Born in Fort Worth, Texas in 1930, Ornette Coleman began playing alto sax in 1944 and tenor soon after, and is almost entirely self-taught. From the beginning Coleman chose the path less traveled, concerning himself with pitch and melody and trying to extract qualities of the human voice with his horn. The result was a sound in jazz that no one had ever heard before, sparking the "free jazz" revolution, which soon became one of its major currents. Despite an early lack of comprehension over what Coleman was doing, the titles of his early albums suggest that Coleman himself knew exactly how his music would influence the jazz world (Tomorrow Is the Question, Something Else), it was just a question of time.
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