Albert Ayler, Spiritual Unity, Anniversary Edition

Yesterday, July 10th, marked the 50th anniversary of the first recording session for Albert Ayler's seminal release, Spiritual Unity. ESP has created a special expanded anniversary edition that includes an extra cut, a version of "Vibrations" that was accidentally included in an early pressing of the disk but otherwise has not been previously available as an integral part of the complete sessions. Now it is. That's a good thing.

I wont re-iterate what I said about the importance of the disk to the world of free jazz. For that you can go to my review article of Tuesday, February 23, 2010 on these pages.

ESP has also put together a full-length narrative The Albert Ayler Story, a download-only set with four-CDs worth of interviews and selected cuts. I've not had a chance to listen to it but you can get it at a limited-time special price if you go over to the ESP site and buy it there. http://espdisk.com/official/catalog/4072.html

Happy listening!

Paul Bley Trio, Closer, 50th Anniversary Edition Remaster

It is possible that pianist Paul Bley is not as recognized as an important figure in the development of free jazz now as he was years ago. I do not claim to have my finger on the pulse of consensus out there, partially because I don't really care what the world thinks and it does me no good to heed the "no, we don't recognize that" jazz police that claim to be the sole tastemakers. Why would I care?

In my own thinking Paul belongs to a small handful of piano innovators in "new thing" evolution. Of course the other would be Cecil Taylor. And of course there are others, but the influences of Taylor and Bley seem especially critical in what went after.

And of all the albums Paul has made, one of the most seminal surely is Closer (ESP 1021), a trio date from 1965 that has been nicely remastered on CD for ESP's 50th Anniversary series. The trio included the wondrous bass wielding of Steve Swallow. On drums was a young Barry Altschul, at the very start of his free drumming career and already an extraordinarily sensitive drummer for the trio context.

And on this album Paul was making a pretty clean break from bop roots--in just 27 short minutes covering some seven very excellent Carla Bley compositions, a number written by Ornette Coleman, one by Annette Peacock and one of his own.

These are classic head structures that allow Paul and the band to break free of changes and let themselves create free tonality and chromatic improvisations that of course owe much to Ornette's harmolodic approach yet have an unmistakable originality.

Keith Jarrett most certainly paid close attention to what was going on with Paul in this stage and built his early style around it. Then of course many others have followed in the path since.

But even if others had not been influenced in the years that followed, this album would still hold up as an avant classic. It is that--and anyone who hasn't heard it really should check it out.

Ayler's "Spiritual Unity" and Influence

There are recordings that have become vastly influential with musicians and have also caught on with the general listening public. Miles Davis' Kind of Blue comes to mind. Then there are recordings that at least initially did not sell briskly but strongly influenced several generations of new jazz artists.

Certainly Albert Ayler's Spiritual Unity (ESP) was one of the latter. When it came out in 1965 it supplied a vocabulary for the budding free saxophonist and just as importantly presented a model for the free rhythm section that remains very much alive today.

ESP has reissued the album as a CD, as a download and as an audiophile quality collector's edition LP.

It's not just Albert Ayler's tenor work that was rather revolutionary at the time. Gary Peacock's bass and Sunny Murray's drums were equally so. Peacock acted with maximal freedom and true virtuosity yet his playing was a continual commentary on the implication of the simple folk-like quality of the head melodies as well as Ayler's freely articulated excursions into expressive tenor sounds. Much has been made of comparing what Ayler played and the Pentecostal practice of "speaking in tongues." I'm not about to question the aptness of that analogy. More to the point free music derived much from the freneticism of his playing on these sides.

Perhaps most importantly Ayler established a much wider palette of sounds the tenor sax could regularly call upon: the throaty growls. dynamic lower register overblowing, piercing upper register falsettos and much else. After this album and several key others that followed, the expanded sound resources suggested by Ayler's work were adapted by many that followed in his wake, from late Coltrane onwards.

Then there is drummer Sunny Murray. He virtually invented the freely out-of-time style of drumming that has remained a critical stylistic aspect of the modern player. And one can hear how well enmeshed Sunny was in this way of going about it early on. Listen to how he interacts with Ayler and Peacock on Spiritual Unity and you will hear a master already fully formed.

The general public still may find this music a little shocking, perhaps abrasive. Compared to Kenny G. that is certainly so. (And of course that should tell you something about Kenny G. more so than Albert Ayler.) It took many years for a Beethoven or a Berlioz to gain general acceptance in the late classical-early romantic era. And there are still untutored ears that may find that music a little too "heavy." So with Albert. He has an intensity that the listener needs to assimilate to appreciate his music.

Spiritual Unity is one of those records that belongs in the collection of anyone serious about the roots of the jazz of today. It's that important and it's that good.

Albert Ayler's Clangorous "Bells," 1965

Albert Ayler's mature phase freaked more than a few listeners when heard in 1964-65. His folksy march tunes and quasi-spiritual heads were played with a kind of over-the-top vibrato and exaggerated zeal that were rather unprecedented in the music. His solos of course reveled in a kind of "speaking in tongues" frenzy, where the sound of his tenor may have seemed to some like the ravings of a madman but in fact were quite deliberate and controlled. He expanded the boundaries of the modern jazz saxophone vocabulary in revolutionary ways. Cries, shouts, multi-phonic blasts and rapidly undulating passages of "freak" notes were his normal playing mode. In some ways he took the expressive, soulful climax tones of Ben Webster, Illinois Jacquet and the bar walkers and extended their range and frequency as a consistent part of his solo lexicon. That flipped more than a few people out but also gained him a solid underground following.

It was ESP Disk who recorded and released the lion's share of his classic work in those few short years during the mid-sixties. That included the one-sided LP Bells, apparently the best half of a 1965 NYC Town Hall appearance. By this time he was working with an expanded ensemble, the quintet with brother Donald on trumpet, a young Charles Tyler on alto, and Louis Worrell and Sonny Murray on bass and drums, respectively.

Bells may not be his absolute best recording but it captures well the extended pandemonium of the new group in ways that the contemporaneous Impulse live set did not. New York Eye and Ear Control and Spiritual Unity (both on ESP and available again) might be better choices for your desert island Ayler take-alongs. Bells remains a thorough blast, however. Literally. And figuratively. (I said the same thing about another recording the other day. That was a blast too. I must be having a blast, no?)

There's a new limited collector's vinyl edition available on 180 gram virgin transparent vinyl with the Bells art silk screened onto the reverse side of the record. Go to http://www.espdisk.com/ to find out about it.