Recorded at Contemporary"s studios in Los Angeles in February and March 1958, Ornette Coleman"s Something Else!!! features Don Cherry on pocket trumpet, Walter Norris on piano, Don Payne on bass, and Billy Higgins on drums. The first of two albums that Coleman recorded for Contemporary, Something Else!!! marks the saxophonist"s debut as a leader. "He was a very influential but at times controversial artist," says Phillips. "Right out of the gate he was doing something that was just so different from what people were used to hearing," says Phillips. "Although structurally-speaking, the music in this recording is based on established song forms, you can hear very clearly that Coleman is starting to break free of the limitations of conventional harmony." Neil Tesser writes in his new liner notes that Coleman traced jazz back to its roots to rid the music of its increasingly elaborate harmonic structures and other constraints. "Without the limitations imposed by such harmonic patterns, his band would freely travel into, out of, and between musical keys," says Tesser. "As Ornette said in the original notes, `I think one day music will be a lot freer. The pattern for a tune, for instance, will be forgotten and the tune itself will be the pattern . . ." When he recorded Something Else!!! that day was still a little ways off. In these performances, you hear him in the last throes of unshackling the past."