What's New




	Jeff Lederer’s project, ‘Truth Is Marching In’, is intended to alter the outcome of next month’s U.S. election. We wish him well and hope he has more success than the attempt to end the Vietnam War by levitating the Pentagon in 1967. Dirk Goedeking sent me the link and added his own comment: ‘Either Albert’s music might accompany a swing of the swing states or Donald Trump will get a very special congratulation to celebrate alternative facts.’ More information about the event and a new album release from Jeff Lederer, entitled Guilty, is available on his Little (i) Music site. Guilty is described as ‘“Guilty!!!” is a razor sharp, politically motivated work featuring Lederer with Kirk Knuffke, Bob Stewart, Matt Wilson, Curtis Hasselbring, and Mary LaRose in new music based on digital samples of lying political speech. Releases Oct 7 (first monday in Oct) on Little (i)!’



	And Dirk spotted the nod to the cover of Jackie McLean’s It’s Time (on Blue Note, of course).



	What’s New on Saturn Dirk also sent some Ayler-unrelated information about the recent doings of the Sun Ra Arkestra, which played earlier in the year for Marshall Allen’s 100th birthday.

	And you’ve just missed a concert by the Arkestra in New York celebrating the birthday of the late John Gilmore. But, here’s a 1965 performance with Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers on BBC’s Jazz 625.

	And here’s a link to a suitably spacey poster for an upcoming concert in San Francisco, this November. * And Finland



	There’s a new Albert Ayler tribute album from Finland, Albert Ayler Reawakened, by a group comprising Jukka Orma (guitar), Pepa Päivinen, Dimitri Grechi Espinoza (saxophones), Ville Rauhala (bass) and Simo Laihonen (drums). More details of this 2 CD release on bandcamp and here’s a taster from youtube:

	Acoustical Swing Is the title of a blog by Pierre Crépon, which has been running for a few months now. The subject of the 21st September post is Sunny Murray, and naturally, Albert gets a mention: ‘Sunny Murray’s shimmering cymbal sound was one of the defining aspects of his playing. He discussed its inception with Graham Lock in his book Chasing the Vibration: Meetings with Creative Musicians. “I had really defined a very good open rhythm—I was trying to get away from the bass drum, as it was,” the drummer said. "I was trying to get into the rapidity of beats to produce the sensation of tones—like, if you take a piano and hit the same two notes in succession, you’ll get a third tone, and this is what I was trying to do with beats. Then, when I started playing with Albert [Ayler], I started to go for the cymbal groove. I’d had a bebop cymbal thing at first, but I knew with Albert I needed a different cymbal groove. So I’d been playing this new cymbal groove for about a year when we came to Europe—Albert, Don Cherry, Gary Peacock—and I heard a record Tony Williams had made with Miles, and Tony was trying to get into a cymbal groove—and it was my cymbal groove! I said to Albert, I’m gonna play the cymbals so fuckin’ loud till there ain’t no sound left! So there was no more sound left in the cymbals for nobody to find for six years—and by that time Tony had gone in another direction [laughs].”’ * Book Corner 1. There’s a good review by Robert Iannapollo of Richard Koloda’s Holy Ghost in the Association for Recorded Sound Collections Journal, which concludes: ‘He clearly admires Ayler but never tarnishes the text with over-romantic, sentimental prose and clearly understands the saxophonist’s shortcomings. Holy Ghost is a biography its subject clearly deserves. It tends to clear up a lot of the muddled, apocryphal rumors that circulated around the musician throughout his career with thorough coverage of his last days. This biography gives Ayler his just due by not glossing over the unpleasant parts. And it might even help in reviving the music of this thoroughly misunderstood jazz giant.’ The full review is available here. Richard let me know about the recent death of the venerable jazz critic, Dan Morgenstern (New York Times obituary). Also, I didn’t know that Michael Cuscuna died last April (New York Times obituary). Richard pointed out that Morgenstern wrote the coruscating review of the Titans of the Tenor concert and Cuscuna, of course, was behind the Live in Greenwich Village: The Complete Impulse Recordings set. Richard also mentioned that Jawbone Press (who published Holy Ghost: The Life and Death of Free Jazz Pioneer Albert Ayler) are preparing a new biography of Eric Dolphy. 2. Not really related to Albert Ayler. except in a negative fashion, I came across a review of In With The In Crowd (Popular Jazz In 1960s Black America) by Mike Smith at The Syncopated Times. It seems to be part of a critical backlash against the avant-garde. Here’s the opening of the review by Steve Provizer: The book In With the In Crowd, named after Ramsey Lewis’ big 1965 hit, has two major threads. One thread is factual, devoted to giving us details about the lives of the performers whose music was popular in the black community in the 1960s and the infrastructure - radio and record labels - that brought their music to listeners. The second thread lays out the case that the kind of jazz that was commercially viable in the black community in the 1960s has been overlooked in jazz history writing. Author Mike Smith says that the attention that might have been given to popular performers like singer Nancy Wilson, pianists Ramsey Lewis and others has instead been focused on the avant-garde, aka “The New Thing,” as personified by Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, Albert Ayler and a few others. Other recent books have a similar complaint and cover adjoining territory, including Jazz With a Beat: Small Group Swing, 1940-1960 and Bob Porter’s Soul Jazz: Jazz in the Black Community, 1945-1975. Smith’s thesis is that the need to “elevate” jazz from a popular musical form to one “equal” to European and other Western forms of music is the key factor. Interesting ... * Ayler at No 28 in Ohio ‘New Ghosts’ (from New Grass) comes in at No. 28 of ‘The Big Bend playlist: 30 great Ohio songs’. ^ And, finally . . . We began with ‘Truth Is Marching In’ and we end (courtesy again of Dirk) with this. No idea. * What’s New July to September 2024 has been sent to the vaults. *******

	This site went online in June 2000. All the previous ‘What’s New’ pages are available below: Archives * If you have any information about Albert Ayler, or any questions or corrections, then please email me, Patrick Regan.

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‘“Guilty!!!” is a razor sharp, politically motivated work featuring Lederer with Kirk Knuffke, Bob Stewart, Matt Wilson, Curtis Hasselbring, and Mary LaRose in new music based on digital samples of lying political speech. Releases Oct 7 (first monday in Oct) on Little (i)!’