Molding the Shape of Jazz to Come

While saxophonist Ornette Coleman’s pioneering style won him a Lifetime Achievement Grammy in 2007, the early iterations of his “free jazz” didn’t fly when he was in the band at Fort Worth’s I.M. Terrell High School. The Panther Band’s loud volume usually masked his mischief, but one day during John Philip Sousa’s “Washington Post March,” band director Gilbert A. Baxter heard Coleman peppering the arrangement with sax riffs of his own invention. Baxter responded by sending Coleman to the principal’s office.

“All of us who were into jazz probably got put out a few times,” Coleman’s cousin and in 2003. “Coleman, more.”