On his second outing for the Contemporary label,
Ornette dusted the piano from the bandstand and focused instead on a quartet. For some unexplained reason,
Billy Higgins was replaced by
Shelly Manne; the only constants remain
Coleman and
Don Cherry. The focus, then, is on the interplay between the altoist and trumpeter in executing
Ornette's tunes, which were, more than on the preceding album (Something Else!, recorded a year earlier), knottier and tighter in their arrangement style. The odd-syncopation style of the front line on numbers such as "Tears Inside," which comes out of the box wailing and then simmers down into a moody, swinging blues, was a rough transition for the rhythm section. And the more
Ornette and
Cherry try to open it up into something more free and less attached to the tune's form, the more
Manne and especially bassist
Percy Heath hang on. Still, there are great moments here: for example, the celebratory freedom of "Giggin'," with its wonderful trumpet solo, and "Rejoicing," which has become one of
Coleman's classics for its elongated melody line and simple obbligato phrasing, which become part of a wonderfully complex solo that keeps the blues firmly intact. The final track, "Endless," is pure magic. After
Manne carries it in 6/8,
Coleman uses a nursery rhyme to move to the solo terrain and, when he does, the solo itself becomes a part of that rhyme as even
Don Cherry feels his way through it in his break. And, if anything, this is one of the things that came to define
Ornette -- his willingness to let simplicity and its bright colors and textures confound not only other players and listeners, but also him too. In those days,
Coleman's musical system -- although worked out in detail -- always left room for the unexpected and, in fact, was played as if his life depended on it. As a result,
Tomorrow Is the Question! was a very literal title; who could have guessed the expansive, world-widening direction that
Coleman's system would head into next?