I've been rediscovering my love for Jazz lately. A coworker of mine has been talking to me about Jazz nonstop. One of our shared loves is for the highly spiritual Albert Ayler. If John Coltrane was the heart of the new "Free Jazz" sound emerging in the mid to late 60's, then Albert Ayler was the soul. His themes were simpler than Ornette Coleman or Coltrane, but whereas those two had raw talent to back them up, Ayler only had dogged determination to have his voice heard. His sax was blistering, unleashing sharp spikes of fire at you. "Spirits Rejoice" isn't as well known as his "Spiritual Unity" album, but many of the themes that are on that classic album are on this earlier one; his simple folk melodies that harkened back to an earlier era of jazz. Poor Ayler wasn't as well received as a lot of the other new "Free Jazz" musicians, but his reputation for being a firebrand was well known in Europe where he almost always received a warm welcome. Albert's' brother Don Ayler played the trumpet on here and for most his later albums, as did Gary Peacock on bass and Sunny Murray on drums. These guys kept their albums rooted so that Ayler could find his spiritual Ecstasy in trying to send his notes out as far as possible. I'm convinced that no one else could have done a better job for him. This might not be the best first album to get into Albert Ayler, that one would be "Spiritual Unity", and his later discography is a bit of a thorny path when he decided to cut an R&B album, some people hated it, but really, you can't go wrong with any Albert Ayler, dude was one of a kind. I picked this up a at Easy Street for $5. And it's the sweet ESP reissue edition that looks real nice and has great liner notes. Get this....5 songs makes the count at 17977....
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