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(From Jazz Monthly No. 187 - September, 1970.) - UK THE FIRST RECORDINGS: HOW CONFUSING it can be to be labelled an avant-garde-lover is highlighted by records such as this not-so-recent issue, which I dislike with what some would think of as mere intolerance but I choose to call discernment. For instance, I have complained before of the mild barracking Ornette Coleman received at Croydon in 1965 but, when after l min.45 secs. of Ayler’s April the audience begins chanting “Off! Off!”, I heartily concur with them. (Incidentally, this appears to have been recorded in some sort of cavernous (student?) hall before a handful of people, who talk unconcernedly in Swedish during the performance — much better than the old nightclub scene, what?) There are two revealing points about this record. My remarks in the January issue about Ayler’s rhythmic inaccuracy — sorry, freedom — are illustrated throughout, especially in the closing theme-statement of Rollins’ tune (actually the 1953 No moe, a sort of ur-Oleo): Albert comes in at the wrong place in bar 24, having been thrown by the simple but stodgy beat of his accompanists, and with great uncertainty — sorry, magnanimity — he twice adjusts his phrasing to theirs. The other thing is the clear derivation of his whole style from Rollins (minus Rollins’s sense of time, of course), even down to some of the vocabulary and the approach to quotation: Free, for instance, has a sardonic version of Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet theme, to say nothing of the frequent references to Sonnymoon for two on Rollins’. (I am not familiar with the original private issue of this session, but the track entitled Free appears to be in fact the version of Moanin’, beginning just after the theme.) From this point of view, the best part of the album is the five minutes following the last recapitulation of April, a long cadenza stringing together a fantastic collection of rhythmic cliches and half-remembered melodies (beginning, as Charles Fox points out, with the Ballet egyptien). But, when you compare it with Rollins’s “Our Man in Jazz”, recorded three months earlier, this set is generally nowhere. It is very fortunately supplied with abnormally long gaps between numbers (16 secs. and 19 secs.) and distributed by Transatlantic. BRIAN PRIESTLEY
Back to: Discography: The First Recordings
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