number of public performances. I would suspect he might have played the most concerts of his career in his post-1970s decades. His willingness to release that music seems to have diminished. 

 

Also, Of Human Feelings was released in the 1980s, but recorded in 1979.

The Caravan of Dreams must have been a wonderful location . 

Once I heard the LP "Opening at Caravan of Dreams" and it´s the best Prime Time I ever heard, and on the last track Ornette plays some really astonishing violin. 

And I have that LP with string quartet plus Denardo "Prime Design-Time Design". 

And I have the DVD "Made in America" where you see some parts of "Skies of America" with the Symphony.......very fine. 

Very amusing those two old women who tell Ornette how much they liked it. 

[kh1958]

7 hours ago, Gheorghe said:

The Caravan of Dreams must have been a wonderful location . 

Once I heard the LP "Opening at Caravan of Dreams" and it´s the best Prime Time I ever heard, and on the last track Ornette plays some really astonishing violin. 

And I have that LP with string quartet plus Denardo "Prime Design-Time Design". 

And I have the DVD "Made in America" where you see some parts of "Skies of America" with the Symphony.......very fine. 

Very amusing those two old women who tell Ornette how much they liked it. 

For me, it's the finest music club I've ever been to--in its heyday, friendly and relaxed with great sound. Often I sat in the front table. The Caravan was great from about 1983-1989, had flashes from 1990-92, and for the next few years existed as a non-jazz club, with rare exceptions, before it ultimately closed. Now the location is a restaurant. In addition to Ornette, a partial list of who I heard there would include: Sonny Rollins, Sun Ra, Stan Getz, Joe Henderson, Dewey Redman, McCoy Tyner, Art Blakey, Elvin Jones, David Newman, Art Ensemble of Chicago, James Clay, Dizzy Gillespie, Freddie Hubbard, Woody Shaw, James Moody, Jon Faddis, Herbie Hancock, Cecil Taylor, Stanley Turrentine, Jimmy Smith, Jack DeJohnette Special Edition, David Murray Octet, Oregon, Ralph Towner, John McLaughlin, Joe Zawinul, Paquito D'Rivera, Ronald Shannon Jackson, James Blood Ulmer, Charles Moffett, Roy Hargrove, Phil Woods, Cassandra Wilson, Shirley Horn, Hugh Masekela, Miriam Makeba, Willie Dixon, Fenton Robinson, Buddy Guy and Junior Wells, Albert King. Notwithstanding that it was about a 50 minute drive from my home, I went there a couple of hundred times.

[bertrand]

Is this listed in any Ornette discography:

(143) Box Office (1981) dir. Josef Bogdonavich full movie - YouTube

 

[Late]

 

[romualdo]

Here's Ornette's discography taken from the current online Lord over the period 1979 to 2010 - there are 30 entries

hope you can open it (it's in "Open Document Text" format - opens with microsoft - the only way I was able to load this under 100kb of data - Microsoft text/document & PDF were too large)

The 100kb limit can be unbelievably frustrating at times

Ornette Coleman Lord 79-2010.odt

[John L]

The Lord discography doesn't include many of the known live dates.   We need a good comprehensive Ornette discography. 

Ornette was rumored to have been holding quite a lot of unreleased music privately.  Maybe someday his family will let us hear some of it?   

[JSngry]

As with Phil Woods and his similarly instrumented professional named Charlie Parker, what used to be known by the name of Mosaic represented what a combination of a collection of private tapes and a loving box of records can be done to.

Or Sam Rivers.

[erhodes]

20 hours ago, romualdo said:

Here's Ornette's discography taken from the current online Lord over the period 1979 to 2010 - there are 30 entries

hope you can open it (it's in "Open Document Text" format - opens with microsoft - the only way I was able to load this under 100kb of data - Microsoft text/document & PDF were too large)

The 100kb limit can be unbelievably frustrating at times

Ornette Coleman Lord 79-2010.odt

Many thanks for this.  It's at least a start.

3 hours ago, John L said:

The Lord discography doesn't include many of the known live dates.   We need a good comprehensive Ornette discography.

Which was what I was thinking when I started this thread.  David Wild did a good job through the 70's but it seems no one has tackled it on that level since.  KH1958's description of the Caravan of Dreams and the material that might derive just from there (and then) suggest that there are whole worlds of Ornette that have yet to be properly documented.

[romualdo]

4 hours ago, John L said:

The Lord discography doesn't include many of the known live dates.  

Lord only includes material that has been "released" (shellac/vinyl, flexi, tape, cassette, CD, official download etc etc) 

unreleased live sessions (on the whole) are not listed

[Gheorghe]

Don´t forget Sonny Rollins "Road Shows Vol. 2) where Ornette has a guest performance on "Sonny Moon For Two". This was on Sonny´s 80th Birthday and I think Ornette was also an octogenar.