Ornette Coleman | "Genesis of Genius: The Contemporary Albums" | Available March 25 via Craft Recordings

ORNETTE COLEMAN BOX SET

GENESIS OF GENIUS: THE CONTEMPORARY ALBUMS

SET FOR RELEASE MARCH 25

Continuing Craft Recordings’ 70th Anniversary Celebration of Contemporary Records

180g 2-LP and 2-CD box sets contain newly mastered audio by Bernie Grundman of the legendary jazz saxophonist’s albums Something Else!!!! and

Tomorrow Is the Question!

Includes expanded booklet with archival photos and extensive new liner notes by GRAMMY® Award-winning music historian Ashley Kahn

The advance track “Invisible” available to stream/download now HERE

SACD versions of both albums also available

exclusively on the Craft Recordings store

Click here to pre-order/pre-save now

Click here for Online Media Kit

Click here for unboxing video

Los Angeles, CA (January 19, 2022) – Continuing Contemporary Records’ 70th anniversary celebration, Craft Recordings is proud to announce the release of the new box set, Ornette Coleman – Genesis of Genius: The Contemporary Albums (2-LP, 2-CD and digital formats out March 25). Available for pre-order today HERE, the sets feature two seminal releases, 1958’s Something Else!!!! The Music of Ornette Coleman and 1959’s Tomorrow Is the Question! The New Music of Ornette Coleman. These albums transformed an unknown jazz visionary from the hinterlands into the talk of the New York scene.

Both albums were originally recorded by legendary engineer Roy DuNann, the man responsible for the famously pristine sound quality of Contemporary albums, and have been newly mastered for this release by Bernie Grundman, who himself got his start at Contemporary, mentored by DuNann. The 180-gram vinyl set, which will be pressed at RTI, has been cut from the original analog tapes to lacquer, with the original tapes also used for new hi-res transfers and mastering by Grundman for the 2-CD and digital editions. The deluxe box sets include a 32-page booklet with archival photos and extensive new liner notes by GRAMMY® Award-winning music historian Ashley Kahn. The LP jackets also replicate the original tip-on versions.

SACD versions of both albums, Something Else!!!! and Tomorrow Is the Question! will also be made available exclusively via CraftRecordings.com on the same date, March 25, and can be pre-ordered HERE.

Largely avoided by his colleagues on the L.A. jazz scene in the late 1950s, Coleman (March 9, 1930 – June 11, 2015) found an open door at Contemporary Records, where the label’s founder Lester Koenig was intrigued by his melodic sensibility and unorthodox approach to phrasing. After his Contemporary albums, Coleman quickly went on to New York City and turned the jazz scene on its head, but it was Koenig who provided the first glimpse of the saxophonist’s new approach to rhythm and harmony.

“These two recordings are the accessible gateway to Ornette Coleman’s music,” says Nick Phillips, the producer of Genesis of Genius. “He’s expanding on the bebop vocabulary and at this point he’s using traditional forms for most compositions, 12-bar blues and AABA song form, but doing something totally different. With Ornette and Don Cherry’s trumpet in the front line, the way they play and phrase and shift rhythms together, it sounds very loose but very tight.”

Featuring Coleman’s working band with Don Cherry on trumpet, pianist Walter Norris, bassist Don Payne and drummer Billy Higgins, the album Something Else!!!! sounds less radical today than strikingly individual and steeped in the blues. With nine Coleman originals, the session introduced several tunes that became standards, including “The Blessing” and “When Will the Blues Leave?” Featuring Cherry, Shelly Manne, and either Percy Heath or Red Mitchell on bass, the emphatic, pianoless follow up Tomorrow Is the Question! made it clear that Coleman’s concepts were both insistently innovative and tethered to bedrock African American idioms. Consisting entirely of Coleman originals, the album introduced several more tunes that became an essential part of the jazz canon, including “Tears Inside,” “Rejoicing” and “Turnaround.”

More than a seminal improviser and composer who exponentially expanded jazz’s rhythmic and harmonic frontiers, Coleman embodied the playfully heroic duality-erasing ideal at the center of African American musical innovation. Radical and rootsy, avant-garde and populist, philosophical and visceral, genius and trickster, Coleman was born and raised in Ft. Worth, and the wailing Texas blues was woven into his sound. By the time he settled in Los Angeles in the mid-1950s he’d spent years on the road playing blues and R&B, imbuing a gutbucket sensibility that he carried with into every musical setting.

L.A. beboppers often treated him with disdain, perceiving his unorthodox note choice as lack of chops, but he slowly found a brilliant cadre of musicians who embraced his musical vision, including pianist Paul Bley, drummers Billy Higgins and Eddie Blackwell, bassist Charlie Haden and Don Cherry. The Contemporary albums paved the way for Coleman’s fall 1959 triumph in New York City, with Tomorrow Is the Question! hitting stores the same month that his quartet started an extended run at the Five Spot, arguably the most consequential and controversial gig in jazz history.

Alternately championed and denounced by his musical peers and critics, Coleman found a new home at Atlantic Records, where he continued expanding his gorgeous, searing, utterly human approach to music. But it was Lester Koenig who first recognized Coleman’s genius when he walked into his Melrose office at a time when the saxophonist wasn’t even welcome on most bandstands.

“The Contemporary discs were the foundation of Ornette’s career and the bellwether of a new age, arriving at the close of one decade, and the onset of a brave, new one,” writes Ashley Kahn in the Genesis of Genius liner notes. “Embraced or derided, the music challenged long-held ideas of what jazz—what music—should sound like.”

Click here to pre-order Genesis of Genius and Contemporary Records merchandise now: HERE

Genesis of Genius Tracklists

2-LP box set

LP1 – Something Else!!!!: The Music of Ornette Coleman

SIDE 1

Invisible (4:43)
The Blessing (4:45)
Jayne (7:17)
Chippie (5:37)

SIDE 2

The Disguise (2:48)
Angel Voice (4:20)
Alpha (4:12)
When Will The Blues Leave? (4:56)
The Sphinx (4:14)

Ornette Coleman – alto saxophone

Don Cherry – trumpet

Walter Norris – piano

Don Payne – bass

Billy Higgins – drums

LP2 – Tomorrow Is the Question!: The New Music of Ornette Coleman

SIDE 1

Tomorrow Is The Question! (3:09)
Tears Inside (5:00)
Mind And Time (3:08)
Compassion (4:37)
Giggin’ (3:19)
Rejoicing (4:04)

SIDE 2

Lorraine (5:55)
Turnaround (7:55)
Endless (5:18)

Ornette Coleman – alto saxophone

Don Cherry – trumpet

Percy Heath – bass (Side 1)

Red Mitchell – bass (Side 2)

Shelly Manne – drums

2-CD box set and digital formats

CD1 – Something Else!!!!: The Music of Ornette Coleman

Invisible (4:43)
The Blessing (4:45)
Jayne (7:17)
Chippie (5:37)
The Disguise (2:48)
Angel Voice (4:20)
Alpha (4:12)
When Will The Blues Leave? (4:56)
The Sphinx (4:14)

CD2 – Tomorrow Is the Question!: The New Music of Ornette Coleman

Tomorrow Is The Question! (3:09)
Tears Inside (5:00)
Mind And Time (3:08)
Compassion (4:37)
Giggin’ (3:19)
Rejoicing (4:04)
Lorraine (5:55)
Turnaround (7:55)
Endless (5:18)

Genesis of Genius continues Craft Recordings celebration of Contemporary Records 70th anniversary, a campaign that launched in December with six digital On Contemporary compilations focusing on individual jazz giants who recorded extensively for the label: Art Pepper, Hampton Hawes, Barney Kessel, André Previn and Shelly Manne plus The Saxophonists – Various Artists, offers a tantalizing glimpse at the depth of the Contemporary catalog with an array of era-defining horn players. 2022 will see lots more to come as the label celebration continues.

About Contemporary Records

Founded in 1951 by Lester Koenig (December 3, 1917 – November 21, 1977), Contemporary Records is a uniquely Hollywood story. An intellectual who loved the arts, Koenig (pronounced kay-nig) thrived in the film industry as a screenwriter, co-producer and assistant to William Wyler, playing an important role on landmark films such as The Best Years of Our Lives, Detective Story and Roman Holiday. Koenig’s life in movies was effectively ended by the Red Scare in 1953, when he was called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee. He was flayed by the conservative Hollywood establishment for having left-wing sympathies, and blacklisted he turned his attention to Good Time Jazz, a label he’d launched in 1949, to record a Dixieland combo featuring players who all had day jobs with Disney. He initially created Contemporary as an outlet for new contemporary classical works, but his ears were wide open and by the mid-1950s many of Southern California’s most exciting jazz artists were eager to document their music in what was rapidly becoming one of the best studios on the West Coast under the auspices of Roy DuNann, the sound engineer Koenig lured away from Capitol Records in 1956. The artists responded to Koenig’s steadfast faith in their creativity, and Contemporary became the essential vehicle for L.A. modernists and East Coast players looking for respite from the New York hustle. Seven decades later, the label’s legacy looks more imposing than ever, as the albums that Lester Koenig and his son John recorded continue to inspire and influence leading players on the contemporary scene.

About Craft Recordings

Craft Recordings is home to one of the largest and most essential collections of master recordings and compositions in the world. Its storied repertoire includes landmark releases from icons such as Joan Baez, John Coltrane, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Celia Cruz, Miles Davis, Isaac Hayes, John Lee Hooker, Little Richard, R.E.M., Joan Sebastian and Traveling Wilburys. Plus, the catalog recordings of celebrated contemporary acts including A Day to Remember, Evanescence, Alison Krauss, Nine Inch Nails, Taking Back Sunday and Violent Femmes, to name just a few. Renowned imprints with catalogs issued under the Craft banner include Fania, Fantasy, Fearless, Musart, Nitro, Panart, Prestige, Riverside, Rounder, Specialty, Stax, Vanguard, Varèse Sarabande, Vee-Jay and Victory, among many others. Craft creates thoughtfully curated packages, with a meticulous devotion to quality and a commitment to preservation—ensuring that these recordings endure for new generations to discover. Craft is also home to the Billie Holiday and Tammy Wynette estates which preserve and protect their respective names, likeness and music through day-to-day legacy management of these cultural trailblazers.

Craft Recordings is the catalog label team for Concord Recorded Music.

Ornette Coleman | Genesis of Genius

Contemporary Records | Release Date: March 25, 2022

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