8. Ornette ColemanFree Jazz: A Collective Improvisation

I’m not really into jazz, but in the early 60s in NY I got into Ornette Coleman, mainly because of a musician friend of mine named Harold Clayton who was crazy about him. My studio was on East 5th Street, and on the corner was a low-key bar called The Five Spot – not even a half a block away, and Ornette Coleman was a regular on stage there. Whenever we could scrape together enough money to get in, Harold would drag me to The Five Spot to hear Ornette Coleman and whoever was sitting in with him. I even got to see Coltrane once, and one of my painting heroes, Larry Rivers, who played sax. All these guys were talking about "free jazz", man, dig it! I was more or less indoctrinated by saturation and after a while I, too, was really diggin’ it!