Showing posts with label Albert Ayler. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Albert Ayler. Show all posts

Saturday, January 7, 2012

More David Murray

One of the joys of a jazz collection as large as mine is that I keep discovering gems that I have either forgotten or failed to appreciate the first time round or (scary thought) downloaded and never got around to hearing.  One disc that falls into the first two categories is David Murray's Interboogieology

I was a little hesitant to post anything from it because it is the kind of jazz that frequently gets poor reviews on the L365 site.  But what the heck.  The first two cuts are, in my humble opinion, magnificent.  They are moody, lyrical, and eloquent.    I posted the first cut, 'Namthini's Shadow.'  If you have ever listened to Albert Ayler's seminal Spiritual Unity, you'll remember the ghostly wail that is always in the background of that music.  You'll hear the same kind of sound haunting this cut, in this case produced by Marta Contreras' vocals.  I find it spiritually regime changing. 

Saturday, November 27, 2010

Jazz Note 4: Thankgiving

Here's a playlist of the current show, which debuts at 9pm Central tonight, Saturday, November 27th.  Tonight's show is a mixed bag of more accessible music from mostly less accessible albums.  Something to cut the taste of turkey and give your digestion something to work with.  You'll find roaring blues and sad romance, spiritual highs and entertaining shadows.  Give it a listen and let me know what you think. 
  1. Thanksgiving Suite/John Lindberg/A Tree Frog Tonality
  2. Mikuro's Blues/David S. Ware Quartet/Live In The World
  3. Ghosts/Albert Ayler/Spiritual Unity
  4. Red Car/David Murray/I Want To Talk About You
  5. Odin/David Murray/Body and Soul
  6. Crossing the Sudan/Chico Freeman/Destiny's Dance
  7. Stratusphunk/George Russell/Stratusphunk
  8. O'Neal's Porch/William Parker/O'Neal's Porch
  9. Contemplation/Mal Waldron and Marion Brown/Songs of Love and Regret
  10. Sonny's Dream/Sonny Criss/Sonny's Dream
  11. The Wane/Steve Lacy Trio/The Holy La
  12. Both Sides/The Vandermark Five/Airports For Light
Update: Mikuro's Blues played at half speed.  I stopped the show and replaced the track.  I hope it works this time.  Of course, with avant garde jazz you can't always tell. 

Saturday, May 8, 2010

The Ghost in the Room of Modern Jazz

If I had to pick one jazz man who stands, or hovers, as the perfect spirit of avant garde jazz, it would be Albert Ayler.  The spirit that Ayler expressed so well was much larger than he, and it haunted jazz for a good decade between the mid-fifties and mid-sixties.  Maybe it never goes away.  It was a frustration with the limits of musical forms.  

Ayler said in an interview that the music he played was unavoidable and inevitable.  From an NPR film review by Howard Mandel, there is this Ayler quote:
"The music that we're playing now is just a different kind of blues," Ayler said. "It's the real blues, it's the new blues, and the people must listen to this music, because they'll be hearing it all the time. Because if it's not me, it'll be somebody else that's playing it. Because this is the only way that's left for the musicians to play. All the other ways have been explored."
That was nonsense, of course; but it expresses the frustrated spirit that possessed a lot of avant garde geniuses.  The brilliance of hard bop created an unquenchable hunger.  There just had to be something more out there.   Maybe there just wasn't.  

But for Ayler, this hunger was a personal tragedy.  He never could, because he could never, persuade enough listeners to build a sustainable audience.  He never could, because he could never, let go of the spirit that haunted him.  He lived as a man permanently alienated from everyone he loved in this world.  
"I was living pure frustration, like a madman, like a madman," Ayler once said. "I was up in my room when I went to Cleveland, playing, and I was beating like this on the floor. Then I go downstairs; my mother said to me, 'I don't think you're my child. When I was in the hospital, the man must have made a mistake and given me the wrong baby.' Made me cry. I cried, but I thought, I said, 'Hmm. Nobody understands what music — what I'm trying to do,' and I'm trying to understand it and it was, like, [a] very shaky situation."
This alienation surely contributed to his suicide in 1970.  Beware of great art.  It can kill.  

It is no wonder, then, that Ayler's music is so haunted.  His magnum opus is Spiritual Unity (1964), with the great Gary Peacock on bass and Sunny Murray on drums.  Another document, recorded live earlier in that year at "The Cellar Cafe" in New York, has the same trio doing the same material.

If "material " is the right word.  The cuts have titles like 'Ghosts', 'Spirits,' 'Wizard', and 'Prophecy.'  The Bells/Prophecy recordings are quite literally haunted.  There is a constant, ghostly moan, barely perceptible, but always present in the background.  I am not sure how it was produced.  It did rather give me the shivers.  

Here is a sample.  Listen for the moan. 
Albert Ayler/Prophecy/Spirits
If Ayler's music never went mainstream, he surely had a great influence on jazz and maybe even converted a few disciples to his dark church.  Guitarist Marc Ribot recorded an album entitled Spiritual Unity.  It has Ayler's frequent bass player Henry Grimes, with Roy Campbell on trumpet and Chad Taylor on drums.  Here is a cut for comparison:
Marc Ribot/Spirits/Spiritual Unity
It falls well short of the agony of Ayler's recordings, but the commentary is interesting nonetheless.  Ayler's music is very challenging.  It is worth meeting that challenge, for there is a spooky longing haunting nearly all of modern jazz.  In Ayler, the ghost is in the room. 

Saturday, October 25, 2008

Albert Ayler vs. Kenny Burrell


I have been listening to a lot of avant garde jazz lately, and maybe it's a sign of spiritual progress and maybe it's a sign of brain damage, but I am getting to like it. There are moments when a coherent tune starts to bore me, and I long for a spooky, twisting, what the Hell was that? line to keep life interesting. I confess that I even picked up an Albert Ayler disc from eMusic.

I first encountered Ayler after reading a short piece in Rolling Stone (I think!) by Patti Smith. I bought an Ayler LP and couldn't make heads or tails of it, even when I was stoned. That may have been thirty years ago. So it was with some trepidation that I downloaded Spiritual Unity, by the Albert Ayler Trio. Apparently my ear is getting to the level of consciousness that Patti Smith reached when I was a very young man. The recording is very well made, with every tone and echo evident. But it is pure Page Four jazz: no listener could hum the tune, for there is no tune, and I doubt that the most seasoned player could accurately reproduce it after a single hearing. When you are alone with Albert Ayler, you are really alone.

I have loaded Ghosts, from Spiritual Unity, to Drop.io. Give it a listen, to see what Avant Garde is all about. Gary Peacock is on bass, and Sunny Murray on drums. Ayler carves out a cavenerous space, and fills it with bits of traditional melody, and then smears them across the board.

But then compare it with Kenny Burrell's Chitlins Con Carne, from Midnight Blue. The latter was one of the first jazz CDs I purchased, from Rhino Records in Claremont California. It was a remainder, if I remember right, so I got it cheap. Midnight Blue is one of the best recorded jazz discs I have ever heard. Every buzz and thump and exhale is on the tracks. Stanley Turrentine plays tenor, Ray Baretto plays congo (a great idea!), Major Holley plays bass, and Bill English is on drums. This is so damn good it makes your toes curl. It's pure Page Three Jazz: a theme stated, and then milked for all its worth. Burrell and Turrentine engage in a platonic dialogue. The congo is the wheels the cart runs on, while Burrell and Turrentine dance on the flatbed. The bluesy heart beats across the action.

NPR has a short piece on the recording, with a couple of tunes available (including, unfortunately, the one I have on Drop.io. See NPR Jazz Library.

It's okay to have angels hovering about the top of the picture. That's the space for avant garde. But the manger scene has to have a baby, straw, and goats. That, and all the smells and colors of real life. Ayler's job is to decorate the upper arches, Burrell is the center piece. You can sample both at by Drop.io link. If you like what you hear, buy the discs.