(Avant-Garde Jazz, Free Jazz) Albert Ayler - Love Cry - 1967, FLAC (image+.cue), lossless

Friday, 21 July, 1967, was the day of the late John Coltrane's funeral in New York.
A few hours after that incredibly sad occasion, Albert and Donald Ayler, who, with Ornette Coleman, had played at the funeral service, met with this writer at the offices of Jazz & Pop for an interview. My own feelings about the interview were decidedly mixed. For the better part of the year, I had been pursuing Albert between New York and Cleveland and back in the hope of being able to tape just such an interview, as part of the research for a volume on the relationship between the New Jazz and Black Nationalism. Now, under the most mordant conditions imaginable, it appeared as though my wish were finally to be granted.
It was inevitable, given both the circumstances and my long-time preoccupation with Coltrane's music, that the subject would, in short order, turn to the departed saxophonist. Some of the things that Albert had to say about his own relation to Coltrane on that gloomy Friday struck me as especially relevant as I was composing the notes for this, Albert's second Impulse!
album. Referring, for instance, to Coltrane's MEDITATIONS recording with Pharaoh Sanders, Albert remarked: 'The father, son, and holy ghost. What Coltrane was talking about there -maybe it was a biblical term: he was the father, Pharaoh was the son, and I was the holy ghost. And only he could tell me things like that."
Of all of the saxophonists who are working In their own way to keep the Coltrane heritage alive now that its originator has died, none outrank Albert and Pharaoh on importance or in the compelling power of their improvisations. By this I emphatically do not mean anything so absurd as that either - or both together - is "the new Trane."
The logical place at which to begin is with Albert's own view: "I would say 'when I was in the Army, in 1960 and '61, when I spent two years training, when I first started playing, I had a thing that was free at that time, you know? But when he (Coltrane) started playing, I had to listen ...just to his tone you understand? To listen...to him play was just like he was talking to me, saying, 'Brother, get yourself together spiritually.' Just one sound - that's how profound this man was..."
Appropriately enough, it is in Albert's lovely, sonorous tone that one can first and most readily detect the Coltrane presence: his opening notes on the appropriately titled LOVE CRY, the selection that gives the album its name, have the same sense of simultaneous exaltation and serenity that characterized Coltrane's playing on, say, A LOVE SUPREME. And of course there is another similarity with A LOVE SUPREME in this piece, in the use which Albert makes of his own voice. To Coltrane's singing on A LOVE SUPREME we can now add Albert's mournful vocalizings (to this writer reminiscent of flamenco) on LOVE CRY and UNIVERSAL INDIANS on the present recording, and Pharaoh's delightful chanting (in what one presumes to be an African tongue) in the latter portion of UPPER AND LOWER EGYPT on his TAUHID LP. Albert's approach to a "ballad" -which in jazz parlance means anything played at a slow tempo - also sounds to me fundamentally related to that of Coltrane. Writers, this one included, have heretofore tended to overlook the close likeness between the two styles; mostly, one
supposes, because of the considerable melodic filigree with which Albert embellishes his slow performances. But if you listen with reasonable attentiveness to his statement of the theme of DANCING FLOWERS, you shouldn't have much difficulty in demonstrating the resemblance to your own satisfaction. That same resemblance is also in evidence on LOVE FLOWER (love, like ghosts and the spiritual world in general, being a recurrent preoccupation of Albert), even extending to the paraphrasing of some familiar Coltrane phrases.
Even merely to imply that Albert was in any sense of the word a derivative player, however, would be doing him a gross injustice. For if Coltrane was one of his points of origin - and what better one could be chosen? - there can be no denying the flair and artistry with which he has transmuted the Coltrane vernacular into his own highly personal and emotionally challenged Weltanschauung. One of the most engaging qualities associated particularly with Albert is his use of themes that are almost folk-like in their simplicity. Earlier, I referred to his vocal cries as suggestive of flamenco (the ensemble chorus of BELLS is also reminiscent of this Moorish music); others, for their part, have likened Albert's ensembles to those of the old New Orleans marching bands. The point is, these straightforward and uncomplicated melodic strains serve to give Albert a near-universal appeal, besides providing a dramatic juxtaposition and frame of reference for the passion-laden solos that will follow. Speak to Albert, and you will learn firsthand of his abiding concern with the folk, or universal, aspects of his music, "Because the spiritual forces are uniting through the folk, through the folk. ...My drummer, Milford Graves, he plays rhythms from all over the world. We play folk from all over the world...Like very, very old tunes, you know before I was even born, just come in my mind. It's fantastic, fantastic. 1 talked to somebody today who said, 'I heard a little of this, and I heard a little of that.' And I said to him, 'Well, if you heard that, that was beautiful. Thanks for telling me.' 'Cause I'm trying to play as much as I can in my lifetime, like being a true messenger. All I do is meditate -I practice and I meditate. You have to go all the way, because that's what Coltrane did. The picture that he showed me when I looked into his eyes, that was the universal man." And later, in response to another question, Albert explained his meditation in terms of the same universality. "I really meditate on the universal thoughts. I can't be restricted to an earthly plane, even though like I was born here, and everything."
Above all, in approaching his music, I am sure that Albert would want you, the listener, to take a spiritual stance. If I agree with him that the kind of analytical dissection I have been attempting in the previous paragraphs can only take one so far in the direction of appreciating his art, it is not at all because I wish to join in the attack on the values of Intellect that is already dominant in this country. Rather, it is because I would reaffirm that, when all is said and done, the way in which music affects its listeners has always
been and will doubtlessly remain primarily a matter of the spirit, of the emotions; of the non-rational, in short. Nobody puts this more expressively than Albert himself: "I believe when I talk with somebody, I must communicate to them, not seeing them physically, or anything like that. I must communicate with their spirit that comes from within the soul and the heart. And if I can communicate with that -I can feel it, being an artist. Because some people, some of them come up to me and say, 'I love the way you play,' and all of that. But it's not necessarily that they loved it; they are trying to figure out what's happening. Never try to figure out what happens, because you would never get the true message."

Exact Audio Copy V0.99 prebeta 4 from 23. January 2008
EAC extraction logfile from 11. April 2009, 7:09
Albert Ayler / Love Cry
Used drive  : PIONEER DVD-RW  DVR-112D   Adapter: 0  ID: 0
Read mode               : Secure
Utilize accurate stream : Yes
Defeat audio cache      : Yes
Make use of C2 pointers : No
Read offset correction                      : 48
Overread into Lead-In and Lead-Out          : No
Fill up missing offset samples with silence : Yes
Delete leading and trailing silent blocks   : No
Null samples used in CRC calculations       : Yes
Used interface                              : Installed external ASPI interface
Used output format              : User Defined Encoder
Selected bitrate                : 320 kBit/s
Quality                         : High
Add ID3 tag                     : Yes
Command line compressor         : C:\Program Files\Exact Audio Copy\Flac\flac.exe
Additional command line options : -V -8 -T "artist=%a" -T "title=%t" -T "album=%g" -T "date=%y" -T "tracknumber=%n" -T "genre=%m" %s
TOC of the extracted CD
     Track |   Start  |  Length  | Start sector | End sector
    ---------------------------------------------------------
        1  |  0:00.00 |  3:55.55 |         0    |    17679
        2  |  3:55.55 |  2:49.32 |     17680    |    30386
        3  |  6:45.12 |  3:19.63 |     30387    |    45374
        4  | 10:05.00 |  2:24.42 |     45375    |    56216
        5  | 12:29.42 |  3:09.28 |     56217    |    70419
        6  | 15:38.70 |  3:32.10 |     70420    |    86329
        7  | 19:11.05 |  7:15.70 |     86330    |   119024
        8  | 26:27.00 |  4:14.35 |    119025    |   138109
        9  | 30:41.35 |  7:36.65 |    138110    |   172374
       10  | 38:18.25 |  6:08.50 |    172375    |   200024
       11  | 44:27.00 |  9:50.57 |    200025    |   244331
Range status and errors
Selected range
     Filename D:\music\rip\Albert Ayler - Love Cry (1967) {1991, GRP}\Albert Ayler - Love Cry.wav
     Peak level 100.0 %
     Range quality 100.0 %
     Test CRC E034BD7A
     Copy CRC E034BD7A
     Copy OK
No errors occurred
AccurateRip summary
Track  1  accurately ripped (confidence 3)  [77F491FE]
Track  2  accurately ripped (confidence 3)  [3B93205B]
Track  3  accurately ripped (confidence 3)  [6EF3F327]
Track  4  accurately ripped (confidence 3)  [073DD4E2]
Track  5  accurately ripped (confidence 3)  [C6D029CD]
Track  6  accurately ripped (confidence 3)  [A6116D1E]
Track  7  accurately ripped (confidence 3)  [7EBD67D9]
Track  8  accurately ripped (confidence 3)  [36A5B555]
Track  9  accurately ripped (confidence 3)  [C18EC7A5]
Track 10  accurately ripped (confidence 3)  [04752169]
Track 11  accurately ripped (confidence 3)  [6565FD7E]
All tracks accurately ripped
End of status report