why did albert ayler abandon his unique band to make RnB records for i

[Hot Ptah]

I have no idea if this is what Ayler was thinking, but something that Richard Davis said to our jazz history class in 1978 comes back to me after reading this thread. An earnest young student asked Richard a long, involved question about why some of the jazz giants decided to record in a rock style, or with rock elements, in the late 1960s. The young student hypothesized all kinds of reasons in his multi-part question, from the spiritual to the materialistic and many points in between.

Richard stared at him for several seconds, then replied, "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em."

[paul secor]

I have no idea what Albert Ayler's thoughts/motives were about the change in his recordings. However, I was around then and all the record companies were looking to make some money off the Love/Peace/Longhair/Hippie market. There's no denying that.

[ep1str0phy]

Something to add (and more along JS's perspective)--a quote from a Litweiler Ayler article I actually like:

"The most likely explanation for his last two LPs is that this philosphically assured revolutionary was convinced of his ability to communicate within any medium."

From a purely romantic perspective, that's as good an explanation as any.

[alocispepraluger102]

Never met her but I get the feeling that Mary Parks/Mary Maria was Ayler's Yoko Ono!

that's my understanding

[danasgoodstuff]

Albert wanted to be heard, no doubt. His music was a great gift given to a largely indifferent or outright hostile world. Better minds have been torn apart by less. That old time religion just shaped the form his resultant craziness took, it's content could just as well have been expressed in purely secular terms. If you look at what's on the Love Cry CD now as opposed to what was issued then, and extrapolate...it coulda been a contender both for art and commerce (I love Graves on this and the harpsicord is a nice period touch just a little late, the neo-baroque moment in pop had passed). Love Cry is kin of a mess, and I don't think the session stuff on the box is any more than interesting. but the last two have plenty of strong material from which a great album could've been edited. Interestingly enough I find Henry Vestine to be more on Aylers wavelenght than Bernard Purdie, although none of the players here or in the last concerts were up to the standards set by Sonny Murray or Don Cherry. I found the movie less depressing than I thought I might, but then I knew how it would end going in...having lost my own brother years ago my heart goes out to Donald.

As for Mary, guys who need a new mommy usually find them eventually.

Edited December 2, 2006 by danasgoodstuff

[danasgoodstuff]

the similarity with Electric Mud is that in both cases there was plenty of talent in the room it was just misapplied, largely do to incapatable wave lenght issues....so, if Love Cry is Albert's Electric Mud, are those last live things from France his Fathers & Sons, more successful but less interesting?

[danasgoodstuff]

Also, recording with Pretty Purdie isn't really "going back" to Little Walter, two rather different examples of 'R&B'...

[Simon Weil]

For whatever reason, I've not been able to get all that into the later Impulse LPs; even the Shandars, though pretty good, don't capture what I felt Ayler's music could do at that earlier, rawer stage. Even with Silva and Graves eddying about on Love Cry, it's not one of my favorites either.

Love Cry is, to some extent, a record company concept. Impulse must have wanted short performances - tho perhaps Albert Ayler wanted a record like that also. I heard that band in concert (w. Junie Booth replacing Alan Silva) playing some of the Love Cry compositions, and they were played as a continuous medley - not broken up into separate pieces as they are on the record. I have to believe that's what Ayler wanted the music to sound like.

Love Cry never did make a sense to me. Given what Paul says here, though, I think I begin to understand it. Maybe it was some sort of effort to move into Cecil Taylor "Conquistador" type territory. If you argue that he was making records that were already tight, focussed little bursts of structured activity, perhaps at Impulse's behest, then the last three records fit a pattern.

Danasgood stuff said:

... recording with Pretty Purdie isn't really "going back" to Little Walter, two rather different examples of 'R&B'...

No, but he is going back to the reassuring folds of the music of his formative period, as near as he can get with that music having moved on. In a sense it's a variant on Mary Maria being his "new mommy".

if Love Cry is Albert's Electric Mud, are those last live things from France his Fathers & Sons, more successful but less interesting?

He just sounds so painfully disconnected.

Simon Weil

Edited December 2, 2006 by Simon Weil

[ep1str0phy]

Albert wanted to be heard, no doubt. His music was a great gift given to a largely indifferent or outright hostile world. Better minds have been torn apart by less. That old time religion just shaped the form his resultant craziness took, it's content could just as well have been expressed in purely secular terms. If you look at what's on the Love Cry CD now as opposed to what was issued then, and extrapolate...it coulda been a contender both for art and commerce (I love Graves on this and the harpsicord is a nice period touch just a little late, the neo-baroque moment in pop had passed). Love Cry is kin of a mess, and I don't think the session stuff on the box is any more than interesting. but the last two have plenty of strong material from which a great album could've been edited. Interestingly enough I find Henry Vestine to be more on Aylers wavelenght than Bernard Purdie, although none of the players here or in the last concerts were up to the standards set by Sonny Murray or Don Cherry. I found the movie less depressing than I thought I might, but then I knew how it would end going in...having lost my own brother years ago my heart goes out to Donald.

As for Mary, guys who need a new mommy usually find them eventually.

(Referring to New Grass when you say "kind of a mess?" Because I don't think that Love Cry is anywhere near the oddity that the "R&B" sides are--"art" and "commerce" is right, and was surely what the Ayler/Thiele camp was aiming for on some level, but there were doubtless elements--marketing, preconception-wise, etc.--that got in the way.).

Agreed on Vestine, as I think the "drone" piece is just as interesting and ambitious for the period as anything that any of the great free music guys were putting together. Strangely, I find that the sax quartet pieces on the last couple of Impulses are generally the less involving spots (Ayler seems caught in this Stellar Regions sort Coltranish vibe--maybe a commercial suggestion?--and only seldom pops into his more hardcore self)... but the guitar pieces, and even the Mary Maria tracks, are quite unusual and, in their own way, innovative. There's talk, at least, that Ayler was among the first (in Europe in the early 60's) to do the whole sax-vocal poetry thing--too bad the evidence is only in account, and that we'll never have recordings.

As far as the "old time religion" thing--sure, his craziness could have been expressed in secular terms, but then he would not have been Ayler. At the very least, we would not have the same arc, and surely not the same music (tho that's a marginally different issue)--now, whether or not religion was the corrupting force is one thing, but I'm with the earlier statements in holding that Ayler's story has a sort of morbid poeticism about it that couldn't have happened any other way. I'm not sure we'd be celebrating his music with the same sense of mythological worship had he not taken the plunge with such a conscious sense of messianic redemption (and the whole Holy Ghost thing--spirit box, flower and all--would only be a quoted footnote, and not a legacy). In the end, maybe the "sacrifical arc" just makes us a lot more fetishistic about an intrinsically talented artist, whose music could have gone on being just as spiritual without the horrendous death. As it is, we've got not only an innovator and a genius, but also a legend.

Edited December 2, 2006 by ep1str0phy

[jazzbo]

I hear a real sincerity in those late sides, and I respond to it. I believe he really wanted to get "the message" across and at least on an emotional level I think he did, I feel communicated to emotionally by these albums.

They fit into the entire work I feel, I don't think they HAD to have had outside influences to come to fruition, I feel his investment within them.

Or I'm imagining it all, and enjoying the fantasy.

[ep1str0phy]

Hey, whatever the whys and wherefores, at the end of the day, I think the New Grass recording of "Heart Love" is awesome.

[jazzbo]

I think 90% of New Grass is awesome! I like that one more each time I listen closely.

[B. Clugston]

New Grass would have been much better if they kept Bert DeCoteaux away from it and all the overdubs. Something weird happend to Bill Folwell's bass playing on this session. Very robotic compared to the demos. The label must have got to him.

The later stuff is better.

[B. Clugston]

Henry Kaiser and company have recorded a date of Ayler's and Mary Parks' Impulse era songs.

For more info, scroll down at:

http://www.ayler.org/albert/html/what_s_new.html

[ep1str0phy]

Wow. Thanks for the heads up, B.

[danasgoodstuff]

ep1,

Yes, I did mean that New Grass is "kind of a mess", not Love Cry, good catch.