Ornette Coleman, Ornette on Tenor (side A)

Sidemen on Ornette Coleman's albums tended to come from his narrow inner circle, so perhaps the most surprising thing about 1961's Ornette on Tenor is the appearance of an obvious outsider—Jimmy Garrison on bass (around the same time he started playing with Coltrane). By 1961, Ornette had moved away from the simple melodic heads of the early records and into more abstract melodies. Between the inclusion of a more conventional jazz bassist and Ornette's switch to tenor (from the cheap plastic Grafton alto), the record does sound slightly more professional than his earlier work. At the same time, it's free and abstract in a similar way to Ornette!, which directly preceded it. This phase of Ornette's is a bit hard to pin down, as it's neither as catchy as the early Atlantic records nor as radical and inspiring as his late 60s avant classics like Empty Foxhole and Crisis. While it in some ways feels like an odd transitional period in Ornette's development, these records remain fascinating both historically and when viewed on their own.