It is to the lasting credit of the last Lester Koenig, founder of Contemporary Records, that he gave Ornette Coleman his first exposure on records, thus launching a career that would exercise a worldwide influence. Coleman's vision of the future, as he said in 1958, foretold that "music will be a lot freer. The pattern for a tune, for instance, will be forgotten, and the tune itself will be the pattern." Recorded in 1958, this is the first of two albums Coleman made for the West Coast label before moving on, the following year, to New York and global renown. It is, by any yardstick, a vital collectors' item.