OGJB Ode to O

Lake, Haynes, Fonda, and Altschul form an OG Band of Jazz Empathy

OGJB are four out-jazz OGs get together for a sophomore outing, sounding a little like “O” (Ornette Coleman) and a whole lot like themselves.

Ode to O
OGJB
TUM
21 January 2022

This band’s name comes from the first initial of the four players: Oliver Lake (alto saxophone), Graham Haynes (cornet), Joe Fonda (bass), and Barry Altschul (drums). Not that 1917 ODJB, the so-called “Original Dixieland Jazz Band”, nope no, please. But the OGJB. The youngest of them, Haynes, is 61, and the oldest are Altschul and Lake at 79—vintage players of the real thing. OGs, indeed.

But youth ain’t everything, and wisdom is particularly powerful among improvising musicians. Yes, you can lose your chops, but you can gain all kinds of moves, not the least of which is the ability to listen to your fellow musicians as you work together on creating sound.

OGJB’s 2019 debut, Bamako, featured compositions by each player as well as two spontaneous improvisations. Ode to O follows the same template, with two of Altschul’s tunes being dedicated to other musicians: the title track referencing Ornette Coleman, the most obvious influence on this band and these musicians, and “Da Bang” connecting ears to violinist Billy Bang, another creative artist in the avant-garde tradition.

The latter track is a good entry point for understanding how OGJB operates. After a stately drum introduction by the composer, the horns play an obtusely harmonized theme over a purely swinging 4/4 groove. Fonda starts by playing the same descending four-note line repeatedly while Altschul powers the momentum like a traditional bebop drummer—all pulsing ride cymbal and accents from the snare. The melody consists of syncopated short and long tones that sound almost as if they were being bowed as a double-stop, hence the name of the tune. If what you love about this music is swing, well, this isn’t all that different than, say, the Jazz Messengers. But the harmonic/melodic freedom of the soloists creates huge variety: Haynes plays a light, highly tonal solo that could almost pass for something by Kenny Dorham, other than the fact that harmonies being played by Fonda’s bass line are most static. Fonda solos with bebop phrasing too, fencing with Altschul’s accents, but then Lake explodes (or let’s say stretches) the guidelines with squeals, wriggling phrasing, and various guttural or swallowed tonalities—but he keeps it so short it seems like a poem and perfectly fitted to the statements of his bandmates.

On other tracks, the roles of the players might be reversed. “The Other Side”, a fanfare-like theme by Haynes, finds the rhythm section playing free rather than swinging, all rumbles and cymbal/tom atmospherics. Only Lake is the straight man here, with Haynes taking a wild, expressionist solo that includes the use of a distortion pedal. Haynes slashes through the track, playing long tones that crackle and expand, break up and resolve back into melody. For all its overt noise, it has a majestic beauty, like static shooting into a night sky.

Other contrasts make these dates delicious and compelling. Joe Fonda’s “Me Without Bella” is a long-form composition, shifting from harmonized horns over his bowed bass to a long section during which Lake and Haynes play a melody over a loping Latin groove. There are stretches of improvising too—a collective section in which the four musicians create quietly in ballad form and then a Lake solo over the groove that turns into a call-and-response with Haynes. But even in this section, written elements of “Bella” find their way into the freedom. The flip side of that composed approach are evident in “OGJB #3” and “OGJB #4”, where there is no written material. Both of these spontaneous compositions open the door for Haynes to mix in more of his electronically altered horn sounds, creating arresting textures and soundscapes.

The collective effect of Ode to O is certainly not one of bringing us back to the classic Ornette Coleman quartets of the late ’50s and early ’60s. One or two tracks evoke the chattering joy of that band, perhaps (Lake’s “Bass Bottom” has some of that wit, for example), but the range of music evoked on this recording is wide and long. The tracks featuring Haynes in distorted mode reach back to early 1970s Miles Davis, not just because Davis also ran his horn through electronics, but mainly because those performances create thrilling soundscapes. A tune like Haynes’s “Apaixonado” calls up sonic memories of The Art Ensemble of Chicago and its “little instruments” interacting with horns across an open landscape of development. The tribal power of the Fonda/Altschul rhythm section might bring to mind some of the best “free” teams of the last few years (William Parker/Susie Ibarra; Gerald Cleaver/Eric Revis) or the team of Phillip Wilson and Abdul Wadud who powered Julius Hemphill’s Dogon A.D.

Beyond these famous bands, OGJB ought to be a group that New York’s New Jazz contingent looks to as ancestors. Haynes connects this band to the MBase philosophy that spawned so much of the current scene and, of course, Lake is a creative cousin of Henry Threadgill, the other OG of the New Jazz.

If “vintage” sometimes means seeming old-fashioned or left behind, then these gentlemen demonstrate that fresh thinking is possible at any age. They play here with an exquisite connection to each other and to music history. Each came up in a music scene that nurtured a fresh combination of originality and connection to a tradition. That blend remains potent on Ode to O.

RATING 8 / 10