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June 1 2025

Peter Brötzmann and Albert Ayler - who came first?

Personally, I’ve always thought, Sonny Rollins. However, the question is examined in Peter Brötzmann: Free-Jazz, Revolution And The Politics Of Improvisation by Daniel Spicer, and the relevant extract is available at The Wire. It includes the following:

‘In fact, there’s an intriguing possibility that, in terms of influence, the direction of travel might have been the other way around. “I think that is actually the case,” Brötzmann told me. It’s known that the two met in 1960 while Ayler was stationed in Orleans, France, with the 76 Adjutant General’s Army Band. During this time, Ayler would regularly make trips to Paris and even as far as Stockholm to check out the jazz clubs and sit in with local musicians. When the band toured France and Germany between June and September 1960, Ayler made regular visits to a club called the Cave in Heidelberg, around three hundred kilometres south of Wuppertal.

“We were a kind of house band there – me and Peter Kowald and different drummers – we played very often,” Brötzmann told me. “There was always a slim Black guy sitting there, but then he disappeared. Then, later, I bought the first record that has his picture on it, from Copenhagen, where he is playing “Summertime” [1964’s My Name Is Albert Ayler]. Man, I looked closer and closer – there was the guy!”’

Ghosts Quintet

Dirk Goedeking found the sheet music for an arrangement of Ghosts for a Quintet comprising flute, alto and tenor saxophones, trumpet and bass. It was on the Scribd site.

ebay

I always check ebay every month just in case something new turns up, and this month it did. An ESP flyer for a series of concerts at the Astor Place Playhouse in February, 1966, including one for the Albert Ayler Quintet on the 7th. There are a couple of reviews for that concert here, and if you have a spare £365 ($495) the original item could be yours, otherwise you’ll have to make do with this picture.

Or for a considerably less amount of £13.20 (with £15.20 delivery from the U.S.) you can purchase this:

It’s described as

‘album art poster pics
8X10" Matted Print Art Jazz Album Cover Picture:
The Outer size of matte is 8 x 10" (The inside art-print size is a bit smaller, of course)
Condition is New with Brand New Matte, mounted on backing board & bagged in cellophane.

* Image was cut from a published book showing the wonderful art of Jazz album covers.’

Do we applaud the entrepreneurial spirit or condemn the reckless vandalism? Pity it’s the Fontana version, that’s the one I’ve got.

But the most distressing item on ebay was an early copy of Bells:

This was not because of the price - £204 - nor the description of the sound as ‘ex Playback nice & quiet’, but this additional note:

‘Wir lösen die LP Schallplattensammlung unseres Vaters in Teilen auf. Die Preise und die Zustandsbewertungen (Goldmine Gradings) sind mit erfahrenen Sammlern zusammen erstellt worden. Es handelt sich um Priatverkäufe, aber wir versuchen das ganze zumindest möglichst professionell abzuwickeln. Vinyl Versandmaterialien und Versanderfahrung sind gegeben...

We are liquidating our father's Record collection. Prices and Gradings have been made by the help some well experienced Record-Collectors.. These are private Auctions, but we will try to handle it as professional as possible. Records will be shipped safely packed and well cared about inside special Boxes.’

I felt a shadow pass over my grave. Although when I pop my clogs my lot will just shove everything in a box and send it to Music Magpie. I did wonder whether that was why there seemed to be more pages of Ayler merchandise on ebay this month, whether we’re all reaching that age when the carefully curated Ayler collections head down to the local charity shop or tip. Perhaps I was just reacting to the following item from Dirk.

Touching

‘Albert music is always touching people, and helping

timberic and olejazz to get into sadness

or whitakr to concentrate and stay focused

or Sammy Stein to understand Gershwin ("It felt real, like someone had understood ...") ‘

It definitely wasn’t

Mastering the Power of Your Emotions (2nd Edition) by Elisha O. Ogbonna, which has the following entry for “A Guilty Conscience”:

I don’t suppose it matters, but I don’t like the way odd accounts of Ayler’s life (and death) get replicated and develop into myth. Although Albert’s guilt over his treatment of Don was a strong motive for suicide, I also think that the cancellation of his Impulse contract was an equally strong motive and shouldn’t be ignored. And again, the above account is relying solely on Mary Maria’s version of events, can we be sure that’s entirely accurate? I also have problems with the description of Ayler’s music. Maybe we should just send an email to Albert and ask him why he killed himself. Apparently you can do this on the ESP bandcamp site where there’s a ‘Contact Albert Ayler’ link at the bottom of the right-hand side for sending him an email.

I came across another book with a passage about Albert Ayler, African American Jazz and Rap: Social and Philosophical Examinations of Black Expressive Behavior edited by James L. Conyers, Jr. It occurs in Chapter 8: ‘Jazz Musicians in Postwar Europe and Japan’ by Larry Ross. It’s a fairly brief account of Ayler’s life, but there is some additional information about the Shaker Heights area of Cleveland and that comment about the ‘sound of the ghetto’ from Nat Hentoff’s interview with the Ayler brothers in DownBeat:

‘For three years, Albert was in the Army. “It was at that time,” he said, “that I switched to tenor. It seemed to me that on the tenor you could get out all the feelings of the ghetto. On that horn you can shout and really tell the truth. After all, this music comes from the heart of America, the soul of the ghetto.”
“Do you feel, then, that only black men can play this kind of music?” I asked.
Ayler laughed and said, “There are ghettos everywhere, including in everybody’s head.”’

The Jazz Temple

Richard Koloda sent me this photo of the Jazz Temple in Cleveland, where Albert Ayler played.

“This photo showed up in a recent publication from the Cuyahoga Valley National Park.” Richard added that there’s a fantastic article about the owner, Winston Willis, on wikipedia. Also that the Jazz Temple was firebombed shortly after Albert played there, although he wasn’t the cause. “The reason was the neighborhood was not Black friendly.”

Acoustical Swing

Pierre Crépon’s Acoustical Swing was one year old in May and Pierre has written a recap of the year’s ‘doings’ which includes ideas for the future and begins:

‘This Substack page was launched a year ago, and posts have been added on a (mostly) weekly basis. Hopefully, the initial idea of “a space for free-form writing about jazz history”€ has held up. One thing I’d like to do after a year of experiment would be to open the page to further collaborations.

Acoustical Swing had the pleasure of publishing contributions by bassist Mike Johnston and radio host Olivier Delaporte, and for this second year I’d like to extend an invitation to readers looking for a space to host work matching our general “historical avant-garde”€ line. This, whether we’ve already met or not, and whether it is written, visual, or audio work. Another idea, not fully developed yet, would be to start a research group for people interested in learning how to research jazz history and produce collaborative work.’

Congratulations to Pierre on Acousitcal Swing’s first anniversary!

Robert Forster

I got quite excited when this name popped up, he was one of my favourite actors. However, this isn’t him, but the Australian musician, founder of the Go-Betweens (of whose oeuvre I am sadly unaware). There’s an article on the Brooklyn Vegan site about his new project, entitled “Robert Forster (Go-Betweens) on how Vampire Weekend, Leonard Cohen, Albert Ayler & more influenced new album 'Strawberries’” It includes the following about the Ayler influence:

‘Albert Ayler

The last influence, that’s the wrong word, it’s flavor that you don’t even see coming. You think of influencers and you think, oh, it’s you sitting around with the record collection and just soaking it all up and then writing the songs. Sometimes something can come from your past and it’s just like a really minor thing on the record but then it sticks in your mind when you look back. The last song on the album, “Diamonds,” is an unusual song for me. It’s got a quiet verse, but a big bolshy chorus. It’s a real loud and quiet dynamic. And the band who, the Swedish band with Peter Moren producing, they were handling it beautifully. We’re in the practice room just before we recorded, and Lena, who was playing the saxophone, she was playing in the choruses too, and they were sounding fantastic. We decided on the third chorus that we’d have an instrumental fake chorus. So we’d go from the third verse and then suddenly, instead of me singing wailing, we’d come in with really a thick sax texture, although she was playing on other stuff. I was standing in the practice room and she just looked at me. Lena, who’s a wonderful person, a great player, she just said to me, “What do you want? What should I play here?” And in that moment, I just said, “Albert Ayler.” And believe me, I’m no jazz aficionado, know very little of the music, but Albert Ayler, I heard a bit in the early ’80s, and I knew that that signified something. And she went, “yeah, great.” And we went through, played it the next time in the practice room, and she just was fantastic. And so, I mean, that’s not really a musical influence. It’s just a moment where a musician looks at you and asks you what you’re thinking of, and a word just comes out that describes what you want. And in that moment, although you haven’t listened to that artist in decades, and suddenly that becomes an important little component on the album..’

And here’s the man himself:

Love Cry - Ecstatic Ballads For Broken Hearts Plus Daft Horns

This is a concert on 4th June 2025, at the Audio Foundation in Auckland, New Zealand (Aotearoa), of a group which seems to be hovering round the Ayler Christmas Carols mash-ups of Bernard Stepien and Mars Williams, but not so direct. I’m still not sure whether they should be listed as an Ayler tribute band, and with no clips, audio or visual, to go on, I may leave it a while.

The description of the band’s music is as follows:

Love Cry - Ecstatic Ballads for Broken Hearts

A new musical project by Singapore based Australian saxophone titan Tim O'Dwyer featuring the extraordinary drummer Darren Moore (Singapore/Aus) alongside a slew of local fire breathers.

Love Cry is an ongoing performance project in which we reinterpret sentimental Asian—ballads particularly Thai Luk Thung—through the ecstatic and explosive vocabulary of free jazz, inspired by the work of Albert Ayler. Rather than fusing genres, the project seeks to confront and transfigure them. We approach these songs not with irony but with intensity—treating their sentimentality as a site of power, memory, and transformation. Each performance is a risk: a negotiation between melody and rupture, memory and fire.’

More information at undertheradar.co.nz.

youtube etc...

Youtube’s gone a bit weird with lots of AI rubbish. There’s a version of ‘Ghosts’ by Mete Erker, from the album Tilburg Noord. And a weirder one which Dirk found on instagram, entitled “Not Ghosts”. Let’s leave it at that.

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May 1 2025

Belated Easter Greetings

From Dirk Goedeking:

‘"Hosanna Crucify him" by Gudrun Endes was published in the German Jazzecho in 04/2020. "He has risen" by Kevin McCarity was published in 1973.’

And I don’t think this is going to work.

Musée Albert Ayler

Dirk paid another visit to the virtual ‘Musée Albert Ayler’ in Lyons, which we last mentioned almost 5 years ago. Here are a few more posters:

Staying in France, Dirk also unearthed a podcast on Radio France from 2015, entitled ‘Albert Ayler, du free jazz au Black Power’.

Paul Dunmall

And he also spotted this: The Paul Dunmall Sextet performs ‘Jazz Dance’ (Eddie Harris) and ‘Ghosts’ (Albert Ayler) at London’s Vortex Jazz Club on Friday 2nd May.

LINE-UP:

Paul Dunmall - Saxophones, Nikki Yeoh - Piano, Percy Pursglove - Trumpet, Richard Foote - Trombone, James Owston - Double Bass, Miles Levin - Drums.

ABOUT

A lauded master on the European Jazz scene, Paul Dunmall celebrates his 72nd birthday with this specially invited Sextet. Multi generational and drawing from a wide variety of inspirations this particular ensemble is well suited to Dunmall’s program for this concert. Pianist Nikki Yeoh has collaborated in her own group and with Dunmall in different combinations in recent years and the concerts have been received with deserved ovations. Percy Pursglove and Richard Foote (trumpet and trombone respectively) are the perfect partners on these sonic trips and the bass/drum combination of James Owston and Miles Levin are integral to a number of Duns latest ensembles.

Germán Boco Trío

Thought I’d mention this since I’m not adding that much this month (“In Spring a woman’s fancy turns to telling her husband to do some decorating”, so I’ve been tottering on stepladders and investigating what’s been living behind the cooker for the last ten years) and I didn’t want it to get lost in the Tributes pages. Germán Boco is an Argentinian percussionist and his album, Humo (‘Smoke’), turned up on youtube. As well as Monk’s ‘Bemsha Swing’ and Coleman’s ‘Lonely Woman’, it also contains a track entitled ‘Homenaje A Albert Ayler’.

Non-Ayler Follow-ups

Again from Dirk:

Sun Ra

‘Sun Ra's complete Maeght recordings were released on Wednesday, 16th April. They are available on bandcamp, Spotify,... . So after "Revelations", Cecil Taylor, the third in a row, is still waiting for a complete release.’

Jimmy Giuffre

Following on from last month’s Giuffre film, Dirk mentioned another record by the Giuffre/Friedman/Phillips Trio, Olympia - Feb 23rd, 1960 Feb 27th, 1965, and pointed me in the direction of a fine Giuffre discography, and another album, this one of a Berlin Concert by the Giuffre/Bley/Swallow Trio from 18th November, 1961, which is available on youtube.

And finally ...

April 1 2025

Housekeeping

A couple of things which I’ve mentioned before but the links have died. First, Cecil Taylor in Europe in 1969. Dirk Goedeking alerted me to a video of the Cecil Taylor Unit (Taylor, Sam Rivers, Jimmy Lyons and Andrew Cyrille) in Paris, 1969, which I duly posted, mainly because I’d seen that group at the Hammersmith Odeon, that year. Dave Taylor then sent me a link to the group in Copenhagen (which, with my dodgy memory) I presumed was the same one I’d already mentioned. Dave also said that he’d seen the same concert I had in London. Checking it out, the link to the Paris clip had broken, and so I decided to repost it (still thinking there was only one clip). However, now I check it, I realise there are two clips, Paris and Copenhagen. So here’s Copenhagen:

And, this is the full concert from Paris, both sets:

Which, of course, has very little to do with Albert Ayler.; And now we move on to ... The Beatles. Dirk sent me the following, which I repeat verbatim:

‘The ultimate 60’s music question didn’t concern free jazz, it was simply: “Beatles or Stones?”. I for myself prefer The Beatles, although I didn’t know about “Paul McCartney and Albert Ayler”. Here’s what I found, maybe you know already:

‘So how does Paul McCartney fit into this? McCartney was into experimental music and in the mid-1960s, produced a film showing a French gendarme directing traffic using Ayler’s “La Marseillaise” as the soundtrack. He had several of Ayler’s albums, and when The Beatles were recording their “Revolver” album, McCartney was sometimes at odds with producer George Martin about the band’s musical innovations. To annoy Martin, McCartney would play Ayler’s album “Spiritual Unity” while they were dining.’

“At the same time, he also began to think that the classically trained George Martin was old-fashioned because he did not see the avant-garde musicians on the same level as his role models such as Brahms or Mozart. This went so far that Paul played George Martin a complete album by the experimental saxophonist Albert Ayler at a dinner and - when Martin was not convinced by the quality of the recording - started a full blown argument with him.” (translated German)

[From ‘Making of: Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’ by M. Steinwachs.]

“And I was looking out of the hotel window in one French city and there was a gendarme on traffic duty. There was lot of traffic coming this way, then he’d stop ’em, and let them all go. So the action for ten minutes was a gendarme directing the traffic: lots of gestures and getting annoyed. He was a great character, this guy. I ran it all back and filmed all the cars again, it had been raining so there was quite low light in the street. So in the film he was stopping cars but they were just going through his body like ghosts. It was quite funny. Later, as the soundtrack I had Albert Ayler playing the ‘Marseillaise’. It was a great little movie but I don’t know what happened to it.”

[Paul McCartney – From “Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now” by Barry Miles, 1997.]

As the film seems to be lost, I include a photo of gendarme George taken by Paul.’

So ... First off I found another mention of Ayler in Barry Miles’ book:

‘He was just there at Robert’s [Fraser] one evening. And Keith Richards and myself just happened to be there, and I’d brought some little home movies of mine. I used to have a projector that would flick pictures very slowly: click, click, click. So instead of 25 frames a second, a cat would just move flip, flop, flip, and we’d play sitar music or Beethoven or Albert Ayler, who was a great favourite. It was very very slow but it created a hypnotic mantra kind of effect. I showed Antonioni these movies and he was quite interested. They lasted about quarter of an hour, it was really a five-minute flick but we showed it so slow.’

And then, the question of did I already know this - yes. Back in 2012 there was a documentary on the BBC about the Beatles (I think it was this one about ‘The Magical Mystery Tour’) and there was a clip of Paul McCartney mentioning Albert Ayler, which I failed to put on youtube, but added to the site. And here it is again. On the other question: The Rolling Stones. Although I did see them in Manchester in 1972, and thought at the time they were past their prime.

Dirk also provided a fresh link to the Daniel Caux 1971 radio programmes, ‘My Name Is Albert Ayler: Part 1: Spiritual Unity’ and ‘My Name Is Albert Ayler: Part 2: Love Cry’. These are now available on the France Culture site. All the links to the programmes on the Bibliography page have been replaced. It was in September, 2015 that I first posted the [old] links to these programmes. I described them thus:

‘A word of warning, the sound quality is not great, and although most of the interviews are in English (Bernard Stollman speaks French) there is a simultaneous French translation which, at times, obscures the original. I’ve done a rough breakdown of the two parts of the programme to give an idea of what’s included and where. The interviews with Albert Ayler and Don Cherry are included in the Holy Ghost box, but the others are, I believe, unavailable elsewhere. Most of the music is taken from Ayler’s records, but there is some unreleased material from the second concert at the Fondation Maeght (27th July, 1970), towards the end of the second part of the programme. For a while, I was working on another copy of the programme, attempting to transcribe the interviews, but as the process was (to slip into the vernacular) ‘doin’ me yed in’, I abandoned the task. However, I have added my rather feeble efforts after the breakdown in case they are of any use.

Daniel Caux 1971 Radio Programme Breakdown’

Of course, time marches on, and the ‘unreleased material from the second concert’ is now available on Revelations: The Complete ORTF 1970 Fondation Maeght Recordings.

Dirk added a couple of non-Ayler items:

The Marshall Allen album, New Dawn, was released on 14th February and is available on bandcamp.

The Roscoe Mitchell album, Gratitude: One Head Four People was released on 5th February and is available on bandcamp.

And he ended with this grim note:

‘And a final step leading to our Russian future:

Google translate it as “Albert Euler: next” - better get used to it.

Acoustical Swing

Pierre Crépon’s blog has turned up a couple of things (one barely Ayler-related, the other not at all) worth mentioning:

Out There: Noah Howard Papers

Out There: Jimmy Giuffre OST

This is the ‘Jimmy Giuffre’ film. Smiles, on youtube, with comments.

Pierre mentions that there are no recordings of the Jimmy Giuffre/Barre Phillips Duo, however I think I should point out (although it’s a bit daft since as soon as you look at something on amazon they seem to automatically raise the price) that there is a recording of a Jimmy Giuffre Quartet, with Barre Phillips on bass, Don Friedman on piano and Joe Chambers on drums. It’s a double CD, The Jimmy Giuffre 3 & 4: New York Concerts on the Elemental Records label and is currently cheaper on amazon.uk than the mp3 version. I heartily recommend it.

*

Multiple Alberts

Last month I posted a Dean Westerfield drawing of multiple Alberts. Now he’s coloured it in.

Ronald Shannon Jackson

There’s a feature on Ronald Shannon Jackson (drummer on the live La Cave and Slugs’ Saloon sets) on bandcamp: ‘Exploring the Genius of Ronald Shannon Jackson’ by George Grella, begins with:

‘Here’s the answer to a deep-cuts jazz trivia question: Drummer Ronald Shannon Jackson was one of the very, very few musicians (there may have only been one other) who played with Albert Ayler, Cecil Taylor, and Ornette Coleman.’

Youtube roundup

A mixed bag this month. Apologies if I’ve mentioned these before:

Pharoah Sanders in Antibes in 1968:

The Art Ensemble of Chicago in Montreux in 1974:

And then there’s ‘Albert Ayler (the Caravaggio of free-jazz)’ which is a view of a country road in Italy accompanied by someone (possibly Leonardo "Pippo" Calippo) talking about Albert.

‘Abstract Rhythm in Time DigitalART With Alan Silva‘. There’s also an interview with Alan Silva (from 29th January, 2024, reposting the transcript of a WKCR interview from January 1994, so not exactly current) from Ted Panken’s blog.

A discussion about a forthcoming book by Cisco Bradley, I Hear Freedom, which seems to cover some of the same topics which pop up here.

And this I don’t usually do, since we know everything is available on online somewhere, but since this particular item is in a peculiar state of limbo (with only occasional trips out in the daylight courtesy of Hathut Records), and since someone has bothered to upload the full 10 hours. Here’s a link to the Holy Ghost Boxset.

And here’s April’s version of ‘Ghosts’ by The Fruju Picchu Ensemble of New Zealand.

And finally ...

‘Submerging Albert (RIP mister Ayler)’

What’s New January to March 2025 has been sent to the vaults.

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This site went online in June 2000. All the previous ‘What’s New’ pages are available below: