Rabble Without A Cause
Wednesday December 14th, 2016 with Bernard Stepien
Albert Ayler – unreleased tapes 1966

Saxophonist Albert Ayler had one of the shortest careers in Jazz History. But his imprint on Free Jazz was totally irreversible. Thus, from time to time someone comes up with some tapes, usually low quality cassette tapes and produces a CD out of it than thanks to modern technology sounds if it was recorded today. Tonight we will address one 24,4 minutes such CD that is claimed to have been recorded on May 1st, 1966. There are only two tracks with highly approximative titles of the Truth is Marchin’ In and Our Prayer. None of the music seems to be related to these two compositions. Instead, it contains beautiful expansions of Ayler’s military riffs that livened up his more lyrical spiritual music. But, the plot thickens as there is no indication where it was recorded. After listening to the recordings several times, a sense of déjà vu settled in. it was at Slug’s Saloon in NYC, a session that had already been documented in a two volumes CDs. So, what was it? Some left over tapes that didn’t land on the original realease or another person attending the same concert with a separate cassette recorder?