Ornette Coleman

Randolph Denard Ornette Coleman was born on the ninth of March 1930 at Fort Worth, Texas, the son of Randolph Coleman — a Fort Worth Black baseball player and singer — and Rosa Coleman, a Fort Worth Black seamstress. He was raised in the principal Fort Worth Black community of the principal late-1930s and 1940s.

He was self-taught in alto and tenor saxophone from age fourteen — and was hired across the principal late-1940s at the principal Fort Worth-and-New Orleans rhythm-and-blues-and-jazz performance community.

He was hired in 1949 by the principal Silas Green from New Orleans minstrel show — and toured across the principal Southern American minstrel-and-rhythm-and-blues circuit from 1949 to 1950. He was reportedly beaten by a principal Baton Rouge audience at the principal Baton Rouge Black-show performance of 1949 for the principal Coleman improvisational saxophone approach.

He relocated to Los Angeles in 1950 — and lived across the principal early-1950s at the principal Los Angeles South-Central Black-jazz-and-rhythm-and-blues community as a junior elevator operator and warehouse worker while practising the principal Coleman improvisational saxophone approach.

He founded the principal Ornette Coleman Quartet at Los Angeles in 1958 — alongside the principal trumpeter Don Cherry (1936-1995), the principal bassist Charlie Haden (1937-2014), and the principal drummer Billy Higgins (1936-2001).

He recorded the principal foundational Atlantic Records Ornette Coleman Quartet recordings across the principal 1959 to 1961 period — including the principal The Shape of Jazz to Come of 1959, Change of the Century of 1960, This Is Our Music of 1961, and the principal Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation of 1961 — the principal foundational documents of the principal post-1959 American free-jazz canon.

He relocated the principal Ornette Coleman Quartet to New York in November 1959 — and held the principal Five Spot Cafe at New York residency across November 1959 to April 1960 at the principal Five-Spot-Cafe post-Cecil-Taylor (Taylor placed in this archive) free-jazz residency period.

He founded the principal harmolodic-theory compositional approach — the principal Coleman compositional-and-improvisational theory of the principal post-1972 American free-jazz commercial-and-theoretical period.

He was awarded the principal 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Music for the principal Sound Grammar long-playing-record of September 2006 — the principal first Pulitzer Prize for Music awarded to a principal jazz composer.

He died at Manhattan, New York on the eleventh of June 2015 of complications of a heart attack, at eighty-five.

He is honored here as the founder of American free jazz.