By Ferruccio Martinotti
Albert Ayler definitely represents one of the ontological arguments for being, you and us, in front of a screen in this very right moment. But no worries, we’re not so dumb or arrogant to pretend to add some miserable lines of ours to explain the Man to such a gotha of colleagues and to the super skilled readers of the Only Blog That Matters.
So, trying to keep our battered spaceship at a reasonable distance from the Sun, let’s start the trip by opening the History Book. After a first stint in 1962 along with Cecil Taylor, Albert Ayler comes back to Copenhagen invited by the Cafè Montmartre, one of the most legendary jazz venues all over the globe. His trio, bassist Gary Peacock and drummer Sonny Murray, is on board with him, together they will join Don Cherry, already on the European soil. The trip is the usual kind of adventures for fearless mavericks like them: no food, no bucks, a light luggage made of a white shirt and a shoeshine brush, a heavy load of hopes to play as much as they can and possibly to be paid for that. In terms of discography, the outcome of that tour has been gathered in various forms along the years. Without bothering you too much, following are the releases as listed in the official Ayler Records site: The Hilversum Session; The Copenhagen Tapes; Albert Ayler Live in Europe 1964-1966; European Radio Studio Recordings 1964; Copenhagen Live 1964; European Recordings Autumn 1964 Revisited. Now, this wonderful, shining 2 CD set, allows us to enjoy one of the crucial ensembles in the history of music, delivering high-octane, pedal to metal performances, recorded from 3rd to 14th September on in Copenhagen and on November 9th in Hilversum.
Along with Ayler’s timeless gems (‘Holy Spirit,’ ‘Ghosts,’ ‘Vibrations,’ ‘Spirits,’ among others), the beautiful Don Cherry’s ‘Infant Happiness’ is the icing on an already tasteful cake. Nobody better than poet Ted Joans described the emotions felt in attending the Montmartre residency, his sentence now part of the myth of our beloved music: “Their sound was so different, so unique and raw, like to scream FUCK in Saint Patric’s Cathedral during a sold out Easter service”. And more: “Some Danish answered with bad whistling, others screamed to the musicians to shut up. I sat chocked, intoxicated and surprised to what I experienced. Their music didn’t sound like anything I’ve heard before”. Asked by Danish journalists, the musicians said little about their music. If for Ayler: “My music is spiritual music”, Gary Peacock provided the ultimate, unsurpassed claim: “This isn’t music for a specific purpose, for instance to listen or dance to, it just IS”. No reason to waste ink to add that here we’re talking of a buy-or-die record.
A final note to pay the credits due to the people who made this recordings available to us: the supreme Hat Hut Records Ltd. Founded and owned by Werner X. Uehlinger in 1975, Hat Hut started independently the series “ezz-thetics” in 2019, the name chosen to honor the exceptional recording of George Russel and the great soli of Eric Dolphy on it, then launched the new series “First Visit”, mainly for archive discoveries. The job done by such labels is more than invaluable, it should be considered Heritage of Humanity. Time to scream FUCK whenever and wherever we can is NOW.