Ornette Coleman - "Lonely Woman"

I hadn't listened to this song in a couple of years, but I downloaded it last night. It's easy to forget the power of Coleman's bands at their best. Though Coleman is almost always the star of the show, this track is unthinkable without Charlie Haden's astounding bass work. While Billy Higgins's drums keep that rock, solid right-hand rhythm intact, Haden's bass adds an air of menace, playing way, way behind the beat, laying in those drone figures and seemingly threatening to derail the driving rhythm of the song. Characteristically, Haden provides the pulse, but it's a pulse out of synch with the general harmolodic verticality of the song. The moments that absolutely kill me are when Higgins gets his toms and snare all tangled up with Haden's bass lines, all while keeping that ride going with his right hand, like he's fighting off that darkness, freeing up Don Cherry and Ornette, allowing them to use the bass as a counter-rhythm to push those mournful lines even further (which bass, come to think of it, actually functions more like a drum than a bass, which makes sense, as Coleman's compositions famously rely far more on melody than on harmony).