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(From Down Beat Vol. 32 No. 24, November, 1965.) - US Albert Ayler
MY NAME IS ALBERT AYLER—Fantasy 6016: Bye, Bye, Blackbird; Billie’s Bounce; Summertime; On Green Dolphin Street; C.T.
Personnel: Ayler, soprano, tenor saxophone; Niels Bronsted, piano; Niels-Henning Orsted Pedersen, bass; Ronnie Gardiner, drums. Rating: see below With the exception of one track, C.T., this record is not so much listenable music as it is a document of an impossible meeting.
The tone for most of it is set not by Ayler (who even under impossible conditions is a wild, stimulating player) but by Swedish pianist Bronsted, who is a rigid, crystallized, highly skilled example of what bebop has become and, obversely, of what it never will become. To hear his neat, centered comping to Ayler’s screaming and pleading-to-be-let-free is an experience only few would enjoy.
The other musicians are less guilty; that is, they are more responsive to Ayler’s cries for help.
In Billie’s Bounce, Ayler sounds as if he is deliberately trying to play directly from the Parker tradition. Though his ideas are not spectacular, his point of view is. (I suspect he sounded like this for quite a while until he broke through.)
On Dolphin he almost gets free, but he can’t shake the group (what price freedom?). On Summertime he plays music that is pure sadness. And the cocktail rhythm section makes him seem more suppliant, more lonesome.
The result is like a planned, perverse irony. Ayler’s truest impulses (some nihilistic) are operating behind these wobbling, whimpering comments on the music he grew up in.
The exception is C.T. With drums and bass only, Ayler improvises freely. The performance stands up brilliantly today and is even more remarkable when it is taken into account that it was recorded in Europe in early 1963.
The players are all closely tuned in to each other. Though free playing has become more sophisticated in the intervening 2½ years, rarely do musicians even at this late date listen to each other with such sensitivity. And Orsted Pedersen was only 16 at the time. . . .
If the whole were on the level of C.T., it would be subject to critical appraisal (mine would be favorable). But as it stands, it is a curio for collectors only. The record is true in the sense that it shows Ayler growing out of his boyhood.
If you want Ayler (he’s big stuff), ESP record No. 1002 is recommended.
(B.M.)
Bill Mathieu *** (From Jazz Monthly March, 1966.) - UK MY NAME IS ALBERT AYLER:
Albert Ayler (ten, sop-1); Niels Brønsted (p); Niels-Henning Orsted Pedersen (bs); Ronnie Gardiner (d)
Copenhagen—January 14, 1963
Bye, bye blackbird-1 : : Billie’s bounce : : Summertime : : On Green Dolphin Street : : C. T. -2
-2 Brønsted not present on this track
Fontana 688 603 ZL (33/1d.)
(The above LP is an import and can only be obtained from specialist jazz dealers) AYLER’S OWN YOUTHFUL voice introduces this album, a soft voice that contrasts with the rich pained tones of his tenor playing. It is not a typical nor I suppose a great album. But it is one that I have frequently enjoyed sampling over the last twelve months or so since it first penetrated to Charing Cross Road as an import. Despite the rather incongruous choice of material and worse, the inclusion of a rigidly academic post-bop pianist and a woefully immature drummer, the value of the session was by no means purely historical. Ayler had by this time almost reached maturity and the breadth of his talent is clearly apparent. Already a completely individual musician whose influences are almost beyond detection, he was evolving a style with implications leading out beyond the Coleman barrier. Ayler’s style has been described in some detail with regard to his more recent ESP albums and despite the conservative material most of its elements are here.
A unique feature of the record though is his playing of the soprano—quite surprisingly individual with hardly a note from Coltrane’s formulation for the instrument. He creates basically the same grotesque and sinuous tension as on tenor, though the higher pitch and thinner timbre alters the climate a little. Bye bye proves an adequate vehicle but one hopes to hear more of the soprano in more current context. Two musical details that catch the ear are his use of a continuous (as far as it is possible) rather than a particulate (scalar) pitch, and the attempt to suggest numerous melodic lines by rapid alternation of extremes of pitch or intensity. Also worth noting is the fact that despite the apparently arhythmic atmospheric style, careful attention reveals a complex division of the beat and some of his cadences are as subtle as any yet played in jazz. Needless to say he reveals tremendous confidence and authority—where were the critics while such a player was forming his style?
What I have said of the opening track applies elsewhere. Billie’s theme gets a rather brusque dismissal and the accompaniment who seems to think it knows how the piece should be played is at its worst. Ayler makes one step towards appeasement—he blows a High society quote (after Bird)—then continues with some catching blues fragments though never really evolving a unified structure. Green dolphin is similarly compromised by the clash of personality, but the contrast between the tenor’s distant but suggestive references to the progression and the pianist’s grim orthodoxy is illuminating. There’s an entirely acceptable arco bass contribution and Albert throws in an Ornette Coleman quote to round things off. One or two Coleman passages also crop up on C. T., an Ayler original, and the only nominally free performance included (one wonders if the pianist refused to play). The item is full of interest even though the drummer is completely out of his depth and makes a lot of noise drowning. Pedersen, who is a sensitive bassist and who acts throughout as if he is at least not openly against the main soloist, is understandably less than perfect here, drawing too heavily on flamenco cliche.
Despite (perhaps because of) the ineptitude of the rhythm section which does all the hackneyed things, Summertime approaches the classic heights of ballad playing. Ayler’s completely and painfully sensitive lines move back and forth through dynamic space (revealing incidentally his phenomenal control of timbre and intensity) suggesting a continual emotional flux from anger to defeat. After falling to a mundane piano solo then gathering a little with Pedersen, Ayler caps the performance with a beautiful second solo, the finest individual passage on my review records this month. Few jazzmen have conveyed such a breadth of emotional expression on a ballad.
Having said this I sincerely hope that I have deterred no one from hearing this last track for it is very easy to give the impression of overstating one’s case. For a number of reasons the album is more approachable than later more typical and doubtless better records, but the performance of Summertime for the tenor at least is as good as any I know.
In summary all followers of the new jazz should consider this album despite its imperfections, and doubters could at least try a taste of one of the most original talents on the contemporary scene. TERRY MARTIN Back to: Record Reviews Discography: My Name Is Albert Ayler |
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