Lonely Woman

Ornette Coleman (alto sax), Don Cherry (cornet), Charlie Haden (bass) and Billy Higgins (drums). From the album The Shape of Jazz to Come (1959).

Free jazz fans have few standards of this style to listen to. This is because all the old songs were limited for the musicians by their rigid harmonic forms and their romantic lyrics. They rejected the established norms and were not interested in adding new standards. However, the canonization process in jazz requires the assimilation of new pieces into the standard repertoire. In “Lonely Woman”, although Coleman and Cherry will not recognize bar lines, necessary to interpret a melody, and the theme lacks chord progressions, these are inherent in the mood of the piece. This hesitancy between tonal clarity and ambiguity adds emotion to the composition and the soloists are free to play improvisations based on chords, modal or atonal.

For example, the pianist Denny Zeitlin starts his version by translating Coleman’s and Cherry’s trumpet lines, but as he builds his solo he takes on different piano harmonic personalities that deviate from the composer’s initial spirit. When other keyboardists performs the tune, it acquires subtle nuances, and the demands of freedom are balanced with a more pronounced formalism. Branford Marsalis and Kenny Kirkland make an intensely rhapsodic 16-minute show on their album Random Abstract, and John Zorn also includes the track on his Naked City album.

The small introduction is made by Haden strumming bass chords along with Higgins establishing polyrhythms. Right away Coleman and Cherry enter to expose the theme in unison. The melody is gloomy and heart-breaking, lamenting the ruthless loneliness. The first to intervene is Coleman, whose improvisation is dissonant, but with some coherence. At some point Cherry accompanies him below. Next Coleman and Cherry re-expose the theme intertwining and then Haden and Higgins play the final bars.