Revenant is planning big Albert Ayler box

[ralphie_boy]

Had a listen to the army band and the '62 tracks. While the two former are not more than a nice gesture, the '62 tracks are rather nice! Ayler stretches out on "Sonnymoon", tackles "Summertime" (his version on "My Name is Albert Ayler" is awesome, maybe my favourite recording of this tune!), and his favourite standard, "On Green Dolphin Street" (this too is on "My Name...").

Is this just me or are there, if not traces, at least similarities, in Ayler's style (sound AND lines) to Yusef Lateef's? I am not really strong about it, but I seem to hear ties. Anyone else?

ubu

I listened to Disc 1 also. Lateef didn't come to mind when I heard this session, but now that you mention it, there may be some similarities in their style at that point in time. I immediately thought of Sonny Rollins. I'll have to listen again.

[king ubu]

Had a listen to the army band and the '62 tracks. While the two former are not more than a nice gesture, the '62 tracks are rather nice! Ayler stretches out on "Sonnymoon", tackles "Summertime" (his version on "My Name is Albert Ayler" is awesome, maybe my favourite recording of this tune!), and his favourite standard, "On Green Dolphin Street" (this too is on "My Name...").

Is this just me or are there, if not traces, at least similarities, in Ayler's style (sound AND lines) to Yusef Lateef's? I am not really strong about it, but I seem to hear ties. Anyone else?

ubu

I listened to Disc 1 also. Lateef didn't come to mind when I heard this session, but now that you mention it, there may be some similarities in their style at that point in time. I immediately thought of Sonny Rollins. I'll have to listen again.

Rollins, yes - there's a quote somewhere at the beginning (I fell asleep shortly after reading the first pages) of Val Wilmer's essai about Ayler and his huge sound - so Rollins must be there, too. But Wilmer writes something like Ayler being sort of bigger, soundwise, and Rollins (and others, don't recall the names) being in awe of Ayler's sound.

ubu

[JSngry]

I think everybody was in awe of Ayler's sound. It's amazing on record, and from what I've heard, records capture just a portion of its power.

[7/4]

I picked it up at the post office this morning!!!

[Jazzmoose]

I've been taking it slow with this one, and have only heard disc one so far. Love the Cecil Taylor track. The first cuts though, it sounds like Ayler's on a completely different planet than his band. The band sounds really good until Ayler starts. His take is so different, it makes it sound like the band is just going through the motions all of a sudden...

[7/4]

I will be too. After I'm done with disk 6, I'll be checking out the Cecil disk. And then I have to check the new Alice Coltrane CD that was in the same order.

There's a lot to read too, and I'll be getting into that in the coming weeks.

And it's nice to find out where Slugs was! It turns out that I was playing quite a bit and hanging out at a coffee shop a block a way 2002-2003 (Chama, a ET/UFO oriented place closed in 9/2003). NYC is so full of history...I love it.

Edited October 16, 2004 by 7/4

[JSngry]

The first cuts though, it sounds like Ayler's on a completely different planet than his band. The band sounds really good until Ayler starts. His take is so different, it makes it sound like the band is just going through the motions all of a sudden...

Yeaah, he made a LOT of bands sound that way all of a sudden, whether he was in them or not...

[Jazzmoose]

Just have to point out here that Ayler has received the official "Sassy seal of approval". My wife's cat just loves this stuff! My cat? Forget it; anything farther out than Dean Martin sends him packing. Maybe we should just trade cats...

[pryan]

I listened to disc 1 of the Impulse two CD set the other day, and Ayler's music really hit me in the gut, heart, and soul - all at the same time. I hadn't listened to his music in some time (and I never really "understood" it before), but that listen was an intensely good experience. Maybe I "got" it because I recently attended a Peter Brötzmann concert (see thread in "live shows" forum), and that show kind of opened my ears to what Ayler was doing back then. I think I may have to grab this box. How many copies are they printing?

[ghost of miles]

Just have to point out here that Ayler has received the official "Sassy seal of approval". My wife's cat just loves this stuff! My cat? Forget it; anything farther out than Dean Martin sends him packing. Maybe we should just trade cats...

Two of our cats like jazz, while the third holds out for classical/opera. I listened to disc 2 of the Ayler box late last night, which led me to listen to disc 1 of the Atlantic New Orleans Mosaic box this morning. (Liked both very much.) Ironically enough, cat #3, who almost never likes jazz, came in and sat down beside me for the entire Mosaic disc 1! Evidently he was just waiting for some New Orleans sounds to come around.

BTW that version of "Children" on disc 2 is indeed great... that whole session with Cherry is one that I'm going to revisit frequently.

[Jazzmoose]

Gasp! That's Cherry?? I didn't look at the credits. But I don't like Cherry!

Sumbitch....

Well, if I didn't want my walls shattered, I shoulda stuck with Black Sabbath.

*Not intended as a slam at the group; just what I was listening to back in high school...

[JSngry]

But I don't like Cherry!

Oh yeah? Wanna bet?

[Jazzmoose]

Hell no; not now!

[JSngry]

Better start looking for this one:

[Matthew]

I was listening to Anthology of American Folk Music tonight, and it finally struck me how people can connect Ayler to the "Folk Music Tradition." They both have a concern for all aspects of life; the good, the spiritual, the bad, and the sinful. The rhythms and sounds of Ayler and folk have a kinship of feel to them that seem to be almost of an organic nature. It's as if some of the lyrics of these traditional songs could be used to express some of what Ayler was trying to communicate. Volume two of the Anthology, the Social Music one, really has a Ayler feel to it.

PS: Reading this over, I'm not too clear on what I'm trying to say, but listen to volume 2 and the Ayler "La Cave" recordings and hopefully you'll hear the connection also.

Edited October 23, 2004 by Matthew

[Gary]

Better start looking for this one:

seconded - top drawer Ayler (& Cherry).

[king ubu]

Better start looking for this one:

seconded - top drawer Ayler (& Cherry).

That one is great, yes! But I prefer the Hilversum album (released by George Coppens on his own Coppens outlet - check the Ayler Supranet site for info on how to order, I think Coppens posted there).

What I find a bit strange is that the longer of two dates by this quartet, released on Ayler records (Live in Copenhagen or similar title) is now in the box - this will certainly keep many of us from buying that Ayler Records release. Not so fair, I'd say. However I suppose the estate of Ayler did agree, and I really hope Jan Ström of Ayler Records was asked as well and did agree.

ubu

[JSngry]

PS: Reading this over, I'm not too clear on what I'm trying to say...

Quite the contrary, my friend.

[Gary]

[]

That one is great, yes! But I prefer the Hilversum album (released by George Coppens on his own Coppens outlet - check the Ayler Supranet site for info on how to order, I think Coppens posted there).

yes I have this one

I dont think you can go wrong with any of the Ayler / Cherry material.

[king ubu]

[]

That one is great, yes! But I prefer the Hilversum album (released by George Coppens on his own Coppens outlet - check the Ayler Supranet site for info on how to order, I think Coppens posted there).

yes I have this one

I dont think you can go wrong with any of the Ayler / Cherry material.

I prefer the way mine's looking, I have to admit:

The music is what counts, though, and it is fantastic!

ubu

[Gary]

yes on my one you can swap the sleeves around.

[brownie]

The New York Times' review of the 'Holy Ghost' box.

October 24, 2004

MADE HIM WANNA HOLLER

By Ben Ratliff

JAZZ musicians are often mythologized, but in the case of the tenor saxophonist Albert Ayler, the effect is so extreme that he has become an abstraction, swathed in Baptist-church language, the revolutionary rhetoric of the mid-60's Black Arts movement, and hot-palmed record-collector desire. "Holy Ghost," a new boxed set of his work put out by the Revenant label, is his worshipful monument.

It is a black plastic box containing nine discs, a partial facsimile edition of an issue of "The Cricket," the magazine of which Amiri Baraka was one of the editors, and an oblong, hardcover, 208-page book of essays and data, tracking Ayler's life up, down and sideways. There are copies of a snapshot depicting the prepubescent Albert with saxophone and of a flyer from the nightclub Slug's along with a real pressed flower in a plastic sleeve. It feels funereal, like something that should be buried with the body. Or mutely symbolic, like some totem in a dream.

Ayler himself seems like dream material. In 1970, at 34, he was found drowned in New York's East River - it's still unknown whether it was suicide - after practicing eight years of a kind of jazz stripped of all its niceties, its complex rules of harmony and rhythm. As much as he loved Sonny Rollins and Charlie Parker, he apparently had no desire to learn how to improvise through chord changes, the most basic obligation of a jazz saxophonist.

So his songs, and his improvisations, finally tended to use basic, major-triad harmony. Anthems, hymns and marches often use major triads, too, and thereby he cracked a secret: he figured out a way to make music that sounded ancient and somehow inevitable.

The box set's accompanying book repeats one story, over and over again, with different names and places. It is about Ayler, in his early performing years, eagerly sitting in on a bandstand, following along for a few bars of the standard material the band is playing. (It's "Moanin'" in one anecdote, "How High the Moon," in another, "Billie's Bounce" in a third - but it doesn't matter.) And then Ayler explodes, in some mixture of rapture, one-upmanship and free-tonality improvisational zeal. He shrieks and cries through his instrument, and uses his one professional refinement - a big tone and vibrato learned from playing in R&B bands. The other musicians, or the promoter, or the fans drop their drinks, or stalk off stage, or drag Ayler away.

It sounds like an exaggeration, an idealization, some kind of special pleading. Or, again, like a dream: stepping up to a practiced bandstand and offering primitivism instead of professionalism is a little like the one about showing up to school with no clothes on. But Ayler probably knew why he was there; both his ruckus and his melodies make historical sense. He was under the trance of Ornette Coleman's first records, sensing the possibilities in jazz of looser tonal relationships, stronger folk elements, and wilder playing. He had been playing marches for three years, with the 76th United States Army band in Orléans, France. And he was - perhaps - starting to come undone with religious visions.

Ayler's acquaintances report that he talked a great deal about "the truth" and "holiness." He insisted that the music is out there, and musicians are just vessels. "You think it's about you?" he once asked Amiri Baraka, after reading his appraisal of someone-or-other's jazz. He spoke about visions, and once wrote them down in a letter to Mr. Baraka: "The Devil angel thrives off of uncleanliness, curse words, blasphemy and discord."

Ayler wasn't naïve. He was creating some crossing-point of gospel and shock, art-brut flung up to God; his technical ability may have been rudimentary, but he had a killer sense of how to spook jazz bohemians of the early 1960's down to the core. Even in jazz, there can be something beyond technique - some intuitive form of style - and Ayler had it.

The producers of "Holy Ghost" have prowled the margins of Ayleriana to put out material that isn't well-known and protected by license. The best of Albert Ayler? To me it is "Spiritual Unity" (1964, ESP); "The Hilversum Session" (1964, Coppens); "Albert Ayler Live in Greenwich Village" (1965-67, Impulse). What they've found isn't all good; with such slender technique, there are no guarantees. Let's say you are a Type-B Ayler appreciator, someone who doesn't actually feel that he was the Holy Ghost. How do you work through it?

There's some instructive juvenilia here: on a bonus disc, rehearsals of his Army band in 1960, with Ayler soloing ineptly during the big band standard "Leap Frog." There's a chilling recording of the concentrated little set Ayler played at Coltrane's memorial. And there are two entire discs of Ayler being interviewed. He's all sweetly credulous enthusiasm: his speaking voice exposes him. The conversations provide more details - his parents' illnesses, his pay scale ($10,000 for his final Impulse contract), endless homilies about the challenge to the avant-garde artist in society. But if you can get through them, someone should devote a nine-disk box set to you.

This Type-B Ayler appreciator really only wants to hear the best of the 1965-1967 period, when Ayler moved from a free, liquid concept of group improvisation toward the sound of a band repeating his national-anthem-like melodies, over and over and over, in a kind of fractured unison. There's a surfeit of it here, much of it with muffled sound.

And please, save me from the original demos behind the album "New Grass," his 1968 album of spiritual R&B cut with reputable session players - a record ultimately compromised by Impulse Records, which hired singers and musicians against Ayler's plan. But the demos here show that the album didn't start promisingly, either.

Here's the good news. At the end of disc one, and for nearly all of disc two, we get a sense of how Albert Ayler spent 1964. This is the music that approaches a state of grace. It is his trio with the bassist Gary Peacock and the drummer Sunny Murray, and they play the most extraordinary music: it begins with and returns to little motifs, but is essentially free jazz, a very early example of the real thing - long, exploratory solos of shapes and texture with no determined key, players moving in and out of a running stream.

And here's where I will join the mythmakers: these three musicians are in a trance. They make light, dancing music - Sunny Murray, in particular, made his cymbals sound like running water. (Around this time, he was seen onstage using knitting needles for sticks.) Mr. Peacock played all over his instrument in almost random patterns, coming down on a fat, resonant low E once in a while. But there is space in the music: if free jazz often suffers from an oppressive density, don't blame these father-figures.

Here, there's nothing gratuitous about Ayler's saxophone language. As he demonstrates in "Saints," he believed that there could be such a thing as a free-improvisation ballad. He doesn't clonk you over the head with what would become his sure tactics: volume, repetition, or the hint of old-time religion. That he played music on such a high level, then hardened it into a routine and finally lost his way, seems the saddest and most real story; much of the rest of the book of Ayler feels like apocrypha.

[Matthew]

The New York Times' review of the 'Holy Ghost' box.

October 24, 2004

MADE HIM WANNA HOLLER

By Ben Ratliff

...As much as he loved Sonny Rollins and Charlie Parker, he apparently had no desire to learn how to improvise through chord changes, the most basic obligation of a jazz saxophonist.

So his songs, and his improvisations, finally tended to use basic, major-triad harmony. Anthems, hymns and marches often use major triads, too, and thereby he cracked a secret: he figured out a way to make music that sounded ancient and somehow inevitable.

Excuse the language, but that's pure bullshit. This is the best the New York Times can do?

[JSngry]

I would very much like to sit down w/Mr. Ratliff and others of his ilk who talk about Ayler's "rudimentary" technique and point out any number of passages on, say, VIBRATIONS and SPIRITUAL UNITY that should get them to get their heads out of their collective asses.

"Saxophone technique" is not the same as playing changes. Playing changes is not playing the instrument, that's playing a type of music on the instrument. Ayler may or may not have ever spent time learning how to play changes, stories vary, apparently, but he sure as hell put in some time learning how to play the saxophone.

There was a review in The Saturday Review. ca. 1965(?), of the Fantasy issue of MY NAME IS ALBERT AYLER, where the reviewer (forget who he was, but it was a "name", possibly Martin Williams? - anybody who can find it, please post) noted that his first reaction was to wonder if Ayler could even play the instrument. He then noted that further listenings revealed that there were moments of seeming ineptitude mixed with moments of high-level virtuosity. The sentence from the review that I (almost) remember is, "it becomes apparent that Albert Ayler is a very, very good saxophone player."

I would not-so-respectfully suggest that people who can't hear this aren't really hearing what is going on in Ayler's music. They may be feeling it (maybe...), but they sure as hell ain't hearing it. Whether or not that matters or not, or to what degree, is another discussion, I suppose...

[jazzbo]

Jim, thanks for putting that out there in the thread. YOU KNOW DA SAXOPHONE. Me, I don't know the saxophone at all, but I do know one thing from just listening over the years: Albert Ayler was one monster saxophonist!