that's why I am pro-sound: no one has to learn to spell to talk

"Ornette Coleman" by Geert Vandepoele. 

Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

via Wikimedia Commons

Interview with Ornette Coleman: "Coleman: Exactly. And that's why I am pro-sound. No one has to learn to spell to talk, right? You see a little kid holding a conversation with an adult. He probably doesn't know the words he's saying, but he knows where to fit them to make what he's thinking logical to what you're saying. Music is the say way. If you desire to play it or write it, then you have to get more information. But the end result is that you play music. Even when you write it, someone's got to play it. So if you can play it and bypass all the rest of the things, you're still doing as great as someone that has spent forty years trying to find out how to do that. I'm really pro-human beings, pro-expression of everything." [...]

Coleman: After I found out that I was playing music and that I'd have to learn how to read and write music, I started doing that about two years later. Finally, I said, "Oh, that means what I really want to do is to be a composer." But when I was coming up in Texas, there was segregation. There was no schools to go to. I taught myself how to read and how to start writing.

"It was when I found out I could make mistakes that I knew I was on to something."
–Ornette Coleman @ A&R Recording, New York, NY, April 29, 1968

Coleman's young son also played with him:

Ornette Coleman - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "In 1966, Coleman was criticized for recording The Empty Foxhole, a trio with Haden, and Coleman's son Denardo Coleman – who was ten years old. [...] His technique – which, though unrefined, was respectable and enthusiastic – owed more to pulse-oriented free jazz drummers like Sunny Murray than to bebop drumming. Denardo has matured into a respected musician, and has been his father's primary drummer since the late 1970s."

And more, Fresh Air Remembers Jazz Innovator Ornette Coleman: