Pat Metheny/Ornette Coleman-Song X; Geffen Records, 1986

 

A few weeks have gone by since the passing of great drummer Jack Dejohnette, and the outpouring of obituaries and remembrances from the music fan world has been voluminous. Fitting, too, as the late Jazz Master drummer certainly deserved them all. He could play within any combination of musicians and it certainly sounded as though every setting within which he participated was elevated by his presence. Did the man every have a bad night on the drums? If so, those must have been few and far in-between. It seems doubtful that there any recordings of Jack playing whack. As for Disaster Amnesiac, after the news about Dejohnette's leaving his physical embodiment, I went right to listening to a favorite recording upon which he played, 1986's Song X by Pat Metheny/Ornette Coleman. This is one that has been in my musical rotation since the early 1990's. Probably checked out from the Fremont CA main library at first, and did so numerous subsequent times. Such a great band: Metheny, Coleman, Dejohnette, Charlie Haden, and Denardo Coleman. All players of deep skill and great merit. To describe Ornette as such almost seems like an insult, doesn't it. The breadth of his compositional and improvisational gifts were so wide ranging as to have developed a pretty large cult following, and that's completely merited. His free form blowing on Endangered Species, his Bop lines on Mob Job, the mastery of ballad lyricism on Kathelin Gray, the way that his sounds completely replicate the sounds of 1980's Video Games: dude was singular with the alto saxophone. Let's not forget his deeply rural violin chops either. The rest of the band responds accordingly, with Haden showing the reliably sumptuous bass lines he pulled from his upright, always welcomed by Ornette into the fray, and Metheny presumably absolutely stoked to be jamming harmelodically with that musical conception's architect. Let's not forget younger Coleman Denardo's percussive contributions: he never steps on Jack Dejohnette's feet as the two drum in tandem throughout seven of Song X's eight tracks but is always in the mix, especially on the opening bars of Long Time No See. As for the late Jack D., one can hear his lovely and crisp ride cymbal patterns and quick left hand snare drum syncopation all through the session. Hear him push Trigonometry, essentially playing the melody with that left hand while his right hand keeps time and his feet accent on hi-hat and bass drum, and hear the standard for many decades of Jazz drumming. Dejohnette developed a style that while based upon his influences came into its own early on, and he just kept building upon that, right up to the end Disaster Amnesiac imagines. Song X is a perfect exemplar of Harmelodics. One can hear so many of the elements that Ornette Coleman blended in order to build that unique system of his such as Folk Music and Bucky Fuller ideas and Texas Blues and Popular Culture. Open ended, free flowing Jazz drumming was also a ballast for Harmelodic Theory, and Jack Dejohnette was one of the perfect players for the pursuit of it. It's sad to hear about his passing but at least we have recordings such as this from which we can appreciate his genius.