Klarinet Archive - Posting 000128.txt from 1999/07

From: Stephen Heinemann <sjh@-----.edu>
Subj: [kl] Ornette Coleman's saxes
Date: Mon, 5 Jul 1999 14:21:48 -0400

In Joe Goldberg's _Jazz Masters of the Fifties_ (NY: Macmillan, 1956),
Ornette Coleman relates his choice of the plastic alto to Nat Hentoff as
follows:

"I needed a new horn badly but I didn't have much money. A man in the
music store said he could sell me a new horn -- a plastic model -- for the
price of a used Selmer. I didn't like it at first, but I figured it would
be better to have a new horn anyway. Now I won't play any other. They're
made in England, and I have to send for them. They're only good for a
year the way I play them. The plastic horn is better for me because it
responds more completely to the way I blow into it. There's less
resistance than from metal. Also, the notes seem to come out detached,
almost like you could see them. What I mean is that notes from a metal
instrument include the sounds the metal itself makes when it vibrates.
The notes from a plastic horn are purer. In addition, the body of the
horn is made flat, like a flute keyboard, whereas a regular horn is
curved. On a flat keyboard, I can dig in more."

(I remember reading this paragraph as an impressionable teenager in the
Chicago 'burbs, and going into the Karnes music store to ask about plastic
altos. The salesman brought my question to one of the techs in the back,
who came racing out wild-eyed -- "Where did you see Ornette?" -- and I had
to admit that I didn't know anything about him yet beside what I'd read in
the Goldberg book, which is still mysteriously missing from the Palatine
High School library.)

Readers of this list will observe more than a couple of incongruities in
Ornette's statements (starting with Why in the world would anybody buy a
plastic sax when they could get a used Selmer?), but this is what thinking
outside the box entails. Whether one finds his music dazzling or
unlistenable (or, depending on conditions, both), there is no denying its
originality.

By the way, he didn't stick to the plastic-only creed; I saw a picture of
him playing a Selmer Mark VI with a low A (circa 1963), which,
coincidentally, is the same model I've played for the last twenty years.
The bell is about four inches longer than standard; if your left hand
fingers fly off the keys, they bonk loudly against the bell.

Stephen Heinemann
Bradley University
sjh@-----.edu

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