My Name Is Albert Ayler

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Rule-breaker extraordinaire ... Albert Ayler
Free radical

John Robinson finds Albert Ayler's radical sounds still resonate

John Robinson
Saturday April 15, 2006

Guardian

As one of his fellow musicians recently recalled, the music of saxophonist Albert Ayler was something about which people always had a strong opinion - and it was often a negative one. To the poet and jazz critic Philip Larkin, it sounded like someone playing a double bass with a wet wellington boot. To many more, however, it has sounded sad, ecstatic and beautiful - and undoubtedly worthy of being more widely heard.

In this regard, Ayler's pioneering free jazz has recently enjoyed an upturn in fortunes. In 2004, the Revenant label released a sumptuous boxed set of his recordings, called Holy Ghost. This week, meanwhile, sees the release of an excellent documentary film (London ICA, Tue 18; Glasgow Centre of Contemporary Arts, Apr 22) by Swedish film-maker Kasper Collin, entitled My Name Is Albert Ayler.

A project that began in 1998, Collin's film is testament to the passion and dedication that the man and his wildly honking, but strangely tuneful music can inspire. Having tracked down all extant film footage (including Ayler's performance at John Coltrane's funeral service), the film uses old audio interviews, and recent interviews with his brother and father as a framework for Ayler's story.

And that story is pretty extraordinary. Essentially the tale of someone in the vanguard of free jazz, My Name Is Albert Ayler is about artistic integrity in the face of poverty, and of commitment to a musical vision. Along the way we meet fascinating characters (bassist Gary Peacock would fast for two weeks when he "felt himself to have become dissipated"), and how they attempt to follow their credo: feel, not tempo; feelings, not notes.

As intense and inspiring as the music that this policy produced was, however, it was neither a path to financial reward, nor even wholly understood. While the pretty, leather-suited Ayler was popular with ladies (the film interviews several girlfriends) and in Europe (particularly in Collin's native Sweden), his penury was only relieved by occasional gigs, and money from patrons like John Coltrane. Meanwhile, though his brand of rule-breaking free music was held to be an example of black self-determination, Ayler instead seems to have had his mind on a different track.

"We are the music we play," he told Downbeat magazine in 1966. "We keep trying to purify our music, to purify ourselves, so that we can move ourselves, and those who hear us, to higher levels of peace and understanding." A noble aim, but it's debatable how much peace Ayler himself felt in his last, turbulent year. In November 1970, his body was found floating in Brooklyn's East River, after he had apparently committed suicide.

Though the mood of My Name Is Albert Ayler can't help but be informed by the manner of Ayler's death, the movie makes little capital out of it. Instead, it prefers to dwell on the visionary nature of the musician who supplied the film's tagline. "If they don't get it now," Ayler had once presciently said, "they will." Happily, he seems to have been right.

― Roque Strew (RoqueStrew), Saturday, 15 April 2006 23:45 (twenty years ago)

I just spent some time on the Philip Larkin Society page. I'm not sure why Larkin gets to be called a jazz critic, and I'm also sure I don't care. Not to start an ilm-fight between USians and Brits, but we don't need Larkin or Gilles Peterson to establish "sivilleye-zed" tastes in jazz ezzthetic (using the George Russell spelling). (Peterson compared a second-rate funk-fusion-jazz date by Harry Whittaker favorably to Coltrane's A love Supreme and Sun Ra's Sleeping Beauty.)

Ayler was amazing. Spirits, Bells, Witches & Devils. The man took folk song and gospel and married them to free jazz. I hope that documentary makes it out my way--I'd love to see it--Ayler died about the time I was first getting into jazz.

― J Arthur Rank (Quin Tillian), Sunday, 16 April 2006 01:35 (twenty years ago)

Thank you for this. I hope this sees Canadian release. Inspiring.

― jordache, Sunday, 16 April 2006 06:58 (twenty years ago)

I'm not sure why Larkin gets to be called a jazz critic

Well writing professionally on jazz for 44 years may have some bearing on that.

― Billy Dods (Billy Dods), Sunday, 16 April 2006 08:54 (twenty years ago)

Billy's right: Larkin was both a badass poet (see "Aubade" etc.) and a mostly badass jazz critic. Between organizing books, amassing porn and contemplating jazz, he really filled up his non-versifyin' time. Sure, he was a touch conservative in the jazzcrit dept. but whatever--he's Philip Larkin.

Back to Larkin-proof Ayler-love...

― Roque Strew (RoqueStrew), Sunday, 16 April 2006 09:36 (twenty years ago)

Larkin--badass poet, I'll give you; Larkin the jazz critic I had not encountered in my 30 some years of listening to and reading about jazz. So I read some this morning. Deeply commmitted to modernism I can live with, though it makes his criticism of Ayler easier to understand. His milieu was the jazz of pre WWII. But I find troubling his essentializing of the black artist for his white privilege (ref: his writing on jazz as the art of the unconscious in the Freudian/Lacanian sense). The music of Ayler must have rocked his world that depended on the narrative of progress and privilege. Black freedom was just too much and he read it as wretched excess.

So, I see he was a jazz critic, but so is Stanley Crouch. Both have their views of jazz & I have mine.

― J Arthur Rank (Quin Tillian), Sunday, 16 April 2006 12:13 (twenty years ago)

I was amused to find out that Larkin had written specifically about Ayler. His dislike of post-War Jazz is well documented; I've always connected his attitude with the horrible Trad movement in 50s Britain. He was stone cold wrong, like he was about a lot of other stuff.

Looking forward to the movie.

― Mingus Realty (noodle vague), Sunday, 16 April 2006 12:46 (twenty years ago)

"his wildly honking, but strangely tuneful music can inspire."

Ha! (I wonder what's on that box...)

― js (honestengine), Sunday, 16 April 2006 13:17 (twenty years ago)

"his wildly honking, but strangely tuneful music can inspire."
Ha! (I wonder what's on that box...)

-- js (roc...), April 16th, 2006. (later)

It's definitely for Aylerites or completists. Nine cds of rare and unreleased materials on the late John Fahey's Revenant Records label. I say for Aylerites or completists simply because of the amount of material that might off-put or irritate the neophyte. The acolyte would revel in it (and there's still 3 shopping days until my birthday).

Now, there are the anointed-in-waiting, too. A friend in upstate NY who is just getting into jazz was told he would like Ayler, so he bought this as his introduction. I was cautiously awaiting his response, but he got the connections of the folk tunes with the New Orleans march music, the raw, "untrained" sound of Ayler's horn.

I am anxiously awaiting this documentary. I am wondering what conclusions the film's creators have drawn that lead the Guardian to conclude that Ayler "apparently committed suicide" since so many stories circulated about mob hits, jealous lovers, possibly psychotic "followers" (MD Chapman style) and even being mistaken for a panhandler, roughed up and tossed in the river. Surely, it is not a stretch to say that Ayler could have been despondent. In 1970, even McCoy Tyner thought he would have more financial success driving a cab than playing jazz, and although jazz suicides are comparatively rare, many a career has dashed on the rocks of the vagaries of the music bid'ness.

― J Arthur Rank (Quin Tillian), Sunday, 16 April 2006 14:14 (twenty years ago)

Fantastic: this film is showing in Vancouver later this month, and then 2 days later, on my birthday, the same music-on-film festival is showing a film about Roky Erickson.

― jordache, Sunday, 16 April 2006 20:41 (twenty years ago)

I read about the box in an issue of Spin (which said something about Thurston Moore being a fan) and I got it. It was pretty good, definitely interesting. I'd like to see this film..

― Harrison Barr (Petar), Monday, 17 April 2006 00:19 (twenty years ago)

thurston moore's opinion is enough to make you drop that much cash? wow.

― the unbearable lightness of peeing (orion), Monday, 17 April 2006 17:39 (twenty years ago)

I loooove Ayler and I wouldn't part with that much cash. But then I gots plenty more to keep me warm until I can afford it.

― J Arthur Rank (Quin Tillian), Tuesday, 18 April 2006 15:15 (twenty years ago)

I am wondering what conclusions the film's creators have drawn that lead the Guardian to conclude that Ayler "apparently committed suicide" since so many stories circulated about mob hits, jealous lovers, possibly psychotic "followers" (MD Chapman style) and even being mistaken for a panhandler, roughed up and tossed in the river.

i once asked a musician who was close to ayler about this, and this musician was absolutely convinced that it was suicide. so much so, that when he heard the news he wasn't the least bit shocked or surprised.

― Lawrence the Looter (Lawrence the Looter), Tuesday, 18 April 2006 15:34 (twenty years ago)

two years pass...

I just saw this... considering Don's mental state (not saying nec. that that means Albert was similarly unstable, but it's not out of the question) and the state of his career, suicide seems perfectly likely. An awfully sad story. So awful that Donald wasn't able to keep playing, he was great.

Good movie anyway, and swiped a nice big poster as we were leaving

― Niles Caulder, Monday, 21 July 2008 11:26 (seventeen years ago)

five years pass...

I was reflecting yesterday -- when I caught this on youtube -- that I've spent more time listening to Don (through Albert's records) than Miles Davis.

The man took folk song and gospel and married them to free jazz.

There was a little about his development. He was cast as this quasi-mythical figure who came from nowhere (easy to do given his statements and the tone of his voice) but Cecil and Ayler came out of hard bop and the transition from an earlier style to further breakthroughs isn't very well documented in Ayler's case (it might be in that boxset which I've yet to hear).

The qn to Don ("So what's wrong with you?") made my blood boil. Switched off about 10 mins after that.

― xyzzzz__, Saturday, 15 March 2014 10:34 (twelve years ago)

the transition from an earlier style to further breakthroughs isn't very well documented in Ayler's case (it might be in that boxset which I've yet to hear).

The record My Name Is Albert Ayler has him playing standards. There's also a few on Holy Ghost, where he's playing with the Herbert Katz Quintet (in Scandinavia, I believe).

― Montgomery Burns' Jazz (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Saturday, 15 March 2014 15:02 (twelve years ago)

Thanks.

I would have liked to have seen the transition to be talked about on the doc. It was alluded to in that the meeting with Cecil was covered and then the playing and/or trying to fit in with 'less advanced' jazz musicians in Sweden.

― xyzzzz__, Saturday, 15 March 2014 21:49 (twelve years ago)

one year passes...

Enjoyed this doc. Had no idea the extent to which Donald was such a damaged character.

The scene of Edward Ayler looking for his song's headstone and being unable to find it, and when he does, it's this miserable, shoebox-sized little thing, provided me my "America should be ashamed at itself" moment for the day.

― Wimmels, Wednesday, 15 July 2015 19:46 (ten years ago)

P sure Scott posted this image somewhere or other on ILX, but it shld be on this thread too:

http://41.media.tumblr.com/77f0641c47dd67f83a7cb082f0b75bdc/tumblr_mlcf1k4obA1ruugm4o1_1280.jpg

― sʌxihɔːl (Ward Fowler), Wednesday, 15 July 2015 19:56 (ten years ago)

that's awesome.

― Wimmels, Wednesday, 15 July 2015 20:01 (ten years ago)

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