"Albert Ayler was the most primal of the free jazz musicians of the 1960s. He possessed a deep blistering tone—achieved by using the stiffest plastic reeds he could find on his tenor saxophone—and a broad, pathos-filled vibrato that came right out of church music. His trio and quartet records of 1964, like Spiritual Unity and The Hilversum Sessions, show him advancing the improvisational notions of John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman into abstract realms where timbre, not harmony and melody, is the music’s backbone."

Some long-time listeners gen me up??....please....

I love his sound....but the idea about murdering songs,strangling them and spitting them out (I'm talking about standards or perhaps Song Book items is a better term)....I am extremely iconoclastic myself Art wise....but are there political motives involved.... is it a case of pushing the boundaries of sacralidge (?dx)...my biggest problem is that I don't like many of these songs in the first place....

Yep, I have that resonance-FM show archived somewhere
well . . when I say "archived" I mean it's shoved away in a box full of goddam cassettes
BUT - if anyone was interested ENUF, I could rip it & put it online somewhere

HERE even.

Now, Ayler, yes, he he he -
There was a time when it would be fairly accurate to say that I was obsessed with Albert Ayler & his music & his goddam myths.

But this will not be the time to go into that. Not yet.

Forget Ayler doin' other people's tunes -  Bye Bye Blackbird is a curiosity cos he's on soprano, loses the rhythm section, whole thing falls apart. Forget the early scandinavian recordings, it's formative stuff. Start with Spiritual Unity, Prophesy, Witches & Devils (now re-released with another title)  blah - and don't go near the Spirituals record either...
ALSO: Caveat emptor: don't buy Slug's Saloon it is an awful audience recording & very short rip-off CD.

HERE's a discography with pictures: http://www.ayler.org/albert/html/discography.html

But if you ever see this at a boot-sale, snap it up - stick it on ebay & retire off the proceeds - nah, just joking, you'd be lucky to get ten bob for it


erm... yep
http://www.ayler.org/albert/ - this is the bestest information site
http://www.geocities.com/jeff_l_schwartz/ayler.html - this one's a good biography, but draws heavily on Valerie Wilmer's original bio & stuff

... erm, i think he signed up specifically to be in the army band
like a lot of cats did.
Like John Stevens, Paul Rutherford, Trevor Watts all did here.

As if all that free music came as some kinda RESULT of that, though that's probably a bit simplistic.

I retract that statement.
I could delete it, but what the hell.

... maybe it was the airforce, I can't remember.

 

“Change Has Come implies, says Ayler, that ‘ in my music, I’m trying to look far ahead. Like Coltrane, I’m playing about the beauty that is to come after all the tensions and anxieties. This is about post-war cries; I mean the cries of love that are already in the young and that will emerge as people seeking freedom come to spiritual freedom.’ I remembered Albert saying in that earlier Down Beat interview: ‘We are the music we play. And our commitment is to peace, to understanding of life. And we keep trying to purify our music, to purify ourselves so that we can move ourselves - and those who hear us - to higher levels of peace and understanding. In a way, we’re trying to do for now what people like Louis Armstrong did at the beginning. Their music was a rejoicing. It was a rejoicing about beauty that was going to happen.’”

Nat Hentoff (from the sleevenotes of Albert Ayler In Greenwich Village
http://www.ayler.org/albert/assets/multimedia/change.MP3

Cleveland, Ohio man - no AACM connection

...parallel universe

marching is the core of free improv

maybe being in the army led to the avoidance

of regular beats in free improv

in europe at least

or did it?/

european free improv had beats for a lot of its time i think

less so now

no army

no air force

no rain

no rain

Bring back the DMZ....Grunts with 1000yards stares at peace loving folk

Not experienced enough to up load <Don McCullum (or is he the Man from UNCLE bloke)....photos Grunts, tired to the point of de-gruntification....>....

Yeah , music made that war go around....good god....

Free Impro....made to make the Vietcong run....