Prime Time

Prime Time was an American free funk band formed by Ornette Coleman in 1975. The band drew on Coleman's theory of harmolodics to create its music. Its founding members were guitarists Bern Nix and Charles Ellerbee, bassist Jamaaladeen Tacuma, and drummers Denardo Coleman and Ronald Shannon Jackson; later members included bassist Albert MacDowell and drummer Sabir Kamal.

Ornette's first album with Prime Time, Dancing in Your Head, was released in 1975. Their 1988 album, Virgin Beauty, featuring Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia, was their biggest success, reaching number two on the Billboard Jazz Albums chart and outselling, in its first year, any previous Coleman record. Prime Time then opened for a Grateful Dead concert at the Oakland Coliseum in 1993.

In 2017, two years after Ornette's death, Denardo reformed Prime Time for a concert at Alice Tully Hall, in tribute to Ornette and to Bern Nix, who had died earlier that same year.