The Wizard

Albert Ayler (tenor sax), Gary Peacock (bass) and Sunny Murray (percussion). From the album Spiritual Unity (1965).

Albert Ayler was an American free jazz saxophonist, singer and composer. His goal was to avoid the notes and enter a new realm in which the saxophone created “sound”. The tempered system of Western music was unable to handle the spasms, bellows and moans that came from his instrument. He was a virtuoso of the “dirty” sound with a multitude of tricks: off-key ripples, barks in the lower register and howls in the upper one, a very wide vibrato and phrases thrown like darts. He took the saxophone vocabulary to its final limits. However, his compositions presented simple diatonic melodies that contrasted with his heated free jazz improvisations.

In 1964 Ayler recorded his most important work, Spiritual Unity, with a new trio. In 1965 he formed a band with his brother Donald, who brought his brother’s expressive style of improvisation to the trumpet until he suffered a nervous breakdown in 1967. In this group Ayler began to use folk melodies and collective improvisation. In 1966 he signed with Impulse! advised by Coltrane, incorporating in his recordings blues, gospel, rhythm and blues, rock and vocal music, but not even in this way found audience. In 1970 his lifeless body was found floating in the East River of Brookling in strange circumstances.

In this theme Ayler repeats a phrase three times and immediately starts to make his solo in an outrageous way. His speech is not limited by anything and he is released completely giving the feeling of coming from another planet. He also introduces extreme sounds that arise from his saxophone never heard before while Peacock and Murray cling to his interpretation as a cowboy would a steer in a rodeo. Then Peacock enters displaying a melodic line devoid of any conventional phrase and playing randomly. After that, Ayler comes back to re-expose the theme.