Innovative jazz saxophone player and composer Ornette Coleman has died in New York at the age of 85.

A native of Fort Worth, Texas, Coleman’s journey took him through Louisiana both physically and musically.

As recounted in a New York Times obituary, Coleman had a fateful encounter with a group of musicians in Baton Rouge just before he moved to Los Angeles.

The musicians, unhappy with his playing style, attacked him outside a dancehall after a performance with bluesman Clarence Samuels.

While in Los Angeles, Coleman struck up a friendship with New Orleans drummer Ed Blackwell, who, as reported by OffBeat contributor Hank Cherry in a 2010 article, helped expand Coleman’s musical landscape.

In the article, “Ed Blackwell: Speaking In Drums,” Cherry recounts a pivotal moment in Blackwell and Coleman’s musical partnership:

“In Los Angeles, he [Blackwell] started playing with Ornette Coleman, and it was Ornette who gifted him with another key to drumming. The two had such an immediate affinity they moved in together. Blackwell’s second line-infused beat enraptured Coleman, but one night during an impromptu jam, Coleman blew through a particularly intricate piece. Blackwell counted the bars, gave a press roll, and began driving the song back toward beginning. Coleman stopped and issued Blackwell a cutting look. ‘Why did you end my phrase?’ This was new music, he told Blackwell. They weren’t following the rules anymore; they were making their own.”

Coleman made it his habit to create new musical rules, and in doing so, he advanced jazz music in ways few had before.

You can hear some of Coleman and Blackwell’s dynamic interaction on the 1971 track “The Jungle is a Skyscraper” from the Science Fiction album.

Rest in peace Ornette Coleman.