A Jazz Legend Returns, With A Lawsuit

Late last year, a small artist-run record label quietly released an album called New Vocabulary, by a trio consisting of the game-changing sax player and Pulitzer Prize winner Ornette Coleman, trumpeter Jordan McLean (whom Soundcheck listeners will know from the Afrobeat band Antibalas and from the band for the hit musical Fela) and drummer Amir Ziv. Yesterday that quiet was shattered by the announcement of a lawsuit filed on behalf of Ornette Coleman against the other two musicians, alleging that the album had been released without his knowledge or consent. 

The press release about the lawsuit had some curious phrasing: the lawsuit was filed “on behalf of” Ornette, rather than by Coleman himself. This perhaps is not surprising: Ornette is 85 and in poor health, and is not available to comment on the proceedings. His son, the drummer Denardo Coleman, has been Ornette’s guardian since 2013 and filed the lawsuit last week.  

In yesterday’s press release, the collaborative playing by the trio was referred to as “teaching sessions,” a term that Jordan McLean said in a phone interview he had never heard before yesterday. In an email, Brian D. Caplan, a partner in the firm Reitler Kailas & Rosenblatt, seemed to back off that characterization slightly, but wrote simply, “Ornette never agreed that a recorded jam session was going to be commercially released.“

There were in fact numerous jam sessions – on that point, both sides seem to agree. And clearly, these sessions, whatever they were, would not and could not have happened without Ornette’s participation. The question is: what was Ornette’s understanding of the purpose of those sessions? Did he know these recordings were intended for release? “Absolutely,” McLean claims. “All I can tell you about that is what Ornette has told us face to face, and time and time again; I can’t speak to the subsequent decisions made within his organization in the meantime. But every conversation I’ve ever had with Ornette was ‘yes, yes, yes.’”

Without an actual statement from Ornette Coleman himself, we have no way of knowing what Ornette’s wishes were in 2009 when the recordings were done at his home – and crucially, whether those wishes have changed since. McLean last visited Coleman nearly two years ago, while the sax player was recovering from a broken hip. After that, he says he was “cut off from communication with Ornette,” with his calls going directly to voice mail or being answered by a nurse who said Ornette was not available. 

The lawsuit claims that Ornette Coleman did not want the tapes released, and in fact asked for the materials to be sent back to him, at which point McLean and Ziv released them instead on the New Vocabulary album. Caplan wrote, “The defendants asked for written permission, didn't get it and released an album in any event. There is no written or verbal agreement authorizing such release. ” Asked if he had any kind of paper trail, voice mails, or other support for his decision to release the album, McLean said, “this is a complex legal affair, and there are some things I can’t really discuss right now, other than to say, we have hard proof. We have proof and documented evidence that we compiled over an extensive time of being with Ornette, and we will present them in the appropriate forum.”

Lost in all this is the record itself. New Vocabulary generated positive reviews, although at least a couple of writers noted the curiously low key release by McLean and Ziv’s record label, System Dialing Records, given that Ornette Coleman is a huge figure in the world of jazz and had not released a studio album since 1996. (All of his later albums, including Sound Grammar, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2007, have been live recordings.) McLean points out that it’s an artist-run label with a tiny budget; “we were limited by our resources. We made a dedicated mailing, we put the record out there the best we could, and the idea that there was no fanfare… in this day and age I wonder if that’s not even a bit more sensational.”

The lawsuit, though, complains that “an individual not recorded at the sessions is credited as having participated,” and that “music was added to the recordings after the fact.” In the pop music world, this wouldn’t even be worth mentioning, but in the world of jazz, where the live interplay of the musicians is paramount, studio tricks like overdubbing have long been frowned on. The pianist Adam Holzman appears prominently on several tracks, with his parts having been recorded later. That includes the piece “Sound Chemistry,” whose title seems to call back to Ornette’s Sound Grammar.

The similarity in names seems to have caught the attention of Coleman’s camp. McLean and Ziv’s label, System Dialing, echoes Ornette’s 1995 album Tone Dialing. New Vocabulary also seems to allude to Sound Grammar. The lawsuit claims “the public is likely to be misled into believing that Coleman approves of, or is affiliated with, the public release of these recordings.” That, of course, is exactly what Jordan McLean believes. “If we didn’t think it had value,” he says, “and if we hadn’t gotten so much explicit encouragement and direction from Ornette on it, then we never would have done it. What interest could I possibly have in bringing this kind of thing upon myself?”

Asked what relief the lawsuit was seeking, Caplan wrote, “The action is requesting injunctive relief, damages, attorneys fees and punitive damages.” Caplan’s firm has represented some high-visibility musicians, where the stakes have been quite high, but that is not the case here. Sales of New Vocabulary, according to McLean, add up to “a very humble number. I’ll be happy when we reach a thousand; I don’t know if we’ve reached a thousand yet.”

The quiet release of last year is now making a big noise. Maybe those sales numbers will top a thousand after all.