{"id":486176,"date":"2019-05-22T08:00:29","date_gmt":"2019-05-22T14:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=837918"},"modified":"2019-05-22T08:00:29","modified_gmt":"2019-05-22T14:00:29","slug":"flashback-ornette-coleman-sums-up-solitude-on-lonely-woman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/music-news\/flashback-ornette-coleman-sums-up-solitude-on-lonely-woman\/","title":{"rendered":"Flashback: Ornette Coleman Sums Up Solitude on \u2018Lonely Woman\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In a 1997 interview<\/a> with philosopher Jacques Derrida, the late saxophonist and sonic trailblazer<\/a> Ornette Coleman<\/a> recalled the origins of his most famous composition. \u201cBefore becoming known as a musician, when I worked in a big department store, one day, during my lunch break, I came across a gallery where someone had painted a very rich white woman who had absolutely everything that you could desire in life, and she had the most solitary expression in the world,\u201d he said of his time working as a stock boy at L.A.\u2019s Bullock\u2019s in the early-to-mid\u2013Fifties. \u201cI had never been confronted with such solitude, and when I got back home, I wrote a piece that I called \u2018Lonely Woman.’\u201d<\/p>\n

Recorded 60 years ago today, on May 22nd, 1959, and released that October on Coleman\u2019s classic LP The Shape of Jazz to Come<\/a>,<\/em> \u201cLonely Woman\u201d remains otherworldly and enchanting. The mournful horn lines \u2014 played by Coleman, on a plastic alto sax, and Don Cherry, on pocket trumpet \u2014 have the feel of a ballad-like lament, but drummer Billy Higgins\u2019 uptempo ride-cymbal pattern gives the piece a quiet urgency. Add in Charlie Haden\u2019s droning, almost raga-like bass lines, the perfect match for Coleman\u2019s blues-steeped soloing and piercing tone, and you have a blend that sounds like nothing else inside or outside of jazz<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Due to Coleman\u2019s revolutionary approach to improvising, which did away with the predetermined song forms that had defined earlier eras of jazz, his band stirred up serious controversy when it turned up in November \u201959 for a two-week residency at New York\u2019s Five Spot. Established jazz artists weighed in, and the reactions weren\u2019t generally favorable \u2014 \u201cI don\u2019t know what he\u2019s playing, but it\u2019s not jazz,\u201d Dizzy Gillespie said the following year.<\/p>\n

But one artist who wasn\u2019t repelled was Lou Reed<\/a>, then attending Syracuse University.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I was going to college I would go down into New York and I would trail Ornette\u2019s quartet around \u2014 Billy Higgins, Charlie Haden, Don and Ornette,\u201d he told Mojo\u2019<\/em>s Sylvie Simmons<\/a> in 2005. \u201cI would follow where they went, I couldn\u2019t afford to go in so I would listen through the window and I heard \u2018Lonely Woman,\u2019 and that changed my life. The harmonies. That was it. There\u2019s not a day goes by when I\u2019m not humming \u2018Lonely Woman.’\u201d<\/p>\n

He even seemed to credit the Coleman band with the germ of the Velvet Underground\u2019s sound<\/a>. \u201cI thought, you put Hubert Selby with Burroughs or Ginsberg lyrics against some rock with these kind of harmonic [ideas] going in \u2026 wouldn\u2019t you have something?\u201d<\/p>\n

Reed would eventually start a literary magazine at school called The Lonely Woman Quarterly<\/a>,<\/em> and in this clip<\/a> you can even hear him singing Coleman\u2019s famed tune. Later, in 2003, Coleman would appear on Reed\u2019s solo album<\/a> The Raven.<\/em><\/p>\n

Eventually, \u201cLonely Woman\u201d \u2014 and Coleman\u2019s work in general \u2014 gained wide acceptance, and the piece became a sort of alternative jazz standard, covered by everyone from the Modern Jazz Quartet<\/a> to John Zorn\u2019s Naked City<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In 1995, speaking to Howard Mandel for The Wire,<\/em> Coleman also told the story of seeing the painting that inspired \u201cLonely Woman,\u201d and discussed how that led him to an epiphany about the nature of art. \u201cI said, \u2018Oh, my goodness. I understand this feeling. I have not experienced this wealth, but I understand the feeling,’\u201d he explained of the woman in the paining. \u201cI went home and wrote \u2018Lonely Woman,\u2019 and I said, \u2018From here on I\u2019m going to support artists no matter what they do \u2014 because that artist sent a signal out. That\u2019s not just a painting \u2014 it\u2019s a condition.\u2019 I relayed the condition to myself, wrote this song, and ever since it has grown and grown and grown.\u201d<\/p>\n

via:: Rolling Stone<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a 1997 interview with philosopher Jacques Derrida, the late saxophonist and sonic trailblazer Ornette Coleman recalled the origins of his most famous composition. \u201cBefore becoming known as a musician, when I worked in a big department store, one day, during my lunch break, I came across a gallery where someone had painted a very […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-486176","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-music-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-19 19:10:28","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KQZR - The Reel","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=486176"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486176\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=486176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=486176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=486176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}