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).
Of Human Feelings music is based on a combination of rhythm and blues, free jazz and funk with an innovative and radical proposal. Critics applauded the expressive music and the harmolodic approach of the album. According to them, it was Coleman’s best work in the field of harmolodics because of his clearly expressed and timeless compositions, and that discordant keys drastically transform conventional polyphony.
Moreover, his synergetic view shows expressive immediacy instead of a superficial technical skill and his compositions were successful in the context of an album that displayed his high quality and catchy distinctive saxophone style. However, the album had little commercial acceptance because it was somewhere between funk and jazz, and didn’t attract any particular group of listeners. Also, the more purist jazz fans didn’t accept the addition of dance rhythms and electric guitars. It was probably an album ahead of its time.
The rhythm section makes a concise introduction with an improvisation by Tacuma. Afterwards Coleman comes in to expose the theme, which has a languid and thoughtful melody that plays in unison with one of the guitarists while the other accompanies them with chords. Then Coleman makes a dynamic and sometimes intermittent solo with intense and daring phrases. Ellerbee and Nix don’t stop playing giving him a solid and bold support with random and arbitrary melodic lines. Coleman continues his ingenious speech full of unexpected twists and turns until the group re-exposes the theme in an exquisite way.
