Variations In Time and Tonality

By Blake Leonhardt

"Being original can get you into a lot of trouble," said Ornette Coleman of Cool Eye Collins in a late 1971 interview with Rolling Stone magazine. What events transformed a young and charismatic musical prodigy with all the impetus of his predecessors into a jaded recluse? The under credited founder of free jazz, the pioneer that broke through the mold and limitations of be-bop, the man that introduced a subterranean jargon that became the colloquialisms of today. Yet have you ever heard the name Cool Eye Collins before now? Chances are you haven't. Longshoreman Donnie Domingo lives on the hi-hat of life. He perceives time as linear and as means of achieving self-indulgent goals. On the downbeat of a languidly paced ballad is Gian Paolo Giannini, the Italian foreign exchange student fresh to the shores of Long Beach, California where he studies ethnomusicology. When the two meet something strange happens to time. Like the opposite ends of magnets, this pushing and pulling transports us to the year 1956 where a disenchanted Cool Eye Collins has recently had his cabaret card revoked for a possession of heroin charge. Collins decides to join the list of expatriates on the other side of the pond where black musicians are revered and treated like first class citizens. Back in Long Beach, Donnie has cajoled Gian into taking a road trip to New Orleans during the week he has off for spring break. Before long the two would parallel Cool Eye's song, traveling I-10 in search of authenticity and original chorus while dodging border patrol, headshrinkers, sorcerers and an Alaskan crab fisherman with an equivocal past and motives.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1661435629
• ISBN13: 9781661435622
• Release Date: January 2020
• Publisher: Independently published
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.82 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.5" x 0.6" x 5.5"