Of Human Feelings

''Of Human Feelings'' is an album by American jazz saxophonist, composer, and bandleader Ornette Coleman. It was recorded on April 25, 1979, at CBS Studios in New York City with his band Prime Time, which featured guitarists Charlie Ellerbee and Bern Nix, bassist Jamaaladeen Tacuma, and drummers Calvin Weston and Coleman's son Denardo. It followed the saxophonist's failed attempt to record a direct-to-disc session earlier in March of the same year and was the first jazz album to be recorded digitally in the United States.

The album's jazz-funk music continued Coleman's harmolodic approach to improvisation with Prime Time, whom he had introduced on his 1975 album ''Dancing in Your Head''. This approach emphasized natural rhythmic and emotional responses in a way that Coleman compared to a spirit of collective consciousness. He also drew on rhythm and blues influences from early in his career for ''Of Human Feelings'', which had shorter and more distinct compositions than ''Dancing in Your Head'', while applying free jazz principles from his music during the 1960s to elements of funk.

Following a change in his management, Coleman signed with Island Records, and ''Of Human Feelings'' was released in 1982 by its subsidiary label Antilles Records. Critics generally praised the album's expressive music and harmolodic approach, but it made little commercial impact and went out of print. Coleman enlisted his son Denardo as manager after a dispute with his former managers over the album's royalties, a change that inspired him to perform publicly again during the 1980s.

Background

By the end of the 1960s, Ornette Coleman had become one of the most influential musicians in jazz after pioneering its most controversial subgenre, free jazz, which jazz critics and musicians initially derided for its deviation from conventional structures of harmony and tonality. In the mid-1970s, he stopped recording free jazz, recruited electric instrumentalists, and pursued a new creative theory he called harmolodics. According to Coleman's theory, all the musicians are able to play individual melodies in any key, and still sound coherent as a group. He taught his young sidemen this new improvisational and ensemble approach, based on their individual tendencies, and discouraged them from being influenced by conventional styles. Coleman likened this group ethic to a spirit of "collective consciousness" that stresses "human feelings" and "biological rhythms", and said that he wanted the music, rather than himself, to be successful. He also started to incorporate elements from other styles into his music, including rock influences such as the electric guitar and non-Western rhythms played by Moroccan and Nigerian musicians.

''Of Human Feelings'' was a continuation of the harmolodics approach Coleman had applied with Prime Time, an electric quartet introduced on his 1975 album ''Dancing in Your Head''. The group comprised guitarists Charlie Ellerbee and Bern Nix, bassist Jamaaladeen Tacuma, and drummers Ronald Shannon Jackson and Denardo Coleman, Ornette Coleman's son. Tacuma was still in high school when Coleman enlisted him, and first recorded with Prime Time in 1975 for the album '' Body Meta'', which was released in 1978. Tacuma had played in an ensemble for jazz organist Charles Earland, but Earland dismissed him as he felt audiences gave excessive attention to his playing. Coleman found Tacuma's playing ideal for harmolodics and encouraged him not to change. Although Coleman's theory initially challenged his knowledge and perception of music, Tacuma came to like the unconventional role each band member was given as a soloist and melodist: "When we read Ornette's music we have his notes, but we listen for his phrases and phrase the way he wants to. I can take the same melody, then, and phrase it like I want to, and those notes will determine the phrasing, the rhythm, the harmony – all of that."

Recording and production

In March 1979, Coleman went to RCA Records' New York studio to produce an album with Prime Time by direct-to-disc recording. They had mechanical problems with the studio equipment and the recording was rejected. The failed session was a project under Phrase Text, Coleman's music publishing company. He wanted to set up his own record company with the same name, and chose his old friend Kunle Mwanga as his manager. In April, Mwanga arranged another session at CBS Studios in New York City, and Coleman recorded ''Of Human Feelings'' there on April 25; the session was originally titled ''Fashion Faces''. Jackson did not record with the band; instead, Calvin Weston was hired in his place to play simultaneously with Denardo Coleman. They recorded all the album's songs on the first take without any equipment problems.

The album's recording session was captured using a Sony PCM-1600 two-track digital recorder, a rare item at the time. According to journalist Howard Mandel, the passages played by the band sounded neither very soft or loud on the album, because it had been mixed with a middle-frequency range and compressed dynamics. Because of the equipment used, Coleman did not embellish the album with added effects and avoided overdubbing, multi-tracking, and remixing. According to him, ''Of Human Feelings'' was the first jazz album to be digitally recorded in the United States.

Composition and performance

According to '' The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Music'' (2004), ''Of Human Feelings'' features jazz-funk, a type of music that developed at the turn of the 1970s and was characterized by intricate rhythmic patterns, a recurrent bass line, and Latin rhythmic elements. Lloyd Sachs of the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' wrote that, although Coleman was not viewed as a jazz fusion artist, the album can be described as such because of its combination of free jazz and funk. Glenn Kenny

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