Ornette Coleman was a composer and multi-instrumentalist who is best known as a saxophonist and the primary progenitor of the free jazz movement of the 1960s.  The first track on his groundbreaking 1959 Atlantic Records album “The Shape of Jazz to Come,” is Lonely Woman, a melancholy piece of music that perfectly evokes the mood suggested by its title. It was recorded on May 22, 1959.

Coleman was born in Fort Worth, Texas in March of 1930 and played saxophone in the high school band until he was kicked out for improvising during a performance of Sousa’s Washington Post March. Not long after he could be found playing tenor saxophone with small be-bop and R&B bands in the Fort Worth area. At 19 he had moved to New Orleans and was touring with a band until, after a show in Baton Rouge he was assaulted, and his saxophone was destroyed by his attackers. After that incident, Coleman purchased an alto saxophone and that would remain his primary instrument for the remainder of his career.

He toured for a time with the Pee Wee Crayton band and eventually found himself in Los Angeles where he met musicians that shared his musical outlook. By 1959 Coleman had formed his own quartet with Don Cherry on pocket trumpet, Charlie Haden playing bass and Billy Higgins at the drums. Their first album for Contemporary Records, “Tomorrow is the Question!,” led to a contract to record for Atlantic where their first release was “The Shape of Jazz to Come.”
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In a 1997 interview Coleman described his inspiration for Lonely Woman: “Before becoming known as a musician, when I worked in a big department store, one day, during my lunch break, I came across a gallery where someone had painted a very rich white woman who had absolutely everything that you could desire in life, and she had the most solitary expression in the world. I had never been confronted with such solitude, and when I got back home, I wrote a piece that I called Lonely Woman.”

Lonely Woman has been described as one of the seminal recordings in jazz history for its impact on the direction of jazz music for the next several decades. Some in the music world are still trying to come to grips with the concepts Coleman introduced more than six decades after its release.

Here is a link to Ornette Coleman’s Lonely Woman:

"LONELY WOMAN"