Albert Ayler Biography
13 July 1936, Cleveland, Ohio, USA, d. 25 November 1970, New York City, New York, USA. In common with many of the radical figures of the 60s avant garde, tenor and alto saxophonist Ayler paid his dues in R&B bands. He started his musical education on alto, and played in the church attended by his family. At the age of 10 he began studying at the local academy of music, continuing to do so for some seven years. During this time he was section leader in his high-school orchestra. In his late teens he secured a job with blues legend Little Walter. Subsequently, he formed his own R&B band, but this folded and, after giving up college due to financial difficulties, he joined the army. His national service took him to Europe, where he decided to stay following his discharge. His first few albums were taped either in Europe or for European labels, but his reputation was made with the recordings for the New York label ESP, which was established by Bernard Stollman particularly to promote Ayler's music. In 1966 Ayler signed with Impulse! Records where he continued to provoke poisonous controversy even among enthusiasts of contemporary jazz. On 25 November 1970 his body was recovered from New York City's East River. One bizarre rumour claimed that there was a bullet-hole in the back of his neck. Ayler had not been seen for some 20 days before his body was discovered, and the circumstances of his death remain unclear. The theory that he was killed by the police has been given much currency. However, he had been very depressed about the breakdown suffered by his brother, Donald Ayler, and close friends have confirmed that he had talked about taking his own life.
Until the late 50s the tendency in the development of jazz had been one of increasing harmonic complexity and sophistication. Ornette Coleman and Ayler created styles that, although neither atonal nor entirely free, re-established the primacy of melody. Ironically, the mass of the jazz public found this music less accessible than the more technically complicated work of figures such as John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Gil Evans and Charles Mingus. Although Ayler cited Lester Young and Sidney Bechet as favourites, he seems to have owed something to Sonny Rollins, but one can also hear strong elements taken from New Orleans jazz, from gospel and work songs, and a number of techniques common in traditional African vocal music. It is, however, unwise to try to appreciate his music without paying some regard to its spiritual dimension and to the raw emotional components. In an interview with Nat Hentoff for DownBeat in November 1966, Ayler and his trumpeter brother Donald advised that the way to listen to their music was "not to focus on the notes and stuff like that. Instead, try to move your imagination toward the sound . . . you really have to play your instruments to escape from notes to sound." The Aylers were among the first to reject the term "jazz" as redolent of Jim Crow and Uncle Tom attitudes. Standards and bop classics were still central to his repertoire, at least on record, and his articulation often sounded inadequate for the job. The cynical have suggested that this was the reason behind his predilection for dirge-like tunes, flexible, dream-like tempi and phrases that sprawl carelessly across bar-lines, but his proficiency, though often questioned, can scarcely be in doubt; his apprenticeship in school, church and army bands, and the recollections of those who heard him play in the 50s testify to his technical credentials. One important key to his work lies in the album of spirituals recorded for the Debut label in February 1964. Although it features some of his least inventive playing, it does provide a link between his early work with blues and mainstream modern jazz bands and the albums for ESP-Disk and Impulse! In the remarkable series of albums made in 1964, with Gary Peacock and Sunny Murray buoying him up on a tide of oblique but potent rhythm, we can hear not the strongly pulsed aspects of African music, but rather its melody-stretching and elaborate tonal and timbrel play. Ayler's attitude to rhythm made even his early, inadequately realized recordings seem dangerous. At the time much attention was focused on his sound, a strident braying with an enormously exaggerated vibrato that could make his lines seem deceptively maudlin. Such tonal distortions had always been present in the playing of musicians on the borders of jazz, blues and R&B, such as Arnett Cobb and Jay McNeely, and vibrati as wide as the Mississippi delta were common with New Orleans brass band saxophonists like Emmanuel Paul and, indeed, Bechet. What alarmed people was not the sound itself, but Ayler's cavalier attitude to the beat and the way he used squeals, honks, cries and moans as an integral part of his style instead of reserving them for climactic moments. He was, however, first and foremost a melodist. He told Hentoff, "I like to play something that people can hum . . . songs like I used to sing when I was real small. From simple melody to complicated textures to simplicity again . . .", a process that is clearly at work in all his recordings. Ayler's first recordings were done in Stockholm in October 1962 with a willing but baffled bass player and drummer. It was not until 1964 that Ayler was able to record with musicians who really understood what was going on. With Peacock or Henry Grimes on bass, Murray on drums and Don Cherry's bright and agile pocket-trumpet it was now possible to hear Ayler's music properly realized. Gone were the rather ungainly refashionings of standards, to be replaced by Ayler compositions such as "Mothers", "Witches And Devils" and the ubiquitous "Ghosts". His broad and incantatory lines have a strange grace. In the second half of the 60s Ayler began using two bass players and, in the group that recorded the definitive In Greenwich Village, a violinist and cellist. With brother Donald Ayler replacing Cherry, and with one of the bass players concentrating on arco work, the music became a closely woven pattern of keening lines, developing a harder, shriller feel. These intense sides baptized his contract with Impulse! It was with this label that he made what were paradoxically his least "way out" but most controversial albums. Even at his most abstract Ayler had been deeply rooted in spirituals and blues, but Music Is The Healing Force Of The Universe and New Grass found him involved in an uncomfortable species of pedestrian soul/funk/jazz fusion. There is some raunchy and direct saxophone playing, but these gems are marred by their tacky setting. Ayler spawned fewer imitators than John Coltrane (who admitted to being influenced by Ayler) or even Coleman, but there are those - notably Matthias Schubert - who overtly base their playing on his style. Tommy Smith's first album leaned intriguingly on his example, David Murray has paid musical tribute to him, and his spirit is often heard in the work of Jan Kopinski in the otherwise harmolodics-based environment of Pinski Zoo. Ayler's ideas have been so thoroughly absorbed into the contemporary mainstream that his own work may no longer seem so startling. His effect at the time may be gauged by the fact that BBC Television, after bringing Ayler's quintet to Britain especially to record two programmes, were so alarmed by the music that the tapes were locked away and surreptitiously wiped without ever being shown.
Source: The Encyclopedia of Popular Music by Colin Larkin. Licensed from Muze.
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