Albert Ayler
'Trane was the Father, Pharoah was the Son, I was the Holy Ghost.' — Albert Ayler
At a glance 🔭💭
Some coordinates adapted from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0) · Pleiades (CC BY 3.0)
Companions ⏳🌊
- FamilyEdward Ayler
His father, who first taught him the alto saxophone and played alongside him in church.
- FamilyDonald Ayler
His brother, six years younger, who took up the trumpet in 1965 and became a pillar of the brothers' band.
- ColleagueCecil Taylor
Sharing a stage with Ayler in Copenhagen in 1962, he gave him the conviction that his path was not wrong.
- ColleagueSunny Murray
They met in Taylor's group, and his beatless drumming on “Spiritual Unity” bore up Ayler's sound.
- PatronBernard Stollman
He founded ESP-Disk and recorded “Spiritual Unity” as the label's first jazz release.
- FriendshipJohn Coltrane
He cherished Ayler and recommended him to Impulse, and Ayler played at his funeral.
I. The boy from Cleveland · 1936–1958 (age 0–22)
(Cleveland) He was born in July 1936 in Cleveland, Ohio. His father, Edward Ayler, was a music lover who played saxophone and violin, and his mother, Myrtle, was a devout woman who took her sons to church without fail. In 1942 his brother Donald was born, six years his junior. As a child Albert learned alto saxophone from his father, and father and son often played side by side in church. (Church) Beneath Ayler's music lay the sound of the Black church. The hymns and spirituals sung by the whole congregation, the trembling voice of the preacher, the wide, swaying tremor of the singing all survived intact in the lines he would later blow at the heart of New York's avant-garde. Critics hold that the simplicity of his themes, which can sound like nursery tunes or marches, cannot be separated from the memories of these years. (Training) He studied formally at Cleveland's Benny Miller Academy of Music, and as a teenager, it is said, his Charlie Parker–like alto earned him the neighborhood nickname 'Little Bird.' Around the age of sixteen, by his own recollection, he spent two summers touring with the band of blues harmonica player Little Walter. In high school he was reportedly an unusually gifted golfer as well. After graduating he worked in local rhythm and blues bands, but Cleveland had little room for a young alto player steeped in bebop. In 1958 he enlisted in the army.
II. From the army band to Northern Europe · 1958–1963 (age 22–27)
(Army band) In the army he was assigned to a military band, and around this time he switched his main instrument to tenor saxophone. Playing marches day after day would later come back to life as the fanfares and marching rhythms of his music. While stationed near Orléans, France, he visited the clubs of Paris whenever he could, and is said to have taken in melodies such as European folk songs, military songs and the French national anthem. (Drifting) After his discharge in 1961 he looked for places to play in Los Angeles and Cleveland, but few stages would accept a sound that had already begun to break free of familiar harmonic frameworks. In 1962 he crossed the Atlantic once more, this time to Sweden. “Something Different,” made that October in Stockholm with local musicians, is his first recording. In Northern Europe he found, for the first time, the attentive listeners he had never found in America. (Copenhagen) Late that year, at the club Café Montmartre in Copenhagen, Denmark, he met Cecil Taylor. Ayler came to share the stage with Taylor, who was appearing with Jimmy Lyons on alto and Sunny Murray on drums, and Taylor's music, surging ahead without a fixed meter, convinced him that the direction he had been groping toward alone was not wrong. “My Name Is Albert Ayler,” recorded in Copenhagen in January 1963, included standards such as “Summertime,” yet even within the frame of familiar tunes his sound was already swelling into something strange. That year he set out for New York.
A document from just after he met Cecil Taylor in Copenhagen, when he was still testing his own sound within the frame of standards. Because the tunes are familiar, his strange timbre stands out all the more vividly.
- The record opens with a brief spoken passage in which Ayler introduces himself in English. The album takes its title from it.
- On “Summertime” he plays Gershwin's melody very slowly, each note shaken by a thick vibrato (a technique of deliberately wavering the pitch so that it trembles), until the song sounds like sobbing.
- Piano·bass·drums hold squarely to the traditional feel of pushing and pulling by slightly dragging the back of the beat (swing). Above them Ayler alone bursts out of the harmonic frame, and that contrast is the charm of this record.
- The bassist, Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen, was a teenager at the time. Here you can hear the early playing of a man who would become one of Europe's defining bassists.
III. A union of souls · 1963–1964 (age 27–28)
(Hardship) In New York there was almost no work for Ayler. Club owners heard his sound as noise, and he had to get by shuttling back and forth to his parents' home in Cleveland. But in the lofts and coffeehouses of downtown Manhattan, young musicians searching for the same path had gathered. Drummer Sunny Murray, whom he had met in Copenhagen, and bassist Gary Peacock, who had recorded “Trio 64” with Bill Evans, took their places beside him. (Trio) The three set aside jazz's long-standing agreements. Instead of marking a steady beat, Murray made his cymbals ring like a surging heartbeat (pulse), and Peacock went beyond accompaniment to sing as a third voice. Over them Ayler would play a folk-like theme and then soon tear it apart with screams and cries, overtones and an enormous vibrato. The idea that their souls, rather than their harmonies, had to be in accord went straight into the album's title. He thought of his music not as rebellion but as prayer. Playing like this soon came to be grouped under the name free jazz. (ESP) In July 1964 ESP-Disk, newly founded by the former lawyer Bernard Stollman, recorded the trio's “Spiritual Unity.” It was the first jazz record the label released. The budget was small, little money went to the musicians, and in later years a number of players complained about ESP's royalties. Yet the album spread as far as Europe and made Ayler's name known. That same month he took part, with Ornette Coleman's longtime associate Don Cherry and others, in the music for Michael Snow's experimental film “New York Eye and Ear Control,” and in the fall he left on a European tour with Cherry·Peacock·Murray.
The new language he found with Sunny Murray and Gary Peacock amid the hardship of New York, captured on a single record. ESP-Disk's first jazz release, it is counted among the classics of free jazz.
- The theme of “Ghosts” is a melody as simple as a nursery tune or folk song. Ayler states it clearly, then dismantles it, ranging widely up and down the horn with scream-like high notes and overtones (the higher tones that sound together within a single note).
- Instead of counting one-two-three-four, Sunny Murray's drums ceaselessly scatter cymbal strokes to create a rhythm that flows like a heartbeat (pulse). There is no tempo, yet the music never stops moving forward.
- Gary Peacock's bass is not accompaniment but an equal voice. On “The Wizard” and “Spirits” the three sound like a conversation in which everyone speaks at once and answers one another.
- “Ghosts” is placed at the beginning and end of the album as the first variation and the second variation. It is worth comparing how differently the same theme unfolds in the two performances.
IV. The brothers' march · 1965–1966 (age 29–30)
(Donald) In 1965 his younger brother Donald came to New York with a trumpet. Not long before, at his brother's urging, he had switched from alto to trumpet, yet Albert made him one of the band's pillars. The brothers would stand side by side and play themes resembling marches and hymns, and then the whole band would pass into collective improvisation, everyone erupting at once. The church and the army band of his childhood met as one in the brothers' ensemble. (Bells) “Bells,” which captured a concert at New York's Town Hall that May, came out as an unusual LP with sound cut on only one side. “Spirits Rejoice,” recorded in September at Judson Hall, wove in a melody resembling the French national anthem. It was as if the songs he had heard in France during his army service had come back to life amid a festive tumult. Critical reaction split to extremes, and his livelihood remained precarious. (Coltrane) Around this time John Coltrane held Ayler in special affection. He went to hear him play, and is said to have given him money when he was struggling. Critics broadly agree that Ayler's influence runs deep in the collective improvisation of “Ascension,” which Coltrane recorded in June 1965. Ayler is reported to have said later that Coltrane was the Father, Pharoah Sanders the Son, and he himself the Holy Ghost. On Coltrane's recommendation, Ayler signed in 1966 with Bob Thiele, the producer at Impulse Records, and for the first time received a major-label advance. That year he appeared often at Slugs', a club in the East Village, and in the fall he toured Europe with a lineup that added violinist Michel Samson.
A live recording from Town Hall in the first year his brother Donald joined. Memories of church and army band burst out in the brothers' march-like ensemble.
- A single piece of nearly 20 minutes was cut onto one side of the LP, and the other side was left blank. The record was made to be heard as one unbroken current from beginning to end.
- Donald's trumpet, Charles Tyler's alto and Albert's tenor play a fanfare-like theme together, then scatter all at once into collective improvisation, with several players improvising simultaneously.
- Several times the scattered sounds gather again into the march-like theme. Follow the moments when the theme returns like a signpost, and the form within the chaos comes into view.
- Bassist Lewis Worrell and drummer Sunny Murray keep no fixed beat, bearing up the whirlwind of the horns from below.
V. Mourning and rupture · 1967–1968 (age 31–32)
(Mourning) In July 1967 John Coltrane died at the age of forty. At the funeral held on July 21 at St. Peter's Lutheran Church in New York, Ayler's group and Ornette Coleman's group performed. Those present recalled that in the middle of playing Ayler took the saxophone from his lips and cried out. “Albert Ayler in Greenwich Village,” released that year, included “For John Coltrane,” a piece dedicated to Coltrane during his lifetime, and now it sounded like an elegy. (Donald) That same year his brother Donald suffered a severe mental breakdown and returned to Cleveland. Family and friends recalled that Albert, believing himself to blame for having brought his brother to New York, suffered over it for a long time. The band in which the brothers had marched together effectively ended here. “Love Cry,” recorded in August 1967, an album of tightly trimmed pieces with the themes set clearly in front, became the last studio recording the brothers made together. (Turn) From around this time the singer and lyricist Mary Parks (stage name Mary Maria) stood beside him as his musical partner. On “New Grass” in 1968 Ayler joined forces with rhythm and blues musicians and even sang himself. Many longtime supporters turned their backs, calling it a commercial compromise. But he wanted music that would reach more people, and it was also a road back to Little Walter's band of his teenage years and the R&B stages of Cleveland. Still, the record is known not to have sold as well as hoped.
His first Impulse record, it gathers live performances from late 1966 and early 1967. A piece dedicated to the living Coltrane came, only months later, to sound like his elegy.
- In “For John Coltrane,” Ayler took up the alto saxophone for the first time in a long while. Its sound, thinner and higher than the tenor, leads a slow, hymnlike elegy.
- Beneath it lies a texture of bowed strings, a cello layered with two basses. There are many moments when the group sounds less like a jazz combo than a small chamber ensemble.
- “Truth Is Marching In” opens, just as its title promises, with a march-like theme, then spreads with Donald's trumpet into a festive uproar.
- At the Village Vanguard performance in December 1966, Coltrane is said to have been watching from the audience. It is one of the last scenes of the time the two men shared.
This is the last studio recording the brothers made together. Trimming the pieces short and putting the themes up front, it marks the beginning of a turn toward reaching more people.
- Most of the tracks are short, around three or four minutes. Instead of improvisations unspooled at length, themes that stay in the memory like songs take center stage.
- The glittering timbre of the harpsichord (an old keyboard instrument whose strings are plucked when a key is pressed), played by Call Cobbs, blends strangely well with Ayler's thick tenor.
- Drummer Milford Graves stacks the rhythms of several drums on top of one another, creating a flow that seems to dance without ever counting the beat.
- He rerecorded old themes such as “Ghosts” and “Bells” in brief versions. Set beside the performances of 1964~1965, they let you hear where his music was heading.
VI. The healing force · 1969–1970 (age 33–34)
(Revelation) In the late 1960s, Ayler's faith took on an increasingly apocalyptic coloring. He said he had seen visions, and in “The Cricket,” a magazine published by Amiri Baraka and others, he wrote of God's revelation and the New Jerusalem. In letters to his parents, too, he is said to have spoken often of the end of the world and of salvation. In the air of an era when Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated and racial conflict was seething in city after city, he believed that music could heal the world. (Healing) “Music Is the Healing Force of the Universe,” recorded in August 1969, featured Henry Vestine, guitarist of the blues-rock band Canned Heat, and pianist Bobby Few, and Ayler played not only tenor saxophone but bagpipes. It also included songs with lyrics written and sung by Mary Maria. Recordings from the same sessions came out after his death as “The Last Album,” and these sessions became his final studio recordings for Impulse. Afterward he once again had to get by without a steady income. (Maeght) In July 1970, he was invited to the summer concerts held by the Fondation Maeght in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, in the south of France. Over two nights onstage with Call Cobbs on piano, Steve Tintweiss on bass, Allen Blairman on drums, and Mary Maria, he wove together the fierce improvisation of his early years, songs, and hymnlike themes. There he found the warm welcome he had never received in America. These live recordings remain the last documents of his performing.
The record takes its title from his final belief that music heals the world. It reveals the broad embrace of his last years, taking in blues rock, song, and even bagpipes.
- On the title track, Mary Maria delivers a message of love and healing to the listener as if preaching, in a style halfway between singing and recitation.
- On “Masonic Inborn,” Ayler plays bagpipes instead of saxophone. It is a singular sound, sharp melodies running over a low drone that never stops.
- “Drudgery” is a slow blues led by Henry Vestine's blues guitar. The roots Ayler put down as a teenager in Little Walter's band show through plainly.
- It is a song-centered record, but whenever a tenor solo arrives, the enormous vibrato and the cries of his early years burst out again and again.
VII. The East River · 1970 (age 34)
(Disappearance) On November 5, 1970, Ayler vanished in New York. On November 25, his body was found in the East River near the Congress Street Pier in Brooklyn. He was thirty-four. The cause of death was drowning, and the authorities ruled it a suicide. (Testimony) Mary Parks is said to have recalled later that he had sunk into deep despair before his death. Meanwhile, rumors long circulated in the jazz world that there was another story behind his death, but no evidence has emerged to support them. In his final years he suffered, one after another, the breakup of the brothers' band, Coltrane's death, and the indifference of longtime supporters, and in his lifetime he rarely received a generous fee. (Legacy) Yet the sound he left behind did not disappear. His enormous vibrato, his themes as simple as nursery songs and the cries that tore them apart, and his collective improvisation over rhythm that flows without counting the beat left deep marks on European free jazz players such as Peter Brötzmann and on later tenor players such as David Murray. His younger brother Donald lived in Cleveland until his death in 2007. The boy who once played saxophone beside his father in church is remembered as a musician who believed to the end that music was both prayer and healing.
Lesser-known stories
The story that Ayler toured with Little Walter's band as a teenager appears in nearly every biography, but the evidence for it rests mainly on Ayler's own recollection. Linking a master of the blues harmonica with a pioneer of free jazz, the anecdote is often cited to show that the music of his last years was not a sudden transformation but a return to his roots. Harold Budd, who later made his name as a composer of ambient music, recalled in several interviews that he had played alongside Ayler in an army band during his military service. Budd said that even then Ayler's sound was unlike anyone else's. That a composer known for quiet piano music and the loudest of saxophonists served in the same army band remained a story passed around only among those who had read Budd's interviews. In his final years Ayler took up the Scottish bagpipes on the side and used them on recordings. Their unceasing drone and sharp melodies resembled the sound he had pursued on the saxophone. But because the late records featuring these performances were long underrated, Ayler the bagpiper remained almost unknown to the public. In 2004 the American label Revenant released the box set “Holy Ghost,” which gathered unreleased live recordings, interviews, and a recording of his performance at Coltrane's funeral, and it went on to receive a Grammy nomination. The following year the Swedish director Kasper Collin released the documentary “My Name Is Albert Ayler,” featuring testimony from his father, Edward, and his younger brother, Donald. As long-dormant tapes and the voices of his family belatedly came to light, Ayler emerged at last in three dimensions, not as a holy ghost of myth but as a son and an older brother in a family.
Glossary 📚🔎
Free jazz
(Meaning) The English word free means unconstrained. The name took hold widely from the title of “Free Jazz,” the album Ornette Coleman released in 1960. (In jazz) Jazz in which the players reduce or set aside agreements such as fixed chord progressions, a steady meter, and forms that come around every few bars, and instead make music on the spot by responding to one another's sounds. It is not anything-goes; instead of rules fixed in advance, listening to one another becomes the rule itself. It is like a game in which friends build a story one sentence at a time without agreeing on a plot beforehand. The story only continues if you listen closely to the person before you.
Collective improvisation
(Meaning) Jeukheung (卽興, 'impromptu') means acting on the spot (卽) as inspiration (興) arises. Collective improvisation means several people doing so all at once. (In jazz) Ordinarily in jazz, players take solos one at a time, but in collective improvisation several instruments improvise simultaneously. It existed in early New Orleans jazz and came powerfully back to life in free jazz. Ayler's band would play the theme together, and then everyone would burst into sound at once. It is like several friends drawing on one big sheet of paper at the same time, each looking at what the person beside them has drawn and carrying it on. (Elsewhere) In theater, the term refers to improv, acting on the spot without a script.
Vibrato
(Meaning) From the Italian vibrare, meaning to tremble. (In jazz) A technique of deliberately wavering a note's pitch slightly up and down as you sustain it, making it tremble. Usually it is applied lightly, like a seasoning that warms the sound, but Ayler made it so wide and heavy that the vibrato itself sounded like weeping or prayer. Many interpret it as something he learned from the trembling voices of church choir singers. If, in music class, you sing a long “ah” and then deliberately make your voice shake, that is vibrato.
Overtones
(Meaning) Baeeum (倍音, 'multiple tone') means a tone that is a multiple (倍). It refers to the higher tones that vibrate two or three times faster than the fundamental note. (In jazz) When an instrument sounds a single note, several higher tones are in fact mixed in and ringing along with it. A saxophonist can draw out these higher tones by keeping the fingers in place and changing the shape of the mouth and the force of the breath. With this technique Ayler produced high notes that sounded like whistles one moment and screams the next. If you blow a recorder too hard, it suddenly flips up to a squeaky high note with the same fingering, and that is an overtone popping out.
Pulse
(Meaning) The English word pulse means a heartbeat. (In jazz) Rather than a steady meter you can count off, one-two-three-four, it refers to a flow of rhythm that keeps going like a heartbeat but whose beats are hard to count out cleanly. Free jazz drummers such as Sunny Murray created this flow by ceaselessly scattering cymbals and drums. Even without a tempo, it gives the sense that the music is moving forward without stopping. Think of the sound of a sudden shower drumming on a roof. You can't count the beat, but the sound never stops. (Elsewhere) In medicine it means the pulse; in physics and electronics, a brief burst of signal.
Spiritual
(Meaning) Yeongga (靈歌, 'spirit song') means a song (歌) of the spirit (靈), a translation of the English word spiritual. (In jazz) Religious folk songs sung by Black Americans in the era of slavery, carrying Bible stories, suffering, and the hope of deliverance. Along with blues·gospel, they became one of the deep roots of jazz. Ayler recorded an album of spirituals, “Swing Low Sweet Spiritual,” and many of his simple thematic melodies resemble spirituals and hymns. They are often sung in call-and-response, one person leading a line and many answering, much like a song at a retreat campfire where one person starts and everyone joins in.
Rhythm and blues
(Meaning) A name combining rhythm and blues, commonly shortened to R&B. It spread in the late 1940s when an American music magazine used it to group Black popular music together. (In jazz) Black popular music that added strong dance rhythms and singing to the blues, becoming the foundation of rock and roll and soul. Many jazz musicians worked in R&B bands to make a living, and so did Ayler in his teens and early twenties. That is why his return to this music on “New Grass” in 1968 was both an unfamiliar experiment and a homecoming. It helps to think of it as music your body answers before your mind does, like a jump-rope song in gym class. (Elsewhere) Today R&B more often refers to the smooth pop genre of the 1990s onward.