Ornette Coleman Double Quartet - Free Jazz (1972 Japanese Atlantic Stereo Gatefold LP)

Vinyl: VG+
Sleeve: VG+
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Ornette Coleman Double Quartet - Free Jazz | Vinyl LP - 1972 Japanese Atlantic Stereo Gatefold Reissue (P-6059A, Jazz Age Series, Warner Bros.-Pioneer Corporation)

Ornette Coleman assembled eight musicians at Atlantic Recording Studios on December 21, 1960, split them into two quartets and asked them to improvise simultaneously for as long as it took. Tom Dowd placed the two groups in stereo: Coleman's quartet - Coleman on alto, Don Cherry on pocket trumpet, Scott LaFaro on bass and Billy Higgins on drums - on the left channel; Dolphy's on the right, with Eric Dolphy on bass clarinet, Freddie Hubbard on trumpet, Charlie Haden on bass and Ed Blackwell on drums. The two quartets interact across the channels throughout, listening and responding to each other in real time.

The performance ran 36 minutes and 23 seconds. Coleman wrote a series of brief thematic cells that each musician was given in advance; beyond that there was no arrangement. The LP format required a fade at the end of Side A and a resume at the start of Side B; otherwise the record plays the session exactly as it unfolded. Nothing was edited, spliced or rerecorded.

The title aligned the album with a movement that had not yet been named at the moment of recording. When Atlantic released the album in February 1961, it arrived alongside Down Beat's Leonard Feather review awarding it zero stars - reportedly without his having heard the record. The rating was one of several gestures that defined the hostile critical reception free jazz initially encountered. Nesuhi Ertegun had bought Coleman's recordings regardless and found the Atlantic audience receptive enough to continue recording him through 1962.

This is the 1972 Japanese Atlantic gatefold reissue (P-6059A), Jazz Age series, manufactured by Warner Bros.-Pioneer Corporation.