Jump Street

Prime Time: Ornette Coleman (alto sax), Charlie Ellerbee and Bern Nix (electric guitar), Jamaaledeen Tacuma (bass guitar) and Denardo Coleman and Calvin Weston (drums). From the album Of Human Feelings (1982).

By the late 1960s, Ornette Coleman had become one of the most renowned musicians in jazz after having being the father of free jazz, but in the mid-1970s he stopped playing in this style and enrolled electric instrumentists. Coleman developed the free funk music from his “harmolodics” philosophy, which postulated that although all musicians play individual melodies in any key, the group can maintain its coherence. In addition, he claimed that this way of playing created a spirit of collective conscience that enhanced human feelings and biological rhythms.

To put his theory into practice, he founded the group Prime Time, which he presented in 1975 with Dancing in Your Head, and with which he also plays in Of Human Feelings, the first jazz album recorded digitally in America. Normally the band included two guitars, two basses and two drums, as well as Coleman on the alto saxophone, although in this album there is only one bass. The bassist is Jamaaladeen Tacuma, who at first didn’t sympathize very much with Coleman’s ideas, but liked the uncommon role that was given to each member of the band as a soloist.

The theme is joyful and danceable, and Coleman exposes the main melody the first time in an octave and the second in a higher one. Then comes the bridge, which is more elaborated, in AABA structure. Next Coleman comes in with a suggestive and imaginative solo with Ellerbee and Nix accompanying him at all times and making their own spontaneous discourses. At the end, the three of them form a coherent and interesting ensemble, but we could actually say that the whole group is immersed in a collective improvisation. To conclude, they re-expose the theme with as much good feeling as at the beginning.