Jazz Beat #1 - Ornette Coleman

I didn’t see Ornette Coleman until 1971 when he played the Saturday afternoon program of the Newport Jazz Festival with his old comrades Dewey Redman, Charlie Haden, and Ed Blackwell. It was fortuitous that he shared the afternoon bill with Eubie Blake, Willie “The Lion” Smith, Freddie Hubbard, Charles Mingus, and the New York Bass Violin Choir, for that evening a riot interrupted Dionne Warwick’s performance of “What the World Needs Now” and the festival came to a crashing halt.