Albert Ayler - My Name Is Albert Ayler (c.1973 US Fantasy Vinyl LP)

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Albert Ayler - My Name Is Albert Ayler | Vinyl LP - c.1973 Fantasy Records (86016, Debut Series)

Albert Ayler moved to Sweden in 1962. He had been playing rhythm and blues in army bands and had just begun developing the tenor approach that would make him one of the most singular voices in jazz. By January 1963 he had spent time in Stockholm and Copenhagen, played with Cecil Taylor's group — he described meeting Taylor as the first time he had found musicians who understood what he was trying to do — and been booked for a session at the Danish National Radio Studios. The rhythm section was local: Niels Brønsted on piano, Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen on bass, Ronnie Gardiner on drums. NHOP was sixteen.

The album opens with a spoken introduction by Ayler himself — brief, direct, describing where he came from and where he thought he was going. He then plays four standards and one original. "Bye Bye Blackbird" is the only track on which he uses soprano saxophone. "Billie's Bounce" is the Charlie Parker blues from 1945. "Summertime" is the Gershwin piece from Porgy and Bess — Ayler takes it at a ballad tempo and does not ornament it so much as pass through it, each phrase extended into something that functions less as melody than as sustained expression. "On Green Dolphin Street" is the 1947 Bronisław Kaper standard. "C.T.," which closes the album, is the sole Ayler original, named for and dedicated to Cecil Taylor. Brønsted does not play on it — the track is Ayler, NHOP and Gardiner, and it is the piece where the band sounds most like it inhabits the same space as the soloist.

The album was first released by Debut Records in Denmark in 1964. This c.1973 Fantasy Records pressing is the US Debut Series reissue.