He told a childhood story about his mother, who, he kept reminding me, was born on Christmas Day. After he received his first saxophone, he would go to her when he learned to play something by ear. “I’d be saying: ‘Listen to this! Listen to this!’” he remembered. “You know what she’d tell me? ‘Junior, I know who you are. You don’t have to tell me.’”
From an interview with Ornette Coleman in the NYT