Albert Ayler

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Albert Ayler (born July 13, 1936 in Cleveland , Ohio , † November 1970 in New York City ) was an American jazz musician ( tenor saxophone , also alto and soprano saxophone , occasionally bagpipes ) and composer . He is one of the pioneers of free jazz .

Live and act

Coming from a family of musicians - his brother is the trumpeter Don Ayler - Albert Ayler had access to jazz very early on . He learned alto saxophone at the age of seven and initially played in his father Edward's band; he received his education at the Cleveland Academy of Music . From 1952 to 1960 he toured the United States with blues and rhythm and blues bands, such as Little Walter and Lloyd Price . During his military service, which he first spent in Texas and then from 1959 in Paris , he jammed with Stanley Turrentine and already with Lewis Worrell and Beaver Harris , with whom he later worked again. During this time he also switched to the tenor saxophone ; in Paris he performed in jazz clubs in 1960/61. In 1961 he lived in California for some time before he worked as an entertainment musician in Scandinavia in 1962 and played at the Jazzhus Montmartre in Copenhagen with Dexter Gordon , Don Byas and Don Cherry and finally with Cecil Taylor's group, with which he also played in New York City in 1963 occurred. The first recordings were made in Scandinavia.

Ayler went with Cherry, Gary Peacock and Sunny Murray on a European tour in 1964 and then recorded a first album in New York; In July 1964 his essential album Spiritual Unity was created in trio with Sunny Murray and Gary Peacock . Don Cherry then joined the trio; In 1965 Ayler founded a quintet, which his brother Don also joined. In changing line-ups, including musicians such as Charles Tyler , cellist Joel Freedman and bassist Henry Grimes , Ayler recorded a number of albums for the new avant-garde label ESP-Disk . With an expanded line-up, including two bassists, he appeared from 1965 to 1967 in the major clubs of New York's Greenwich Village .

In addition, Ayler played the record New York Eye and Ear Control in 1965 with Don Cherry, John Tchicai , Roswell Rudd , Gary Peacock and Sunny Murray , which is considered the first recording of a "free form" improvisation that was made without prior agreement. In 1966 there was a collaboration with Ronald Shannon Jackson , which is documented on recordings from Slug's Saloon . In 1967 Ayler appeared with his brother Don, violinist Michel Samson , bassist Bill Folwell and drummer Beaver Harris at the Newport Jazz Festival ; with this line-up he was on a European tour last year, where he also appeared at the Berlin Jazz Days .

In his later recordings (1968, 1969), at the urging of producer Bob Thiele , he approached more commercial forms, in particular the rhythm and blues of his early years, "but without giving up anything essential as a soloist." He brought in, for example, the canned-heat guitarist Henry Vestine added, let other wind players play simple riffs , unfamiliar timbres ( spinet , bagpipes , yodelling ) and singers sing hippie- themed lyrics , but also the “Yeah, Yeah, Yeah!” That the Beatles adapted from Ray Charles . "

In 1970 Ayler could hardly find work in the United States. He traveled to Europe again in June 1970 with a new line-up to play in France. It is uncertain whether he had another gig in New York (in August) after that. At the beginning of November 1970, Albert Ayler suddenly disappeared from the scene. On November 25, 1970, his body was found in the East River of New York (cause of death: drowning). There were rumors of an execution on drug dealer debts. According to his partner Mary Parks, he committed suicide: he threw his saxophone into the television, left the apartment, took the ferry to the Statue of Liberty, but jumped into the water shortly before arrival.

His music

Roy Campbell Jr. and the project A Tribute to Albert Ayler recite Ayler's poem Music is the Healing Power of the Universe the day after Barack Obama's election as US President

Ayler's sound was new, a sound full of splits , overtones and modified rhythm and blues techniques and New Orleans jazz styles. Together with other experimental musicians he opened up new worlds of sound; In interviews he repeatedly emphasized the central importance of folk songs and marching music for his artistic development and his compositions, such as Bells , Ghosts , Spirits , Holy, Holy , Witches and Devils , Holy Spirit , Mothers , Vibrations and The Truth Comes Marching In . The themes of the compositions sound “in their rhythmic simplicity and with their diatonic material like fragments from Euro-American trivial music.” However, Ayler's solos stood “in diametrical opposition to his emphatically trivial themes.” This resulted in “wild, intense improvisations that followed the popular Negated the naivety of his subjects with great sharpness. "

Martin Kunzler quotes the English jazz musician Ronnie Scott , whose judgment in Melody Maker represented the perplexity of many colleagues and contemporaries: "By the standards I know, this is not jazz." No figure in free jazz was as controversial as Ayler, whose " anthemic, proclamatory music, despite recourse to many traditional elements, seemed to be the furthest removed from what was believed to be tradition. "

Joachim-Ernst Berendt wrote about Albert Ayler's style: “ We Play Peace was his motto that he uttered again and again. Ayler's free tenor outbursts (who was largely independent of Coltrane, even preceded him) found security in a particularly idiosyncratic manner; by its recourse to march and circus music of the turn of the century, to folk dances, waltzes and polkas , but also to the dirges , the sadness pieces of the funeral - processions in old New Orleans . " Berendt close emphasized Ayler to folk music mobility of the field cry and archaic Folk blues . The jazz critic Arrigo Polillo was more critical ; In view of the “distorted echoes” of the various folk elements, he states: “But here there is no joy at all. The serenity is feigned in the form of an illusion that shows a mechanical ballet and is reflected by a gruesome distorting mirror. " Ultimately, however, according to Andre Asriel, these are " impressive pieces in which Ayler, who repeats his longing for a heal, peaceful world whose impossibility in the face of the harsh reality of life “ shaped the African American in the United States.

Richard Cook and Brian Morton in the Penguin Guide to Jazz particularly emphasize the role of the drummer Sunny Murray and compare her in titles like Transfiguration and Ghosts with the "telepathic sympathy between John Coltrane and Rashied Ali ."

David Murray recorded his first albums ( Flowers for Albert ) under the impression of Aylers and his “eruptive streams of sound” . Ian Carr notes in the Jazz Rough Guide that countless other musicians followed his "spirit".

Rolling Stone magazine selected his album Music is the Healing Force of the Universe 2013 in its list of The 100 Best Jazz Albums at number 47. Spiritual Unity came in at number 81.

Quotes

“ I want to play something that people can hum along. I like to play songs like the ones I sang when I was very young, folk songs that all people understand. "

- Albert Ayler

“ Jazz is Jim Crow . It belongs to another era, another time, and another time. We play “free music”. "

- Albert Ayler

“ It's the atomic age, today's explosive sound. "

- LeRoi Jones

“ Ayler […] was in many ways closer to the old sound of Bubber Miley and Tricky Sam Nanton than of Charlie Parker , Miles Davis or Sonny Rollins . He brought back the wild, primitive feeling that had left jazz in the late thirties [...] His technique knew no limits, his tone scale went from deep grunts to the shrillest notes at the highest level - without parallel ... "

- Richard Williams

Discography (selection)

  • The First Recordings II (Sonet / DIW, 1962) with Torbjörn Hultcrantz , Sune Spångberg
  • My Name is Albert Ayler (Fontana, 1963)
  • Bells / Prophecy (ESP-Disk, 1964/1965) with Don Ayler, Charles Tyler, Lewis Worrell, Gary Peacock, Sunny Murray
  • Spiritual Unity ( ESP-Disk , 1964) with Gary Peacock, Sunny Murray
  • Ghosts (Debut, 1965)
  • Spirits Rejoice (ESP-Disk, 1965)
  • New York Eye and Ear Control (ESP-Disk, 1965) with Don Cherry, Roswell Rudd, John Tchicai, Gary Peacock, Sunny Murray
  • Lörrach / Paris ( HatArt , 1966) with Don Ayler, Michel Samson, Bill Fowell, Beaver Harris
  • Live in Greenwich Village / The Complete Recordings ( Impulse! Records , 1965-67)
  • Love Cry ( Impulse! Records , 1967)
  • New Grass ( Impulse! Records , 1968)
  • Music Is the Healing Force of the Universe (Impulse, 1969)
  • The Last Album (Impulse, 1969)
  • European Radio Studio Recordings 1964 (Hatology, ed. 2017)
  • Copenhagen Live 1964 (Hatology, ed. 2017)
  • Albert Ayler Trio 1964 - Prophecy Revisited (ezz-thetics / Hat Hut Records Ltd, 2020)

Movie

  • Talking in Tongues , documentary by Doug Harris, 80 minutes, USA / GB 1987
  • Kaspar Collin: My name is Albert Ayler , Sweden 2005
  • Jean-Michel Meurice: Le Dernier Concert , France 1970 (last concert at the Maeght Foundation )

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The recordings later published under the title First Recordings were produced in Stockholm by the Swedish saxophonist Bengt Nordström and appeared first on Nordström's own Bird Notes label and later on the Danish Sonet label. Another documentary from this early creative phase, recordings of a radio session from January 1963 in Denmark, appeared under the title My Name is Albert Ayler on the Danish branch of the debut label founded by Charles Mingus and Max Roach .
  2. ↑ Recordings were made in April 1964 following a European tour, released under the title Witches and Devils on the Freedom label ; Besides Henry Grimes and Sunny Murray, bassist Earle Henderson and trumpeter Norman Howard were involved . According to Cook and Morton, Witches and Devils is Ayler's actual debut album.
  3. ↑ Richard Cook and Brian Morton rated this album, recorded in July 1964, with the highest rating of four stars (plus crown): "[…] is one of the essential recordings of the new jazz and should be in every serious collection."
  4. ↑ The album Live in Greenwich Village was included on The Wire's “100 Records That Set the World on Fire (While No One Was Listening)” . A later edition of his concerts, recorded at the Village Gate , Village Vanguard and Village Theater , from March 1965 to 1967, rated Cook and Morton with four stars; they consider them "essential recordings of post-war jazz" ; According to the authors, they contain the musician's best recordings on the alto saxophone ( For John Coltrane ) and the tenor, such as the apocalyptic Truth is Marching In . They also highlight the role of his brother Don Ayler, who was always overshadowed by Albert and who made his best appearances here. The edition includes the albums previously released under the title In Greenwich Village and The Village Concerts , supplemented by the title Holy Ghost , which previously appeared only on the Impulse! Compilation The New Wave in Jazz . Contributing musicians were Don Ayler Henry Grimes, George Steele, Michel Samson, Joel Freedman, William Folwell, Alan Silva , Beaver Harris and Sunny Murray.
  5. ↑ so M. Kunzler in his judgment
  6. ^ Philippe Carles / Jean-Louis Comolli Free Jazz - Black Power . Frankfurt a. M. 1974, p. 228. The authors analyze this change in Ayler's music as follows: “Between the two basic concepts of his music (references to white, rebellion of black), which he dialectically contrasts and drives to permanent contradiction [...], He now uses colors and instrumental combinations of western style as a mediating element - but thereby complicating the contradictions much more than dissolving them. "
  7. ↑ Ayler was accompanied by the pianist Call Cobbs , the bassist Steve Tintweiss , the drummer Allen Blairman and his partner, the singer Mary Maria Parks . Recordings were published under the title Nuits de la Foundation Maeght and their quality is sometimes rated as "spectacular" (according to Jeffrey Schwartz).
  8. ↑ Martin Drexler, article in the series Jazz in Cleveland , reports on the other hand, statements from Ayler's environment, according to which Ayler did not use hard drugs, only marijuana every now and then.
  9. ↑ Mary Parks to the English discographer Mike Hames 1983. According to Parks, the motive was conflicts with his mother about his brother Donald, with whom he had initially gone to New York, but who he no longer wanted in his band and who had difficulties in New York York getting by.
  10. ↑ cit. according to Kunzler, p. 58
  11. ↑ Andre Asriel Jazz. Aspects and Analyzes Berlin (GDR) 1984, p. 352
  12. ↑ a b Asriel, p. 215
  13. ↑ cf. Kunzler, p. 58
  14. ↑ cf. Berendt / Huesmann, p. 46.
  15. ↑ cf. Polillo, p. 239
  16. ↑ on Spiritual Unity
  17. ↑ see Cook / Morton, Penguin Guide; 2nd edition, p. 56
  18. ↑ cit. after Berendt / Huismann, p. 188
  19. ↑ Rolling Stone: The 100 Best Jazz Albums . Retrieved November 16, 2016.
  20. ↑ cit. after Ekkehard Jost, p. 170
  21. ↑ cit. after Arrigo Polillo, p. 230
  22. ↑ cit. according to Martin Kunzler, p. 58
  23. ↑ cit. after Joachim E. Berendt: Das Jazzbuch . P. 327
personal data
SURNAME Ayler, Albert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American jazz musician
DATE OF BIRTH July 13, 1936
PLACE OF BIRTH Cleveland , Ohio
DATE OF DEATH November 1970
Place of death New York City