Saxophone player and composer Ornette Coleman (1930). As a reaction to bebop and hardbop, he developed a completely original style of his own during the 50s. The improvisations were no longer based on chord charts of 32 times for example, but the improvisation happened more melodically without a set form or structure. The tempo was often still ‘swinging’ as it was in hardbop – that’s why his style is sometimes described as ‘free bop’. We hear him in his piano-less quartet (with trumpet player Don Cherry) in recordings from 1959 and 1961.