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Of Human Feelings

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Of Human Feelings is a studio album by American jazz musician Ornette Coleman. It was recorded by Coleman with his Prime Time Band on April 25, 1979, at Columbia Recording Studio in New York City. The album explores funk-jazz music and features Coleman's harmolodic approach to improvisation.

The album was not released until 1982, when it charted at number 15 on the Top Jazz Albums. It was well received by music critics, including Robert Christgau, who later named it the second best album of the 1980s. However, Of Human Feelings made no commercial impact and subsequently went out of print.

Recording

Coleman recorded the album on April 25, 1979, at Columbia Recording Studio in New York City with his Prime Time Band, which featured drummers Ornettte Denardo Coleman and Calvin Weston, guitarists Charlie Ellerbee and Bern Nix, and bassist Jamaaladeen Tacuma. Weston replaced original drummer Ronald Shannon Jackson. Coleman found the production process for Of Human Feelings very simple: "We recorded all the pieces only once, so all the numbers were first takes. And there was no mixing. It is almost exactly as we played it." According to him, it was the first digitally recorded jazz album in the United States.

Composition

People have started asking me if I'm really a rhythm-'n'-blues player, and I always say, why, sure. To me rhythm is the oxygen that sits under the notes and moves them along and blues is the colouring of those notes, how they're interpreted in an emotional way.

— Ornette Coleman, 1981

Of Human Feelings continued Coleman's egalitarian approach to small-group music with Prime Time, an electric quartet who were introduced on his 1975 album Dancing in Your Head. With the group, Coleman deviated from the solos-with-accompaniment of most earlier jazz and applied a more equitably-shared ensemble approach. According to his theory of "harmolodics", all the players could contribute independent melodies in any key all the while making their parts cohere as a whole. Of Human Feelings featured shorter and more differentiated compositions than Dancing in Your Head.

The album explores funk-jazz, a musical development dating back to 1970 that features repetitive bass lines, elements of Latin rhythms, and complex rhythmic relationships. British jazz critic Stuart Nicholson viewed Of Human Feelings as a culmination of Coleman's musical principles dating back to his free jazz work in 1960, albeit reappropriated around a funky backbeat. Coleman played the melody line and employed two guitarists for contrast, as one part of the band comprised a melody contingent of guitar and drums, and the other guitarist and drummer were entirely committed to a composition's rhythm. Coleman and Prime Time exchanged directional hints throughout the compositions, as one player changed tonality and the others modulated accordingly. According to jazz critic Barry McRae, "it was as if Coleman was translating the concept of the famous double quartet of Free Jazz to the needs of funk jazz."

The tracks "Sleep Talk", "Air Ship", and "Times Square" were originally performed by Coleman during his live concerts in 1978 under the names "Dream Talking", "Meta", and "Writing in the Streets", respectively. "What Is the Name to This Song?" was titled as a sly reference to two of Coleman's older compositions, "Love Eyes" and "Forgotten Songs", whose themes were played concurrently and transfigured by Prime Time. "Mob Job" features a heavy funk sound, the atonal "Times Square" has futuristic dance themes, and "Jump Street" is a blues piece with a bridge. "Love Words" heavily uses polymodality, a central feature of harmolodics, and posits Coleman's extended solo against a densely textured, rhythmically complex backdrop. Nicholson observed West African rhythms and collective improsivation rooted in New Orleans jazz on "Love Words", and opined that "Sleep Talk" could have been derived from the opening bassoon solo in Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring.

Release

Of Human Feelings was not released until 1982 by Antilles Records. According to German musicologist Peter Niklas Wilson, the album may have been the catchiest and most commercial-sounding of Coleman's career at that point. However, despite its potential commerciality, it made no impact on the American hit parade. It only charted at number 15 on the Top Jazz Albums in 1982. Steve Lake of The Wire magazine asserted that Coleman offered only a "funk/jazz compromise" to consumers with Of Human Feelings and consequently appealed to neither market. As of 2012, the album is out of print.

Critical reception

In a contemporary review for The Village Voice, music critic Robert Christgau gave Of Human Feelings an "A+" and felt that its "warm, listenable harmolodic funk" offers listeners so much release from tension that it "confounds mind-body dualism". He found both the abstract rhythmic interplay and artless pieces of melody to be "humane" and said that "the way the players break into ripples of song only to ebb back into the tideway is participatory democracy at its most practical and utopian." The album finished thirteenth in the voting for The Village Voice's Pazz & Jop critics' poll for 1982. Christgau, the poll's creator, named it the best album of the year in an accompanying list. In a decade-end list for the newspaper, he ranked it as the second best album of the 1980s.

Legacy

In a column for The New York Times, writer Robert Palmer said that, although it was recorded in 1979, Of Human Feelings was "still very much in the forefront of musical developments" in 1982. In a retrospective review for Allmusic, jazz critic Scott Yanow gave it four stars and said that, although none of Coleman's original compositions became popular, they succeed within the context of the album as a showcase for his "distinctive horn and often witty and free (but oddly melodic) style." Jazz journalist Todd S. Jenkins felt that it was more successful than Prime Time's previous recording Body Meta (1978), although Coleman's "basic, repetitive compositions took getting used to."

Joshua Klein of The A.V. Club viewed Of Human Feelings as the best starting point for listeners to explore Coleman's theory of harmolodics. In a 2008 article, New York magazine's Martin Johnson said that it "brims with urbane energy" whose elements of funk, Latin, and African music are encapsulated by music that is "all jazz." He included Of Human Feelings in his list of canonical albums of New York's sceneless, yet vital jazz in the previous 40 years.

Track listing

All compositions by Ornette Coleman.

Side one
  1. "Sleep Talk" – 3:34
  2. "Jump Street" – 4:24
  3. "Him and Her" – 4:20
  4. "Air Ship" – 6:11
Side two
  1. "What is the Name of That Song?" – 3:58
  2. "Job Mob" – 4:57
  3. "Love Words" – 2:54
  4. "Times Square" – 6:03

Personnel

Credits are adapted from the album's liner notes.

Musicians
Additional personnel
  • Steve Backer – A&R
  • Susan Bernstein – cover painting
  • Peter Corriston – cover design
  • Joe Gastwirt – mastering
  • Ron Saint Germain – engineer
  • Ron Goldstein – executive director
  • Harold Jarowsky – second engineer
  • Steven Mark Needham – photography
  • Ken Robertson – tape operator

References

  1. ^ Of Human Feelings (LP liner notes). Antilles Records. 1982. {{cite AV media notes}}: Unknown parameter |artist= ignored (|others= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |publisherid= ignored (help)
  2. Haga, Evan (2008). "Vernon Reid: Mistaken Identity". JazzTimes. Quincy. Retrieved June 28, 2013. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
  3. ^ Wilson 1999, p. 207.
  4. Harrison et al. 2000, p. 573.
  5. ^ Palmer, Robert (July 16, 1986). "The Pop Life - Ornette Coleman's Music Develops in Prime Time". The New York Times. Retrieved June 28, 2013.
  6. Kennedy & Bourne 2004, p. 152.
  7. ^ Harrison et al. 2000, p. 574.
  8. ^ McRae & Middleton 1988, p. 67.
  9. Giddins 2000, p. 475.
  10. Wilson 1999, p. 206.
  11. ^ McRae & Middleton 1988, p. 68.
  12. "Of Human Feelings - Ornette Colement : Awards". Allmusic. Retrieved June 28, 2013.
  13. Cooper & Smay 2004, p. 238.
  14. Christgau, Robert (June 1, 1982). "Christgau's Consumer Guide". The Village Voice. New York. Retrieved June 28, 2013.
  15. "The 1982 Pazz & Jop Critics Poll". The Village Voice. New York. February 22, 1983. Retrieved June 28, 2013.
  16. Christgau, Robert (February 22, 1983). "Pazz & Jop 1982: Dean's List". The Village Voice. New York. Retrieved June 28, 2013.
  17. Christgau, Robert (January 2, 1990). "Decade Personal Best: '80s". The Village Voice. New York. Retrieved June 28, 2013.
  18. Yanow, Scott. "Of Human Feelings - Ornette Coleman". Allmusic. Retrieved June 28, 2013.
  19. Jenkins 2004, p. 97.
  20. Klein, Joshua (March 29, 2002). "Ornette Coleman: The Complete Science Fiction Sessions". The A.V. Club. Chicago. Retrieved June 28, 2013.
  21. Johnson, Martin (April 7, 2008). "40th Anniversary: The New York Jazz Canon". New York. Retrieved June 28, 2013.

Bibliography

External links

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