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Albert Ayler


Gary

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Just listened to this on web-stream. After starting off with "Our Prayer" (sounds like VV to me), it has a lot of talking about what constitutes free jazz and blahblah (all in french), after which we get a five and a half minute performance of Truth Is Marching In. Sound Quality is pretty bad. The reason to keep this one is for the audience reaction, which is indeed wildly split between "cool beans!" and "WTF?!"

Apparantly, this is the missing piece from the 13 Nov. 1966 Salle Pleyel performance. I have never heard any of it, I'm afraid. For those interested, I have recorded the stream and have put the Truth online.

[drats! this whole lycos crap is driving me insane! :rmad: ...hang on...]

sorry for the inconvenience, I've put the thing up under another directory/name. Please surf here: http://mitglied.lycos.de/couw/Ayler/

to find the mp3.

Edited by couw
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I'll put up the french talking guys later. I have some difficulty understanding them, and it would be nice to know what details they have on the context of this recording. As I understand it there has been a first concert that ended with 20mins of Ayler, this must be the Lörrach/Paris stuff. The piece above is from a second concert, which started at midnight. Maybe someone with a better grasp of fast french can confirm this.

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they're up. If you are interested, go here:

http://mitglied.lycos.de/couw/Ayler/

and get the BlahBlah mp3s. The first part (4:34) has a yet unidentified (by me, I'm no expert) piece to start it all off, then follows a lot of talk about what constitutes free jazz and Ayler's place in it all. This was followed by "Our Prayer" from the Village Vanguard Live set (not included in mp3). Then follows the second talking part (7:04) in which Ayler is compared to Ornette and Trane and in which the details of the Salle Pleyel performance are discussed.

There is mention of 13 Nov and later also of 18 Dec.

I cannot clearly make out what's up with those dates exactly.

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  • 4 months later...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/genres/jazz...io3/jazzlegends

Nearly 40 years after wiping a live concert tape of Albert as unbroadcastable the BBC are broadcasting an hour long show celebrating his music in the middle of a Friday afternoon whowouldathunkit?

Brodcast today (the link should work for 7 days)

ayler_205.jpg

Julian Joseph in conversation with author James Wylie about one of the giants of free jazz, Albert Ayler.

Nicknamed Little Bird due to his early similar tone to Charlie Parker, Ayler started on the R&B circuit and later moved on to collaborate with multi instrumentalist Don Cherry. Ayler's compositions take in Irish Jigs and Marches, and Coltrane's music most definitely takes on Albert Ayler overtones.

Duration:

1 hour

Playlist

1.

Title: TUNE UP

Artist: ALBERT AYLER

Composer: Miles Davis

Publisher: Copyright Control

Album: The First Recordings

Label: Sonet

Number: SNTF 604

2.

Title: ROLLINS' TUNE

Artist: ALBERT AYLER

Composer: Sonny Rollins

Publisher: Copyright Control

Album: The First Recordings

Label: Sonet

Catalogue Number: SNTF 604

3.

Title: HOLY HOLY

Artist: ALBERT AYLER

Composer: Albert Ayler

Publisher: Art Music

Album: Witches and Devils

Label: Polydor/Freedom

Catalogue Number: 2383 089

4.

Title: GHOSTS: FIRST VARIATION

Artist: ALBERT AYLER TRIO

Composer: Albert Ayler

Publisher: Mecolico

Album: Spiritual Unity

Label: Fontana

Catalogue Number: SFJL 933

5.

Title: ANGELS

Artist: ALBERT AYLER

Composer: Albert Ayler

Album: Spirits Rejoice

Label: ESP

Number: 1020

6.

Title: OUR PRAYER

Artist: ALBERT AYLER QUINTET

Composer: Donald Ayler

Publisher: Mention Music BMI

Album: Live at Slugs Saloon 1966

Label: Base Records

Number: ESP 3031

7.

Title: HEART LOVE

Artist: ALBERT AYLER with THE SOUL SINGERS

Composer: Ayler/Parks

Publisher: Mecolico/NCB

Album: New Grass

Label: Impulse

Number: SIPL 519

8.

Title: DRUDGERY

Artist: ALBERT AYLER

Composer: Albert Ayler

Album: Music Is The Healing Force Of The Universe

Label: Impulse

Number: AS 9191

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My first Ayler album, as I'm guessing it was for many, was Spiritual Unity. When I was waiting tables, I used to play a tape of that recording in my car on the way to, and on the way back, from work. Somehow it always helped me have the willpower to work in the food service, and then decompress from it after a long shift. I gave a ride home to one of the bussers one night, played the tape, and he said, "What the Hell is this?" I said, "Albert Ayler." He didn't say anything for a moment, concentrated his stare at the cassette deck, and then finally offered, "Dude, this rocks!"

Sorry for crashing in on the tail end of the Ayler thread but I just got back on line after about a two or three month hiatus. Anyway, I really enjoyed that story by Late. My first Alyer record was Spiritual Unity also. I do recall how it quickly became one of my favorite recordings. At that time in my life (I was about 21 or 22), I was very hard core about the music. I was living on a steady diet of Archie Shepp, Andrew Hill, Cecil Taylor, Alan Silva, John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, all the ESP and Actuel BYG recordings. Albert was a welcomed addition. :lol:

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  • 1 year later...

Albert Ayler is getting the Impulse Story treatment.

Tracks are:

Holy Ghost

Truth Is Marching In

Angels

Love Cry

Bells

New Grass / Message From Albert

Free At Last

Music Is The Healing Force Of The Universe

Water Music

Untitled Duet

Where's "For John Coltrane"? In fact, other than the first two tracks, it's like an Ayler for Lovers.

There's more info and cover art at: http://www.ayler.org/albert/html/what_s_new.html

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  • 1 month later...
  • 2 months later...
  • 1 month later...

There was an article on Albert in the Times yesterday that included a small interview with Sunny Murray

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2101-2431668.html

The Sunday Times November 05, 2006

The world is ready for Ayler — at last

Coltrane's heir was so ahead of his time that we’ve only just caught up, says Stewart Lee

Albert Ayler’s body was retrieved from the East River, in Brooklyn, on November 25, 1970, a few months after his 34th birthday. The saxophonist grew up in Cleveland, left to find work as a musician playing in restaurants in Sweden in 1962, and returned to New York, changed and inspired, to take the American avant-garde jazz of the period further from its roots than anyone thought it could, or perhaps should, go.

Ayler played at John Coltrane’s funeral, as if the baton were being handed on, but his mysterious death means we’ll never know how he might have developed. For many, the apparently uncompromising aggression of the raucous free-jazz movement dubbed the New Thing encapsulated black anger. But Ayler’s music resisted definition, suggesting euphoric celebration and revolutionary fervour in equal measure.

Ayler’s obituary in the jazz magazine Downbeat struggled to categorise the saxophonist. Was the music he made — a mix of nursery-rhyme melodies, military bugle blasts, raging spirituals, funereal dirges and unrelenting improvisations of the harshest quality — really jazz at all? Faced with confusion in his lifetime, Ayler claimed that history would be his judge. “One day the people will understand” was his oft- repeated mantra.

This year’s London Jazz Festival features two Ayler-related performances: a concert of his music by the guitarist Marc Ribot and Ayler’s bassist, Henry Grimes, and a free afternoon show by the American saxophonist Caroline Kraabel. This is preceded by a screening of a new documentary, My Name Is Albert Ayler, by the young Swedish director Kasper Collin. Does this flurry of officially sanctioned South Bank approval mean that the people do now, finally, understand Ayler? Collin’s film is a haunting mesh of old cine footage, paint-stripping live performances and interviews with surviving friends and family. A strange shot of a semi-naked Ayler, staring silently into the camera, threads through the film, as if the subject is daring you to dismiss him. “I didn’t want to speculate about things too much,” says the director. “I wanted to leave it up to the audience to decide.”

He avoids commentary and frames Ayler’s life with impressionistic images. On his first visit to Sweden, we see footage of the midnight sun that fascinated him. His closing months in Brooklyn see him again obsessed with the sun, staring into it across the East River. And when Collin goes to Cleveland to meet relatives — his brother and collaborator, the trumpeter Donald, and his sprightly father, Edward — they get lost in a cemetery looking for his grave.

“The film was produced over a long time,” says Collin. “I knew about Albert Ayler seeing the sun in Sweden maybe two years into the project. The film wasn’t really scripted. I built it around recordings of Ayler’s own voice. The contrast between his music and his soft, gentle voice was fantastic, because it is not the voice you are expecting.”

For Collin, Sweden is crucial to Ayler’s career. “Scandinavia was important for the development of American free jazz and avant-garde music,” he says. “Ayler felt more relaxed in Sweden. Probably there were some people here who believed in him. It helped him get confident. One big event was in the spring of 1962, when the jazz club The Golden Circle opened, and they had really great acts like Cecil Taylor and Sunny Murray.”

Murray played drums with Ayler throughout the 1960s. A bear of a man whose memories of Ayler often trail off into happy, helpless laughter, he toured here last month fronting a trio that included two British musicians, the saxophonist Tony Bevan and the double bass-player John Edwards. At the Red Rose, in Finsbury Park, London, the response to their opening set, and the demographic diversity of the crowd, would have delighted Ayler.

Does it seem strange to Murray that the saxophonist should leave his native land, only to discover the kindred spirits of the American avant-garde in Sweden? “No, not really,” he says, sitting at the side of the stage, rolling a cigarette. “I haven’t figured out yet how me and Cecil Taylor ended up in Sweden, but I met Albert when he came over to the club, wearing a very handsome cap, dressed very nice in his leather suit. He said he had been playing there in Sweden since he left the army. He said he had been playing his music alone in the forest by himself for a year. He asked if he could play with us. Back then, Cecil just wasn’t outgoing. It was such a weight having to carry the New Thing. Cecil said, ‘I don’t know. I don’t think so.’

“So me and Jimmy Lyons, we said, ‘Yeah, go home and get your horn.’ He came back with this beautiful new sax, so we told him, wait until we give him a signal. Then, in the middle of the gig, we said, ‘Come up’ — and it was beautiful. Albert was like a magic streak of light in the air.”

Collin suggests that Ayler’s time may have come: “Albert was always saying, ‘One day people will understand.’ He was right. He would have been very glad that his music is appreciated by a younger audience, coming to it from alternative rock. It’s not a real jazz thing any more.”

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Gary:

I'm most likely going to watch it through in a few days.I will let you know what's it's like if I remember to post my comments here.I burned it on a DVD and and I looked some parts of it and it looked great. They interviewed his former Swedish girlfriend and they showed some vintage footage of Stockholm in the early 1960s.Sweet!

If I only had more empty DVDs I could burn you a copy of it :(

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I didn't like to wait so I watched the document through.

It was really great.It practically told his whole story from early childhood until he died in mysterious circumstances in 1970. Lot's of his old friends were interviewed such as Sunny Murray,Gary Peacock (briefly) and his troubles with his brother were portrayed really well.

Fortunately there were only a few discussions in Swedish and those vintage shots of Stockholm were beautiful.

What more can I say.Grab it if you can!

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I can't get my DaD copy to burn to DVD correctly, no sound on the DVD , yet its there when played back on my PC using a variety of media players.

Any way nice looking production, guess I'll have to view it on my PC unless any one has any helpful suggestions. I wondered if the problem was that the files are VOB but I have other Video-downloads as VOBs which seem to work fine with the same DVD burning software (PowerProducer)

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