ALBERT AYLER – Nuits De La Fondation Maeght Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 (LPs-1970)

Label: Shandar ‎– SR 10 000, Shandar ‎– 83 503

Format: Vinyl, LP, Album & Country: France & Released: 1970/72

Style: Free Jazz, Free Improvisation

Recorded live at Saint-Paul de Vence, July 25 and 27, 1970.

Engineer [Sound] – Claude Jauvert

Liner Notes – Daniel Caux

Photography By [1-4] – Philippe Gras, [2-3] – Jacques Robert

Cover, Artwork – Patrick Sabatier

Matrix / Runout (A): SR 10000 A

Matrix / Runout (B): SR 10000 B

A1 - In Heart Only .......................................................................... 5:10

A2 - Spirits ................................................................................... 15:00

B1 - Holy Family ........................................................................... 11:40

B2 - Spirits Rejoice ........................................................................ 7:25

Composed By – Albert Ayler

Albert Ayler – saxophone [tenor, soprano]

Call Cobbs – piano

Steve Tintweiss – bass

Allen Blairman – drums, percussion

Mary Maria – vocals, saxophone [soprano]

Albert Ayler was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1936. In 1952, on alto saxophone, he joined the band of blues singer and harmonica-player Little Walter. A few years later he switched to tenor, and met Cecil Taylor, who had preceded him to Scandinavia, in 1962. In the following year he formed a trio with Gary Peacock on bass and Sunny Murray on drums. With this group, plus Don Cherry on trumpet, he toured Denmark, Sweden and Holland. In 1963 he played at Town Hall with his brother, trumpeter Don Ayler, altoist Charles Tyler, bassist Lewis Worrell and Sunny Murray. The arrival of Albert Ayler on the jazz scene has provoked great enthusiasm but also great rage and sarcasm. His first journey to Paris, in 1966, as the final act in a programme which aimed to trace the history of jazz, unleashed a scandal gave rise to a great deal of controversy. Such a reception had the effect of making his eventual return to this country unlikely for a long time to come, until the announcement of his participation in the Nuits de la Fondation Maeght in 1970. He came to St-Paul de Vence, with pianist Call Cobbs, bassist Steve Tintweiss, drummer Allen Blairman and singer Mary Maria, and made a huge impact. He was called back on stage for encores six times, eight times, ten times, and it was the first great triumph in his career.

It might seem astonishing, that someone previously regarded as the champion of anti-jazz is now promoted to the rank of an innovator whose art is the most deeply rooted. The reason is that Ayler’s stance is precisely to wed the very foundations of Negro-American music (“swing”, the atmosphere of spirituals or blues, for example) to the strengths of this music, even the most vertiginous, the most “irrational”… Certainly at first hearing, the multiphonics, the huge vibrato, the growling, the wheezing and other effects can take the listener aback. Something else which can cause amazement is the contrast between the improvisation and the themes on which it is based.. These can be marches, fanfares or blatant repetition. This apparent naivete should not, however, mislead anyone, since Albert Ayler “vampirises” everything he plays in a treacherous derailing of the senses, thanks to the extremity of an expressiveness which masks subtle rhythmic and melodic displacements, while making them more effective. Contrary to popular belief, what is most striking about Ayler is that in spite of the great spontaneity which, according to all the evidence, characterises the arrangements of the pieces he creates, almost all of them appears as a perfectly articulated, coherent and definitive ”whole”. Albert Ayler finds himself in a musical universe which it is customary to call the “New Thing” just as it was natural for Charlie Parker to find himself categorised as be-bop. It seems to us that his contribution has to be acknowledged like an outpouring of indescribable lightning.. On this basis, no jazz improviser apart from Louis Armstrong and Charlie Parker can be compared to him. 
(by Daniel CAUX)


ALBERT AYLER – Nuits De La Fondation Maeght Volume 2 (LP-1970) 

Label: Shandar – SR 10 004

Format: Vinyl, LP, Album / Country: France / Released: 1970/72

Style: Free Jazz, Free Improvisation

Recorded live at Saint-Paul de Vence, July 27, 1970.

Engineer [Sound] – Claude Jauvert

Liner Notes – Daniel Caux

Photography By [1-4] – Philippe Gras, [2-3] – Jacques Robert

Cover, Artwork – Patrick Sabatier

Matrix / Runout (Runout Side A): SR 10004 A

Matrix / Runout (Runout Side B): SR 10004 B

Composed By – Albert Ayler

A1 - Truth Is Marching In ................................................................... 7:55

A2 - Universal Message ..................................................................... 8:15

B1 - Spiritual Reunion ........................................................................ 7:20

B2 - Music Is The Healing Force Of The Universe .......................... 10:30

        (Written-By – Mary Parks)

Albert Ayler – saxophone [tenor, soprano]

Call Cobbs – piano

Steve Tintweiss – bass

Allen Blairman – drums, percussion

Mary Maria – vocals, saxophone [soprano]

By the end of the year 1970, the musician who was thought of as being the strongest personality of the free jazz died in mysterious circumstances.

Albert Ayler had disappeared from his New York City home since November 6. His body was found in the East River three weeks later. His funeral was held discreetly on December 4 in his native Cleveland. Members of his family and several friends attended the funeral. He was 34.

After having scored his first major triumph at the Nights of the Maeght Foundation, he was scheduled to come back to France at the start of 1971 and was eagerly expected there.

LeRoi Jones said several years ago “Albert Ayler is a master of stupefying dimensions and it is frustrating to think that many people might take a long time to be aware of it”. As a matter of fact, there were few of us to acknowledge the importance of this exceptional innovator who was thought of as being a weird musician, one that would be listened to out of curiosity or as a scandalous impostor. However one can wonder if there has ever been a purer and more sincere artist in the jazz field than Albert Ayler. It is true that what he played was both very simple and also very subtly complex, a situation that puzzled listeners who had to revise their usual criteria.

The music of Albert Ayler was as distanced from the intellectual ghetto in which for a time free jazz was confined as from the entertaining without consequences it was later reduced to so as to lessen its impact while ignoring its most radical aspects. Simplicity does not mean simplism and there was no demagogy in the words of Albert Ayler when he spoke of a music from the people for the people. He was perfectly aware of its objectives: “I want to play the melodies I sang when I was a kid. Folk melodies that every one could understand. I would use these melodies as starting points and several simple melodies that move inside the same tune. From a simple melody to complex textures, then back to simplicity and the more complex sounds and more dense ones.”

People tended to see in the triumphant joy that is expressed in the music of Albert Ayler and in its ironic humour a will leaning on destruction through derision, an idea that is alien to us and one that would be at the very least too limitative. Albert Ayler stated on several occasions that what he was playing was essentially a love cry and that can be taken for granted. A universal love that is expressed with a frightening conviction and one that would attach in a single swoop the numerous contradictions that usually tear the human. Love meaning joy, supreme happiness but also happiness in danger. Out of this probably comes the ineffable emotion that is never absent from his music and which constitutes one of its specific elements.

The album we present gathers on one side the start and on the other one the last two numbers from the second concert given by Albert Ayler at the Maeght Foundation. A fervour-laden “Truth is marching in” reminds one of the New Orleans funerals and we know it was played by Ayler at the funeral of John Coltrane. A high level of expressive intensity was to be maintained during the concert. One notes the interventions of pianist Cal Cobbs who was once one of Billie Holiday’s accompanists and whose poetic playing matches happily Ayler’s. Taken at a very slow tempo “Music is the healing force of the Universe” which was the last tune played by Albert Ayler at Saint Paul de Vence seems to mark a will to retain the passing of time. Mary Maria sings with ‘soul’ while Albert Ayler accompanies her with countermelodies of dramatic lyricism that can only raise singular resonances today. (by Daniel CAUX)

If you find them, buy these albums!

FRANK WRIGHT – Your Prayer (LP-1967 / ESP Disk')

Label: ESP Disk – ESP 1053

Format: Vinyl, LP, Album / Country: US / Released: 1967

Style: Free Jazz

Recorded in New York City, May 1967, RLA Sound Studios NY.

Engineer – Richard L. Alderson

Photography By – Harlene Sandra Stollman

All compositions did Frank Wright, except Jones' "The Lady".

A1 - The Lady . . . . . 9:04

A2 - Train Stop . . . . . 7:32

A3 - No End . . . . . 6:49

B1 - Fire Of Spirits . . . . . 12:31

B2 - Your Prayer . . . . . 15:42

Frank Wright – tenor saxophone

Arthur Jones – alto saxophone

Jacques Coursil – trumpet

Steve Tintweiss – bass

Muhammad Ali – drums, percussion

Despite the fact that avant-garde jazz has often met with the criticism that its tonalities and rhythms put it far outside the jazz (and by extension black music) tradition, it is quite true that many of the forerunners of free jazz found their voice in blues and R&B outfits. Ornette Coleman, Albert Ayler, Dewey Redman, Noah Howard, Prince Lasha and Pharoah Sanders all came up in blues bands in the South and Midwest, which in some ways predate both bebop and avant-garde credentials... 

Mississippi-born and Cleveland-raised tenor man Frank Wright (1935-1990) was one of the forerunners of the multiphonics-driven school of saxophonists to follow the direction pointed by Ayler, but with a more pronounced bar-walking influence than most of his contemporaries. Whereas Ayler's high-pitched wails, wide vibrato and guttural honks all belied an R&B pedigree, his solos still contained the breakneck tempos and facility of bebop, for which he had earlier earned the nickname "Little Bird. Wright, on the other hand, offers his honks and squawks with a phraseology derived from the slower, earthier funk of R&B and gospel music; indeed, he was a bassist in Cleveland blues bands until switching to tenor in the early '60s as a result of Ayler's influence (the same influence that brought Wright to New York in 1964).

Wright had not been playing tenor long when he was asked to make Coltrane's Ascension date (he had sat in with Trane on several occasions previously), but reportedly he declined it fearing his skills weren't at the level required by the music. Nevertheless, Wright did make his first session as a leader a few months later, in a trio with bassist Henry Grimes and drummer Tom Price for then-fledgling ESP-Disk' (Frank Wright Trio, ESP 1023).

In the spring of 1967, Wright made his second date as a leader for ESP, the powerful quintet statement of Your Prayer (ESP 1053) featuring Wright in the company of Cleveland-born altoist Arthur Jones, expatriate Martinique-born, French-educated trumpeter Jacques Coursil, drummer Muhammad Ali and bassist Steve Tintweiss. Where the first date falters at a lack of dynamics and cohesion (not to mention experience), Your Prayer finds Wright refining the bag his solos come from, yet maintaining a firm hold on the ecstatic free-blues shout that makes up most of his solo language. The set starts off with Jones' composition "The Lady, a simple unison ascending-descending call for the horns peaking in vibrato, which gives way to a searing solo by the composer with echoes of Dolphy's speed and intervallic leaps coupled to Johnny Hodges' tone, a quality that clearly defined this altoist's style for the few years he was actively recording. Coursil follows with a deft series of punches and blasts, exuding the bubbly-yet-raw swing his solos always carry, even in the most 'out' contexts.

Wright's distorted squall seems like a real style now (though in the ensuing twenty-odd years, it would change some), a thick wall of sound that is less given to distraction, coming through pure and hot. In the Wright-Ali duo that follows, "Train Stop, Wright harps rhythmically on phrases, repeating and expanding upon them and wringing out every last growling breath before moving to yet another plane far eclipsing the ADD approach that hampers his first recording. Muhammad Ali, brother to the more well- known free drummer Rashied, approaches the kit with a more singular style that focuses on hurtling masses than the allover, coloristic palette that his elder sibling has employed. At over fifty minutes (for a single LP at its release), Your Prayer is a rather lengthy slab of high-energy grit, but its unified forward and upward motion make for a firmly rooted sonic liberation.

Slightly over a year after recording his second ESP session, Wright, Ali, Jones, altoist Noah Howard and pianist Bobby Few would leave New York together for Europe with the wave of American free players that subsequently descended on Paris. The Center of the World Quartet (Wright, Ali, Few, and Howard, who was later replaced by bassist Alan Silva) recorded prodigiously for BYG, America, Calumet, Sun and their own Center of the World label throughout the '70s, and brought the tools of post-Coltrane freedom to bear on a decidedly funkier and more populist approach to ecstatic jazz. As poet Larry Neal wrote in a 1969 review of Ayler's R&B record New Grass in the Cricket, "I know what the Brother is trying to do. But his procedure is fucked up. Though these ESP sessions are only an early indicator, Frank Wright was one to get it "on."

_By CLIFFORD ALLEN, July 13, 2005 (AAJ)


One of Frank Wright's finest recordings.

If you find it, buy this album!