Ornette Coleman "Complete Live at the Hillcrest Club" (1958)

For all its audio shortcomings, this session is a piece of essential jazz folklore. When saxophonist Ornette Coleman, a tonally whimsical, rule-bending figure of fun in the southern R&B bands of the 1950s, found likeminded young jazz experimenters at California's Hillcrest Club in 1958, he began a revolutionary trip. This material has never been wholly featured on disc before (and earlier versions have been under Canadian pianist Paul Bley's name), and though Bley's piano sounds as if it's out in the car park and Billy Higgins' drums right in your lap, it's an astonishing jazz document.

How far Coleman had come from the previous decade's bebop is immediately audible in his searing solo on Charlie Parker's classic Klactoveesedstene. And the wailing, wriggling alto sound against Don Cherry's trumpet and Charlie Haden's bass in the closing stages of the standard How Deep Is the Ocean make it apparent that traditionally lyrical reworking of jazz standards would never be the same again. Enduring Coleman compositions like When Will the Blues Leave? and Ramblin' stretch their youthful limbs here, and the squall of the short Coleman original Crossroads show why the saxophonist's arrival came as such a shock in the conservative 50s.

***