Here, then, is the earlywork oftwo men who in most important regards overturned the conventional image of the jazz musician as hard-drinking, drug-using, spontaneous rather than measured, inclined to elevate ideas over feeling, hedonistic rather than altruistic, wreckers of civilisation (whatever exactly that is) rather
than natural builders. We’re deeply guilty, all of us, of perpetuating this myth, which is why Marion Brown and Alan Shorter are such precious as well as tutelary figures in our music. They speak to and from a sensibility that is able to absorb ideas without becoming fixated on them, that studies and uses classical technique without becoming imprisoned by it or making a fetish of it. Brian Morton
