Albert Ayler - In Greenwich Village (1973 Japanese Impulse! Vinyl LP Gatefold)

Albert Ayler - In Greenwich Village | Vinyl LP Gatefold - 1973 Japanese Impulse! Reissue (IMP-88064, Toshiba EMI)

Coltrane was Ayler's most important advocate. When Coltrane joined Impulse! and gained influence at the label, he pushed for them to sign the younger saxophonist, and he specifically suggested that Ayler's first Impulse! recordings be made live, where his music made the most sense. The result is this album, drawn from two Greenwich Village engagements. Side A comes from the Village Theatre on the Lower East Side (February 26, 1967) and opens with "For John Coltrane," a flowing, elegiac tribute to Ayler's mentor, who was gravely ill and would die just months later, in July 1967. Ayler plays alto saxophone here rather than his usual tenor, and the performance is one of his most beautiful and restrained: mournful, hymn-like, drawing on the sanctified church music of his Cleveland childhood. Joel Friedman's cello and the two basses (Alan Silva and Bill Folwell) create a dark, rich harmonic bed. "Change Has Come," from the same set, is more violent and turbulent. Side B comes from the Village Vanguard (December 18, 1966), where Coltrane himself was in the audience. "Truth Is Marching In" brings in Donald Ayler on trumpet, playing the bugle-like fanfares that made him the ideal foil for his brother, alongside Michel Sampson's violin and Henry Grimes's bass. The piece celebrates and then deconstructs the New Orleans brass-band and marching traditions that ran through all of Ayler's work.

"Our Prayer," a Donald Ayler composition, closes the album. Both sets use the two-bass configuration that became a hallmark of Ayler's mid-1960s ensembles, allowing the group to move in different harmonic directions while maintaining an organic unity. Beaver Harris plays drums on both sessions. This is the music that crested Ayler's career: fiery collective improvisation built on melodic themes that simultaneously recalled and dismantled children's nursery rhymes and funeral marches. Ayler summed up his place in the movement with a line that became famous: "Trane was the father, Pharoah was the son, and I am the Holy Ghost."

This is the 1973 Japanese pressing on Impulse! IMP-88064, manufactured by Toshiba EMI, in a gatefold sleeve.