Old and New Dreams

Cherry, Don, Dewey Redman, Charlie Haden, Ed Blackwell

album cover

Ornette Alums Revisit the Master's Teachings

The sage tenor saxophonist Joe Lovano keeps a list of often-overlooked records that he believes are vital to the understanding of jazz history. This 1979 gathering of veterans of Ornette Coleman's groups is on it. "The people on this record are not playing together all the time," Lovano said in a 2002 interview. "They sorta have to switch back into the Ornette way of looking at music, which is pretty different from everything else. You can tell their minds are engaged the whole time—Dewey [Redman, the tenor saxophonist] plays these long melodies that have a beautiful shining heart inside them."

Lovano might have been thinking about Redman's solo on the gorgeous Don Cherry tune "Guinea." Just as the sing-song melody is winding down, Redman makes a scrambling, not entirely graceful lunge into the tenor saxophone's upper register. He's been itching to break away, and now, after Cherry's done his trumpet thing, Redman sees his chance. He begins with big single notes, played just so—he's a man stepping carefully around some bad memories. His playing would be great with just bass and drums (the setting for most of the solos with this quartet), but just as Redman is starting, Cherry switches to piano, providing a firm anchor. Redman responds with a wail. He cries a bit. His phrases—utterly logical yet oddly shaped—swell with such life that they threaten to burst apart.

Old and New Dreams emphasizes the lyrical side of the Ornette Coleman group. The quartet mellows the strident harmonic palette of such path-finding records as Free Jazz (1960), making their flashes of subversion a part of the discourse, rather than the entire conversation.

Genre: Jazz
Released: 1979, ECM
Key Tracks: "Lonely Woman," "Guinea," "Togo," "Song for the Whales."
Catalog Choice: Dewey Redman: The Struggle Continues
Next Stop: Ornette Coleman: In All Languages
After That: Art Ensemble of Chicago: Urban Bushmen
Book Pages: 161–162