The Bebop Shop : New York Is Now: Ornette and Free Jazz : Albert Ayler
Holy Ghost is the first comprehensive attempt to build a monument in sound to Albert Ayler. The settings -- radio and TV sessions, studio demos, private recordings, live concert footage -- find his music at its most liberated. And with the sponsorship and assistance of Ayler's family, friends, and colleagues, Holy Ghost documents his never-before-heard first and last recordings, bookending rare and unissued music from every stage of his career. (Revenant Records)
"Holy Ghost is one of the most lovingly produced archival packages ever dedicated to a jazz musician. More than that, it's such a spectacularly thorough, beautifully thought-out object that it, by its own existence, pays suitable homage to an artist as deserving as Ayler. ...With an astonishing array of photographs and clippings meticulously reproduced and designed, Holy Ghost sets a new, elegant standard for the presentation of historical materials." (Downbeat, October, 2004). Price: £69.99
Albert Aylers two-week tour of Europe in November, 1966, most of it with that years annual Newport in Europe package, was a high point of this great, tragic artists career. Now that his innovations have been so influential in 21st-century jazz, younger listeners may not feel the exhilarating impact that his music had at the time. The nightly concerts featured a succession of stars Dave Brubeck, Stan Getz, Illinois Jacquet, Max Roach, Sonny Rollins. Following these main stream artists, the final act, the shows only avant-garde act, blew away audiences with Aylers gigantic tenor saxophone sound, the liberated unique sound of his group, its sweet-singing repertoire.
Wherever they played, said the Dutch violinist Michel Samson, the crowds went wild with delight, almost like with the Beatles. (Harmonia Mundi) Price: £13.99