Ayler’s utter disregard both for his musical surroundings and the unwritten etiquette of sitting in with musicians in public performance, is a recurrent theme in accounts given by those who experienced this type of situation at the time. The point of sitting in was to establish your musical worth, and you were supposed to do so within the boundaries of a tacitly agreed-upon set of rules and aesthetic criteria. But all Ayler wanted was an opportunity to test out in "real time" the alternative way of playing he was experimenting with in private practice on the base. (Chalmer Adams recalls how "he would get out on the fire escape with his tenor sax … and he just played.") When it came to playing for a predominantly African-American audience in some of the EM clubs, he seemed to have no trouble adjusting to the black urban popular trends of the day, and would do so without giving it a second thought. Baudet saw him a couple of times play "good dance music … more rhythm-and-blues than jazz," at Harbord Barracks, a base with particularly spacious and well-equipped club premises, some 10 miles south of Orléans. On such occasions, groups with a front-line of trumpet, trombone, and one or two saxophones were more in order, and Ayler played "little rudimentary arrangements, with riffs, etc.," which were "setting the curtains on fire–they sure loved that in the clubs." Michel Krassilchick, another Orléans pianist (turned lawyer) took part in Sunday afternoon jam sessions with Ayler at Hardbord Barracks, and confirms that the music was mostly rhythm-and-blues hits such as "Night Train". There, Albert could use his big, raw sound to good effect ("He was using baritone reeds on a tenor mouthpiece," explains White; "that was how he got a big sound.") However related to the tenor tradition of honking and screaming, though, the new possibilities he was investigating on his own were of a subtler, more elusive nature than the codified certainties of rock-and-roll. These may have helped nurture Ayler’s those, but could in no way confine them to that realm; "crossing over" to a supposedly less-restrictive setting was a necessity. The attraction of Paris (about 100 miles north of Orléans) was strong and, when not traveling somewhere, the band members were free to spend all their weekends there. Besides a steady Friday night gig Ayler and Worrell had for some time around 1960 at a U.S.O. club in Paris, with J.L. Vallet as their pianist, the two friends paid frequent visits to some of the local "jazz cabarets" (as clubs were called in France then), and Albert would sit in any time he’d get a chance.

Club bandstands thus became a platform for his reiterated statement to the world that this was where the music was headed–whether people were ready or not for what in a 1962 letter to Lucius White he would call "the new message." And so it didn’t really matter who he was sitting in with, or in which style they were playing. The thematic material used in those days–standards, including ballads; blues; funky anthems like "Moanin’"; etc.–was but a conventional frame of reference he had to keep borrowing for want of one better suited to his newfound approach. He could go so far as to play the head straight, but once soloing, the sounds he would utter through his horn would inevitably clash with the others’ expectations as to how a valid improvised melodic statement (i.e., one based on the cyclical return of the entire form of the tune being played, complete with its corresponding set of chord changes) ought to sound, thus destroying the cohesion of the whole proceedings.

French jazz players were not the least zealous when it came to internalizing and enforcing the rules that apply to the art form they had adopted as their own–perhaps especially true of young amateurs new to the cause, or those in the early stages of turning professional. J.L. Vallet is a case in point. ("He sounded so much like Sonny Clark," recalls White; and, "Coltrane had him all rapt up.") In September 1964, still struggling to make a living as a jazz pianist (in the U.S. by then) and faced with the unbelievable news that, of all players, Ayler was on his way to making a name for himself, Vallet would write Baudet with a tinge of somewhat disenchanted irony: "Albert Ayler was recently exported to Sweden, and yet with good musicians: I can’t understand. Watch out, he wants to go to France. I hope you go to his concerts! (mit die tomate in die hand!)"

Time and again, Ayler would see verbal protests fly in his face: from a bunch of amateur French players who used to play matinées at Le Chat qui Pêche; from more of the same or related ilk during a matinée jam session at the Blue Note conducted by the Vallet—White group. "When he played his chorus," recalls Baudet, "people started howling and all hell broke loose, until he had to stop." And White goes on: "We had the job and he came in and sat in, started playing wild, crazy music … just space music. Nobody understood what he was doing, [so the people] got up and left." The musicians too would get up and leave sometimes, as Baudet again once witnessed at the Caméléon, a tiny cellar-type club usually remembered for its congenial, non-restrictive atmosphere:

I think it was more serious this time, because high-level professional musicians were playing. He came in with his small goatee, his green leather suit, and his horn. He unhurriedly started unpacking and assembling it; he went and stood right in front of the band–there was a singer who was just finished–and he played. The musicians were utterly blown away: I remember that he [a famous French bebop pianist] closed the lid of his keyboard, the bassist set his bass on the floor, the drummer put his sticks down, and they left, went upstairs to have a drink, and they let him alone.

Reactions were not uniformly hostile, though. Henri Renaud, a noted pianist—arranger—producer, has reported in print an Ayler episode at the Caméléon quite similar to the one witnessed by Baudet. However, Renaud dispels any suspicion that he might be the pianist in the latter’s story, by specifying that nobody left the bandstand on that particular night. His comment (in Jazz Magazine 215, Sept. 1973) that being exposed to Ayler "made us feel like we were dealing with a Martian," is qualified by Jean-Louis Chautemps, the saxophonist with the Renaud group that night, who characteristically plays down the shock value in Ayler’s playing: "He didn’t have a big, specific sound, just normal, no exaggerated vibrato such as he would get later. … He just couldn’t care less about the harmonies." To cultured and intellectually alert musicians like Chautemps and Renaud–who were fully aware of Lennie Tristano’s early experiments with free form–the at least theoretical possibility of a "free jazz" was no big news by 1959—60, even though its being put into practice by a complete unknown sitting in with them while they were playing a standard in a night club, was still somewhat unusual! All in all, it is safe to assume that such incidents would have been long since forgotten, had Ayler not caused quite a stir in the jazz world a few years later. As Chautemps puts it, "Playing with him at the time was no big deal, when first-rate American musicians were continuously coming by. To be able to approach people like Gerry Mulligan, Zoot Sims–or even Lester Young–and play with them, no doubt left more of an imprint."

Likewise, their chance meeting on the bandstand at Le Chat qui Pêche wasn’t enough of a memorable experience, however interesting, for trumpeter Bernard Vitet to recall exactly how Ayler’s playing had impressed him at the time, even though, of all the major French musicians on the scene then, he would be one of the likeliest to have heard something worth remembering in it. It was a bit too early, it seems, even for someone who was on his way to becoming a leading exponent of the new music in France (cf. Free Jazz by pianist François Tusques, from 1965). His two very young accompanists on that night, the late Jean-François Jenny-Clark on bass, and drummer Aldo Romano, both of whom were also to make names for themselves first as free-jazz players, had not turned professional yet; according to Vitet, they reacted to Ayler much as adolescents would: making fun of him, etc. What stands out in Romano’s recollections ofthe episode, though, apart from the proverbial green leather suit and Ayler’s shocking disregard for the proper code of behavior–introducing oneself and asking for permission to sit in–is his powerful, highly expressive sound, the "vibration" of which had affected him, notwithstanding his overall appreciation that the saxophonist was playing nonsense, "or so it appeared to us, anyway." But, whereas Vitet recalls Ayler engaging in a "poetical" conversation with him after the set (i.e. using metaphors to convey his ideas on music, notably his love for hymns and marches), Romano was stricken by his apparent muteness: "It felt like we were infront of an autistic person." The photographerThierry Trombert also received an early Aylerian baptism one night at "Le Chat," when the saxophonist and a percussionist–the son of an African diplomat–were left playing as a duet, after all the other musicians had fled.

And so it went. One could further track Ayler from the post-existentialist and pre-insurrectionary atmosphere of the "Quartier Latin" on the Left Bank, all the way up to the red-light district of Pigalle, at the foot of the Montmartre hill, and into the café La Cigale, a favorite hangout for African-American soldiers in Paris. (To them, the neighborhood was probably the closest thing to "home" in the whole city.) There, the music was pretty much a French West Indian/African variety of New Orleans jazz, with veteran trombonist Al Lirvat, from Guadeloupe, or sometimes the American trumpeter Jack Butler, leading the house band. André Condouant, who would later develop into a very good jazz guitarist, was learning his trade by playing bass with Lirvat when he saw Ayler show up a couple of times to jam. He describes the saxophonist as being a nice, charming guy, but "kind of eccentric: He used to wear multicolored hats, and would go around with an African stick in his hands sometimes." As far as music was concerned, though, Condouant doubts Ayler’s ability to really play: "He knew the repertoire but couldn’t improvise so much; he played like an amateur. … He would play ‘I’ll Remember April’ or stuff like that [‘Petite Fleur’ and ‘How High the Moon’, according to a 1982 interview for Jazz Magazine], and was unable to stick to even the basic harmonies. Albert [Lirvat] would make sure that Ayler played one number only and then got off the bandstand, because it wasn’t working." "When he [Ayler] was in Paris," concludes Condouant, "nobody paid any attention to him. People didn’t dig at all the way he played because he would make his horn hiss, which they found most shrieking and unpleasant." Indeed, Ayler, the Martian, was out of context everywhere he turned up. It would nevertheless be inaccurate to assert that he was rejected by the Parisian jazz milieu: He just wasn’t enough of a presence to incur the risk of rejection. Seen but soon forgotten, heard and yet not heard, he went largely unnoticed, except as a passing disturbance–at worst a dimly felt potential threat to the integrity of the grand picture of jazz (which the societies of mutual admiration that had developed between American "stars" and their best European counterparts were so instrumental in maintaining). Indeed, his unconventional ways and sounds could fit nowhere in the well-ordered categories of the jazz discourse.

Ayler would not let this general lack of responsiveness to his attempts discourage him, not even when his playing was met with open hostility; if anything, "it made him play that much harder," as stated by Lewis Worrell. And if Paris had no use for his "difference," there still was hope that people elsewhere would be more receptive. By the time he was transferred to Fort Ord in the Monterey area, California, around the spring of 1961, there to await discharge, he had gotten his first glimpse of Scandinavia by taking a late-summer vacation to Sweden the previous year. It was then that Jørgen Frigård, who was to record Ayler in New York for Debut in ’64, made his acquaintance on a Stockholm-bound express train. On his way back some three weeks later, Ayler stopped in Copenhagen where his new friend accommodated him for a couple of nights. Frigård’s rich account of the whole episode is worth quoting from:

He practiced on the train during those 16 hours, and I was flabbergasted by the way he is playing. He was quite aware of the tradition of the saxophone; I remember he was talking about Charlie Parker, about Coleman Hawkins, and about the inventor, Adolph Sax. And he was talking about [the French classical saxophonist] Marcel Mule. And when he started to play I thought, "Jesus, that’s even further out than Eric Dolphy has taken the saxophone." And he practiced like wild on the train, and also at my apartment. But I got the impression, because later a lot of people here said, "Can this man also play legit music, or can he only play this abstract, wild stuff?" And I told them about his knowledge of Marcel Mule and all the earlier jazz players. But on the second night he wants to go out and see the city, and he takes his horn with him. "Is there any place I can sit in?" And I take him to a little place called Vingården–the vineyard–which was one of the most popular jazz places … where we had Jazz Quintet 1960. And the musicians were Alan Botchinsky on trumpet, a Swedish saxophone player called [Anders] Lindskog–I don’t know whatever happened to him since; piano player: Bent Axen. The bass player I’m a little unsure [Ole Laumann, according to Lindskog], I think it was Benny Nielsen, who died at quite an early age, not too long after that. Drummer: Finn Frederiksen. Now what happens is that we sit down and listen to the group, and he says, "Could you go up and ask the piano player if it’s alright if I sit in?" He was not a pushy guy; he was very polite. "Of course if they say no, it’s okay with me too." So I talk to Bent Axen, he says, "Oh, but of course!" And they have a little talk. The people see this black saxophone player unpacking his saxophone case, and the dancing stops and people assemble: "Oh, something big is gonna happen now. Who is this?" A black player. And after a short, brief conversation, they agree on playing Bobby Timmons’s "Moanin’". And he plays very straight on the statement of the theme. But as soon as he goes into his choruses, one by one all the musicians stop. Until the point where he’s only playing along with the drummer, Finn Frederiksen. And it goes on and on, and the other musicians don’t come back. Half of the audience is holding their ears, and the others are flabbergasted and fascinated: We’ve never heard anything like that. And afterwards I talk to the musicians and they say, "Oh, he was really something else, but that’s too much for us." And then came the question also, "Can he play regular–so-called regular–legit saxophone too?" And I say, "Yes, I’ve heard that."

I was listening and I said, "But what is this?" Every one of us was confused. … We were completely surprised by that. Then I listened to his records and so forth, I learned to understand what he was talking through his instrument. But that first time it was almost a shock. Because the first question that comes to you is, "Can you play like this? Is he serious, or is he just playing a joke?" But I remember that after a little while I understood that, "this man is serious." And especially when I talked to him, then it was clear to me that what he is doing and saying is right … because he really tried to explain in words what he was doing, what his message was and so forth. … I remember that we talked a lot about him after that night. But we didn’t really know how to act. … So, that was really something else … he was so alone doing that at this time. But what was all clear to us was that he was a jazz musician, no doubt about that. He was bringing something new that I couldn’t really understand, but I realized that, of course, this is something that has happened before [with] Charlie Parker and Miles and all that. And Coltrane. Jazz is a very free art form, and what he is playing is free; he’s doing what he feels to do … so why not? I mean, here we have another one, with a different message. So, that’s the way we talked about it."

It is tempting to infer from these accounts that the kind of mitigated reception he had gotten at Vingården, and possibly in Stockholm as well, was sufficient to convince Ayler that Scandinavian people as a rule were more open-minded and therefore more likely to accept his bold forays into the unknown. To be sure, Nordic restraint must have made for a refreshing change from the loud protests, sneers, and overall impatience of the French. Other factors may have played a part in Ayler’s resolve to go back to Sweden after his discharge; undoubtedly, the attraction of Swedish girls had been a prime motive in his wanting to go over there in the first place, as noted by both Frigård and Lucius White. And then Sweden and Denmark, no less than France, were reputed host-countries for jazz musicians by the early ’60s. As expressed by André Condouant, who also decided to remain in Stockholm for a while following a gig he had there in the summer of ’62: "I found the Swedes to be much closer to the American life; they were far more pro-American than the French, and therefore very open to jazz music. So, getting work was easier for me than in Paris. And then Stockholm is a small city, not a big one like Paris."

In a letter from Cleveland dated January 16, 1962, Ayler wrote Lucius White in Chicago: "I was thinking about you yesterday. I hope everything is fine, and you are still blowing [emphasis Ayler’s], because this is the only way we can express ourselves. As you know my mother has been sick for 13 years, and she asked me to spend Xmas here at home. So I was here for Xmas and the beginning of the new year, so next month say around the 10^th of February I will be planning a new LIFE for myself. I will go to NEW YORK for one week, from there by plane to Sweden. At the present I am blowing at TIA JUAN, tenor and soprano. We have about the swingingest group in town. … [capitals Ayler’s]" Whether he embarked on his trip on the planned date or sometime later is difficult to ascertain, but Lewis Worrell–who by then was active on the music scene in New York–does confirm that Ayler came and stayed with him for a few days before flying to Gothenburg, Sweden, on Icelandic Air, then the cheapest airline for these destinations, by way of Iceland and Norway.Anna-Britta Westerman, with whom he was to stay later, met him between early and mid-May, a couple of weeks after his arrival in Stockholm around Easter time (Easter Sunday, 1962 was on April 22).

It probably didn’t take Ayler long to realize that Sweden wasn’t quite the enlightened place of his mental construction. Making a living there as an unknown foreign musician almost automatically meant entering the circuit of that typical Swedish institution, the Folk Parks, where music was provided for people living in small towns and isolated rural areas to dance to–not much of a departure from the kind of commercial gigs with semi-regular or pick-up groups Ayler had known during his Army days. In addition to Swedish players of every persuasion and the occasional visiting foreign act, a number of exiles from the "Black Diaspora" (Africa, Americas, West Indies) found employment with these state-sponsored Folk Park "tours" (sometimes week-long, often mere weekend engagements), either as sidemen or bandleaders. Those were the people Ayler naturally gravitated toward upon his arrival. He was soon alternating between the groups of Ken Hunter, a Jamaican singer—drummer; Jimmy Woode Sr., a pianist whose son of the same name played bass with Duke Ellington; and Bill Houston, a bassist. The last two had allegedly played in a U.S. Army band with Buck Clayton before coming to Sweden together to work at Nalen, and deciding to settle there. In this less-than-challenging musical environment, the solidarity born of a sameness of conditions and shared feelings of artistic alienation could grow into stronger bonds. This is basically what happened with the exiled alto saxophonist Harold Jefta, from Cape Town, South Africa, who had also made Sweden his home, following a European tour with the Golden City Dixies show. He and Ayler met during a boring rehearsal at Jimmy Woode’s place:

"[Albert] had no horn with him. He was supposed to join us at this rehearsal. … It was quite an embarrassing situation–I did not know this guy at all. Albert was standing and looking through the window with his hands in his pockets. … I felt very relieved when this uninspiring rehearsal came to an end. We pulled through a few corny tunes which I hated. I soon learned that Ayler never dug this dance band. I was in need of money, and Albert was in need of money as well. It was for this reason we played in this band. Ayler and myself left together with the tunnelbana (subway) train into town. Since that time we became good friends."

Friendship was one thing, but a bond of a different nature was forged when Bill Houston asked Ayler to join his group for a few Wednesday and Friday dates at a club in the Old Town called Bobadilla, beginning in May. Anna-Britta Westerman was featured by Houston as a singer who also played drums, standing and using a simplified set consisting of snare drum, tom-tom, and cymbal. Although Ayler would only play "the way Bill wanted him to," and she had "no idea then that he played that modern jazz," Westerman was caught by his singularity and assertiveness the minute he started to blow: "It was powerful, strong … and he sounded like he was very sure of himself too. … I’ll never forget that, he was so different." It seems that his distinctive voice was shining through even the dullest musical fabric. Besides, contrary to what Ayler himself told Daniel Caux in 1970– "I had to play commercial, calypsos and whatnot, but I hated to play that!"–and which is amply confirmed by Jefta, Westerman doesn’t think that having to play in dance bands made him unhappy: "He didn’t have any complaint; he liked music." What’s more, "He knew all the songs, he could play anything."

However it may be, Ayler had not crossed the ocean to end up playing corny dance music forever. Just as he had done in Paris, he set out to take advantage of any opportunity to sit in with serious local jazz musicians to deliver his "new message." It would amount to a gross misrepresentation, though, to assume that he did so in an aggressive, conquering way. Quite the contrary, he has generally been noted for his reserved, gentle manners and behavior, especially in all types of social situations where he was brought into contact with the "outer" world–in this case the world of the Swedish modern jazz musicians. Granted, he would not let a chance to be heard pass him by. But he was not a pushy guy; simply, what he was there to do had to be done.

To better understand the nature of the response he elicited from the people he was thus confronting with something totally unheard of, it is necessary to hazard a few generalizations about who they were. By the early ’60s, Swedish jazz at large had a long and well-established life of its own, regulated by such powerful institutions as the Swedish Federation of Musicians, state-controlled touring agencies and recording companies, and perhaps not least, the Orkester Journalen magazine. There were, on the whole, better possibilities of steady employment for the local musicians than in a country like France, and besides its specialized audience, modern jazz was eagerly "consumed" by a large dancing public. The "cool" sensibility that was predominant in the early ’50s had somewhat recessed, though it still informed–in specifically Swedish ways–the music of such important figures as saxophonists Arne Domnerus and Lars Gullin. Perhaps more importantly for our purposes, a younger generation of players had begun (in the late ’50s) to rebel against the aesthetic conventions of their elders, by embracing the cutting edge of the so-called hard bop movement: Miles Davis, Rollins, Coltrane. The clash with the power structure of Swedish jazz, and the "generation battle" that ensued affected the unity of the whole scene, and some of the personal wounds inflicted then were to have lasting aftereffects. The overall atmosphere an unsuspecting Ayler found himself immersed in was permeated with all these undercurrents of ill-feelings, and before he could even realize it, he would be entangled in a battle that was not really his, and be subjected to occasional attacks from various contending factions. An obvious reason for this was that his own pioneering efforts were equally alien and unwelcome to all parties–with the remarkable exception of one man.

Bengt "Frippe" Nordström was indeed an original. An untiring jazz activist who had taken to playing the saxophone himself, and an avid listener gifted with a sixth sense for the new directions that would matter, he had been the first one in Sweden to really "dig" Ornette Coleman and to preach his gospel. In a 1968 interview for Jazz Nytt he told Lars Westin: "In 1962 I heard Albert Ayler. That was a decisive moment for my realizing the possibility to make use of my imagination in more unconventional and unbounded ways. Albert and I felt extremely much for each other’s way of thinking, but we never collaborated musically." Instead, he embarked on a new proselytizing mission, making it his duty to introduce people to his sensational discovery. He would take Ayler to clubs and to other places where the young modernists he championed used to congregate and have private sessions. One such place was the BRA Studio in Gamla Stan (the Old Town). Bassist Björn Ålke and pianist Lars Sjösten have seemingly corresponding recollections of Ayler showing up there one day, after the word had spread that a young black American saxophonist was in town, and joining in a session with themselves, as well as the legendary Bosse Wärmell on tenor sax, possibly Bernt Rosengren on tenor too, and Bertil Lövgren on trumpet. Nordström may have brought Ayler along; in any event he was expected and, as a special guest, was asked what he would like to play. "Stablemates" was his choice. As soon as Ayler hit the first note of his solo, the band was struck with the same shock and bewilderment that others had experienced elsewhere. Neither Ålke nor Sjösten got the message and it is doubtful if their fellow players did.

Nordström himself, like a number of his compatriots, had first heard Ayler play in a place whose name has acquired a mythical resonance in the folk memory of Swedish jazz. Nalen (short for Nationalen), often hailed as the temple of jazz in Stockholm, was a large venue where young people danced to the sounds of that music. In a smaller room called Harlem, jam sessions were held every Friday night. It was during one of these that the photographer Nils Edström had come upon this unknown black man in the audience and exchanged a few words with him; they were the only ones to find the music being played boring. In Edström’s estimation, "By that time Nalen had become pretty much what today I would call fascistic, with heavies as guards who behaved very high-handedly towards the public." There, even the jam sessions were highly regimented affairs, and prospective participants had to apply weeks in advance. Perhaps due to the prestige attached to American musicians, Ayler had been allowed onstage a number of times (about five, according to Nordström) before being barred from playing there altogether. He may have been referring to the night this happened when, interviewed for Down Beat in 1966, he told Nat Hentoff: "I remember one night in Stockholm, I started to play what was in my soul. The promoter pulled me off the stage. Two years later I was back with my own group–Cherry, Murray, Peacock. The promoter woke up. He didn’t pull me off the stage that time." Nalen was no longer "the" prominent place for jazz in ’64, so quite possibly the reference was to a similar incident that may have occurred at the Golden Circle. There too, Edström recalls, Ayler ran into trouble with the promoter on various occasions (though by ’64 the latter had been replaced by a man much more sympathetic to the new music.) Anyway, it seems that Nordström was quick to exploit the Nalen incident for his publicizing ends, until it grew to pretty dramatic proportions: Ayler grabbed by the arm and literally dragged off the stage by the promoter, and then thrown down to the ground, followed by his sax. The fact that he had not been injured in the incident would, with hindsight, be read by "Frippe" as a sure sign that Ayler was going to make a name for himself musically. Another eyewitness to the scene, Anna-Britta Westerman, gives a less exaggerated version of it in which the chief doorkeeper, not the promoter, pulls at Ayler’s sleeve and says he can’t play; she asks him why and he says if the musicians see him come up on stage they’ll just leave.

Nordström has pointed to another interesting aspect of Ayler’s rejection by the Swedish musicians, asserting that Rune Carlsson, a drummer who had played with Eric Dolphy the previous year, secretly enjoyed hearing him at Nalen but would not admit to it publicly. If authentic, the anecdote is a telling illustration of the weight of conventional wisdom, even in such a marginal, socially non-conformist group as the "rebellious" young jazz modernists. Aligning oneself with the peer-group’s dominant opinion can indeed be an effective means of asserting and protecting one’s fledgling identity, no matter if this entails the exclusion of anything or anybody that does not fit exactly with the value system of that particular group. (As was later exemplified in a most painful way by Nordström’s own increasing relegation to a kind of sub-marginal status.) The case of the late Gunnar Lindqvist is illustrative of still another facet of the problem with which Ayler presented musicians, themselves engaged in a struggle for recognition. Both as a saxophonist and, increasingly, a record producer and concert promoter, Lindqvist was, along with Bernt Rosengren, a tireless organizer of the "underground" Swedish musicians’ community, and therefore anxious that it meet with greater acceptance. In this respect, getting the endorsement of prestigious musicians from abroad was a definite asset, well worth a few diplomatic efforts. On the other hand, Lindqvist was generous and open-minded enough not to reject an unknown quantity like Albert Ayler without further examination of what he had to say and offer. The American was even welcome to visit him and exchange views on the music: "We played at home a few times, but he wasn’t interested in the modern jazz I tried to play (Bird tunes like ‘Moose the Mooche’, etc.). He told me, ‘All I need to know are the two whole-tone scales,’ which to me sounded too simple. Especially since I knew that he was familiar with and had played the usual jazz repertoire earlier." Lindqvist was not averse to expanding the scope of the language, but maintained that one had to abide by the sanctioned rules if he wanted to establish his credentials as a jazz musician.

Their debate reached a bitter climax when it suddenly burst in a scandalous way. In August of ’62 the Count Basie Band played for a week at Gröna Lund, a big amusement park in Stockholm. Jam sessions were arranged at the smaller Narren Theater there, and included the participation of some of the Basie musicians. Ayler was in attendance a great deal of the time, as witnessed by different persons including Bill Dixon, then in town for a while on his way back from the Youth Festival in Helsinki. According to him, Ayler (whom he had just met for the first time) was getting along with the Basie men. And A. B. Westerman also remembers that Ayler "played a lot there … they had a lot of fun." Lindqvist’s account is more graphic:

The Narren theatre was the place, and Frank Foster and Albert stood together at the back of the stage, pleasantly talking to each other. You know, two black brothers, both with tenors. … So Foster went up and played a good bebop solo, oh-bah-oh-bah-oh-bah. … When he stepped back he met Albert on his way to take the next solo. They exchanged, "Yeah, man," brotherly smiles, etc. And then Albert started playing, and that is the closest I have come to see a black man turn white. Frank Foster dropped his jaw, his face, his everything. A fantastic scene!

Ayler took part in almost all events, either as a listener or as a musician hoping to sit in. Then he became inspired and, to everybody’s horror, he took out his saxophone and played with Märit Hemmingson’s group. It was precisely as usual and you felt all sorts of peculiar vibrations, with antipathy and aggression being directed at him. … I hadn’t even noticed that Gunnar Lindqvist was there, but the next time I met up with him he described how hurt and outraged and insulted he felt that somebody like Ayler had had the impertinence to sit-in in this situation when modesty precluded that Gunnar himself could even consider it. Gunnar is often very generous, he has generally good contact with visiting musicians … he is that kind of generous type that is really indispensable. But even he on that occasion felt he was injured and wronged because he had invited Frank Foster, who was a great, celebrated star, even outside the Basie context, to listen to Märit’s group. And then he had to listen to Ayler, he didn’t feel too good about that. And I’m not sure that Gunnar will ever tell you about that, but I want to do it in order to show Ayler’s dilemma.

The guitarist Ingemar Böcker, a friend and early associate of Lindqvist’s in "one of the first out-and-out Swedish bebop groups of the late ’40s" (to quote Keith Knox), may have grasped some of these implications in a flash when he heard Ayler on what he believes was the first time he came up on stage at Nalen. Böcker got enthusiastic and shouted, "Yeah, tell it! Tell it to us, yeah, say something!" Hearing someone who "broke these rules of tonality and fluent expression" in a sort of non-intellectualized, expressionist fashion, was refreshing to him at a time when everybody mastered the art of improvising on all types of chord progressions. However, he was a bit disappointed when the pianist Jan Johansson stopped playing and sat looking out at the audience with "that facial expression of non-commitment … neutral … very Swedish." In Böcker’s estimation, "[Johansson] was at that time the one pianist who could have supported him more … the man who would have been able to build this form of music, to cooperate." But even Böcker, in spite of his positive initial response, couldn’t help wondering whether Ayler really had the credentials as a legitimate contemporary player to back up his "daring attitude": "It leaves an open question in your mind, ‘Is this the Emperor’s new clothes?’" Which, he reflects, could explain Johansson’s attitude as stemming from the desire to avoid putting Ayler into a confrontation. Böcker went as far as interpreting the saxophonist’s "fresh, raw sound" and his apparent rules-breaking in terms of a difference in ethnic/cultural backgrounds. Naturally identifying him with the defectors from the Golden City Dixies show troupe in Stockholm, he assumed that he too was South African. "He had that African major-minded, not major-minor bluesy-minded, attitude to the music." Böcker at the time could readily relate Ayler’s sounds to the "African shuffle" feeling of Miriam Makeba, Hugh Masekela, and other exponents of the urban popular music styles known as Kwela or Mbaqanga, in which "you have almost like tonic and dominant, not even sub-dominant. … I was looking for the roots and hearing truly African roots in what he was doing."

Interestingly enough, this musical connection was largely lost on the South Africans themselves. Peter "Shimi" Radise, a tenor player from Johannesburg who had also come to Sweden as part of the G.C.D. troupe (and was to record with Johnny Dyani in the 1980s), played with Ayler once during a session that he, Jimmy Woode Sr., drummer Rupert Clemendore, and others were having at a basement club in the Old Town. He heard nothing familiar–let alone reminding him of "home"– in the avant-garde playing the American burst into as he sat in on "Cherokee". Radise was mostly impressed with Ayler’s "big tone and unfettered sound," and his "forceful way": "He didn’t doubt about what he was doing, he said, ‘This is me and this is what I have, this is my music, this is what I like and this is how Iplay.’" During a coffee pause, Ayler further explained to an interested Radise that this was "the trend in the States now, the whole-tone scales and that’s it."Jefta, for his part, was able to relate Ayler’s playing to one highly specific variety of South African music he had experience playing as a young man: the ballroom and street music of the "Cape Coloureds," which he insists was quite distinct from the kind of Township music Böcker was referring to. His description is to the point: "These [Cape Coloured] saxophone players were really blowing loud and even ugly, with a booming rhythm section. These cats used to vibrate the tone on the saxophone to its utmost capacity to increase the volume on the horns. With a hall full of dancing people it was important to be heard, and the louder the band sounded (there were no microphones), the more it became a favorite." Furthermore, "it was only the Cape Coloureds who used that sound, the Africans and Whites never played that loud, [they] played with little vibrato … these bands never worked with the township musicians who in turn utilized the tonic and dominant chord structure on all the tunes." (Incidentally, an eloquent illustration of the way apartheid was affecting every domain of existence.)

Nils Edström gives another fascinating insight into Ayler’s methodologies, while describing with great care his first experience of actually hearing the saxophonist play–at the newly opened Golden Circle, some time after their initial encounter at Nalen. Bengt Nordström had persuaded "this new phenomenon" he had been raving about, to bring his horn to the Circle one night and sit in with the then-popular clarinetist—singer Gunnar "Silja-bloo" Nilsson. Following are two excerpts from Edström’s exhaustive account:

Precisely because of Ayler’s presence, it was an absolute necessity that you were present when he played, placed in front of him and confronted by his playing, to be forced into trying to grapple with the realization that this experience was totally unfamiliar and devoid of references to anything that had gone before. But Ayler, he more or less rocketed out of his saxophone. Not only sideways like in that famous Lester Young angle, but he would hoist his sax way up. And at the same time … he saw to it that the sound streamed out of his saxophone in all directions, roaring from every acoustic aperture as well as from the sides and the bell, and the mouthpiece too. I asked him about it and that was one of his aims. Because, with the microphone, you just stand there and let out a sound stream in a very concentrated way, but he wanted everybody to be reached by the physical substance and body of the sound. It has to be described like that because there was nothing really that identifiable and yet it penetrated everywhere.

His sound was described as coming from nowhere, like an archetypal raw blast from the primordial forest. And this simply has to do with the fact that people were so shocked by his physical tone, his actual intensity of sound. … Nobody was remotely prepared for that physical mass of sound which, without anybody being aware of it, dug its way in both physically and also, as a consequence, mentally. The effect was rather like a massive snowplow clearing a through way and pushing aside everything it encountered, including all those personal prejudices you collect when you listen to music a lot.

As far as Edström was concerned, hehad managed to overcome his own prejudices and, once on friendly terms with Ayler, was able to consider the man and his music with more equanimity than the average jazz-club patron. He, too, had offered the saxophonist his work place–a photographic studio on Sveavägen, half a block from the Golden Circle, as a place to practice. The only two times Ayler took him up on his offer were quite enlightening occasions for Edström, who from earlier conversations with Ayler had already discovered that, "As a total contrast to his instrumental sound, he was soft-spoken and extremely convincing, very well-versed and filled with a humble admiration for the history which had gone before him. It was necessary to have heard him to be in a position to know, or have any idea, about where he had his musical identity." The first time he came, Ayler started his practical demonstration by showing his friend "how Parker, to simplify it a bit, used two different types of vibrato. … And then," Edström goes on,

he played [Parker] solos that were directly as he had learned them, and how it appeared in the register of the alto sax. Because he could in some way, like Warne Marsh, extend the saxophone register via falsetto, but also through changing the sound. And then I had my second shock, because he could play with every kind of dynamic, from very soft like Kenny Dorham, who was remarkable in his own way because he could get rid of the brassiness and still get a big, fat, and full tone with a very modest volume. And Albert Ayler could control his sound to perfection like that, but it wasn’t anything that in his intensive way he brought forth at the gigs.

But then he must have noticed that I was a bit taken aback when I saw that side of him. So the next evening he came over, he had brought some literature. I think it was called "The Method of Classical Saxophone". And this had an impressionistic section, in so far as Debussy’s "Saxophone Rhapsody" was notated. … But then Ayler is standing there singing and he says, "This is written for alto and I have to sing it so I will know it first before I transcribe it. Because I’m actually not that good at singing straight off the sheet." And then he gets going and plays that piece on tenor, and he is still simulating the alto saxophone fairly quietly in quite a mellow style. He really had all this kind of knowledge as well as everything else and there are people who don’t believe it.

All the talk about Ayler being both assertive and confident in his playing, and articulate in his speech, must not be taken as an indication that, by 1962, he regarded his musical attempts as anything other than tentative. Before leaving for Sweden he had explained to his mother that he had to go "where somebody can understand," as he told Daniel Caux in 1970. "I didn’t quite understand myself for the music hadn’t quite formed in my head yet. I was playing it slow, not as it is now, fast." It can certainly be argued that Sweden is where his musical vision really began to take shape, but this didn’t happen overnight: He had to go through a long and painful process and his confidence would occasionally give way to discouragement and doubt. "He was looking for new sounds and ideas," recalls Harold Jefta. "He spoke about them; he said he heard what he wanted but could not play it. He would make a few sounds with his throat: ‘Whee wheeoo whaaee.’ He would go on saying it’s humanly impossible to do it. ‘I think I’m cracking up, Harold,’ was another of his outcries. A few times he even lifted the phone to demonstrate what he was looking for. He ended up by saying, ‘I’m cracking up.’"

On the whole, the portrait of Ayler that emerges from Jefta’s recollections contrasts sharply with the quasi-conventional image of the man’s personality conveyed by most of the other major informants. For instance, reminiscing about the times he and Ayler would "go out for a coffee and a chat," Edström remarks: "And then it was always about music and questions to do with that. Never anything about the social situation or problems of any kind." To which Jefta opposes: "We spoke about music and even a great deal of politics and social problems. When I mentioned how my mother had to struggle, for instance, he became very concerned. I never expected this man to take an interest in my domestic affairs in South Africa." Or, "When he was in a more high-tempered mood he would say, ‘They are afraid of the truth, Harold. Tell them the truth, don’t be scared to tell them the truth.’ Those words–‘the truth’–were constantly on his lips. When he said ‘they’ he meant the Swedes or the white man. His political consciousness was an inheritance since childhood. This was noticeable in the course of many of our conversations. He reminded me of a man of pride whose music always came first." Newman Alexander’s appraisal of Ayler’s character may help reconcile these two extremes:

He never engaged in the trivial or the superficial, and exhibited the clear signs of advanced spirituality. A striking feature of this is exemplified by the fact that, although the prevailing mood of the time was one of sectarianism and ethnocentricity, ex. black power, Albert’s worldview stemmed from a deep conviction of the universal brotherhood of mankind. He was not conventional or conformist; as a result most musicians recoiled from his musical expressions, but he took that with remarkable equanimity. At that period, Albert dressed in green leather, the whole suit, and even that in the Swedish context of the time was quite a departure from the accepted norm. Some people became apprehensive from that point on. Albert never saw those attitudes and responses as problems; he hardly ever mentioned them. He followed his own path with assurance but coupled with understanding for the otherness of others.

The group kicked off with "Billie’s Bounce" in up tempo, if one could recognize the tune. That tune was tampered on right from the beginning. We juggled around with [it] partly in unison like two screaming hyenas in the wild desert of Africa. This was my greatest musical experience since I came to Sweden. Albert took the first chorus on that huge tenor and held it up straight in the air. His time had come, he was filling the place with a murderer’s sound. He was telling the truth by singing through that horn. Now was the time to tell them. The people were coming out of their corners to find out who was being murdered. They all gathered in front of the band. The pianist who guided the 12-bar blues pattern was now lost completely. Albert was cursing out harsh sounds by which no harmonies could fit. The rhythm section who looked asleep were now wide awake like athletes ready for their off set. The choruses of Albert were only becoming more defiant; I could hear that he wasn’t going to pull any punches. The horn was lifted still higher in the air while the audience stood paralyzed like dummy dolls in a dressing shop window. I could see the black eyeballs of Ayler’s eyes moving backwards the longer he kept on playing, until you could only see the white parts popping out. The rhythm section with its musical doctrines and old habits were struggling and doing their very best to cope with this new phenomenon giving birth in the heart of Scandinavia. … I knew that this explosive event was coming because this man Albert Ayler was drowning in frustrations. All the humiliations on the streets and public places of Stockholm and the United States which accumulated, came out of that horn with a handful of witnesses. They heard an unsung tune, a story untold. … The next tune was "On Green Dolphin Street". Albert demonstrated his very well-schooled past and experiences. He blew his first chorus with carefully selected notes the way Sonny Stitt would play. Ayler had a harsher sound than his predecessors with his metal mouthpiece. His vibrato was pretty and well-balanced until he got to the second chorus where the vibrato started increasing like huge chunks mixed with abrupt flageolets. If he hit a flagrant note which sounded meaningless, he would simply ignore the mistake and cling on to that note and mold it until it became a logical musical aspect that suited his ego. … The cats in the band were rather shaken up and taken by surprise that evening. I can still remember the bass player Rolf telling me that he was about to throw the bass down on the floor in ecstasy. Albert thanked me for playing different than him. We became closer friends than ever before.

Albert came up to Staffan Tilling’s flat often to visit me or take a walk. At one time I played a recording of Bird. While the tune "Marmaduke" was on the turntable, Albert suddenly turns around and says, "This music sounds sad to me." Then I put another recording which was actually a live private recording of local cats from Stockholm. I think the tenorman was a guy called Bosse Wärmell. They were playing "Blue Train". The soloist Bosse put down a lengthy solo. He fumbled on a high note but carried on with the next phrase, when Albert screamed, "He should have remained on that wrong note."

At this early stage, things could easily get out of hand with such a provocative method. During a second engagement at the Frid och Fröjd and before a larger audience, Ayler sounded "worse than ever;" his horn "was choking and screeching on the upper register and flageolets," and there were more wrong notes which, Jefta could feel, "were out of control and could not be harnessed." A defeated Ayler had to honestly admit "he was simply forcing himself to blow that night." His South African buddy has no memories of "Albert playing at any other official engagements." However, he does recall him playing as a visiting artist at a place called the Hamburgerebush nightclub with an unidentified Italian piano trio. When Jefta was invited to play with the same "very good" trio, he was told by the leader that they did like Ayler’s playing.

So, even before the "beautiful Swedish summer" would start "edging towards the early autumn" (in Jefta’s words), Ayler had, almost fortuitously, begun to appear in the role of a freelance featured soloist, if not yet of a fully fledged leader. Anders Spets, the drummer who had traveled up north with him in Jimmy Woode Sr.’s group, remembers a session "somewhere in a cellar" in the eastern part of Stockholm, with Ayler, a second tenor player, Christer Lundberg, bassist Göran Oskarsson, and himself. Apparently, this was not an impromptu occasion since Spets was asked by the drummer Frederik Norén to replace him because he had another commitment. What stands clear in Spets’s memory is that the deliberate purpose of the session was to play "free," starting on a tune to "at least set up some kind of a form," and that it was taped, though nobody seems to know what became of that tape. (B. Nordström has denied doing the recording, or even attending the session.) Judging from Spets’s otherwise fragmentary recollections, it was quite an expedition into uncharted musical territory and the participants were left with no choice but to listen hard and try to figure what to do: "And I think that some tunes … okay. But some tunes, when he was far out, it was too much. Then you couldn’t play; you stopped and looked at him. … Then he would design something in his mind and then fall back on [something else] and it’s better." Incidentally, Lundberg, an interesting modern Swedish player who went practically unnoticed and unrecorded, was also associated with the aforementioned pianist, Bengt Bengtson, around that time.

Late in June Bill Houston took Ayler, Anna-Britta Westerman, and a pianist, Ulf Wilhelmsson, to Finland for a three-day dance gig in Vasa. From there Ayler went straight to Helsinki, where a Swedish jazz guitarist by the name of Herbert Katz had opened a record shop. One day Katz saw a black man with a white patch in his beard come into the shop. "And he said he is Albert Ayler and he is playing tenor saxophone and he got my name from some musician in Stockholm–I don’t know who." Neither did Katz know who the American was, but he took him seriously when Ayler mentioned the names of people he had played with in Sweden. Katz already had some engagements fixed for the rest of the week, so he called the people in charge and persuaded them to take this "famous saxophone player" along with his group. He also called his contacts at Finnish Radio and a recording session was hastily arranged, to be broadcast later that summer. On June 30, Ayler and the Katz quartet, comprising accomplished Finnish jazz musicians, entered studio two of the Radio House for what remains the first known instance of some music being officially recorded under the name of the American saxophonist. It was also the first musical encounter between Ayler and his accompanists, and as usual when he started soloing the other musicians were in for a shock. "We didn’t know what he was doing," the late Herbert Katz once admitted, "and we thought that even he doesn’t know what he is doing. But he knew. That, we found out, because he started his solo and he stopped it exactly as it should have been." (A comment that flatly contradicts A. Baudet’s appreciation of Ayler’s musical abilities quoted above and shared by G. Lindqvist.)Of the only three numbers recorded, for a total of 19 minutes, "Summertime" is particularly fascinating to hear in that it predates by six and a half months the saxophonist’s rendition of the same tune on My Name is Albert Ayler that is universally regarded as his first incontestable masterpiece.In comparison, the Helsinki version sounds like a rather timid first draft: None of the bruised, wrenching lyricism Ayler would wring out of Gershwin’s famous melody during the later radio session, can be heard on the YleisRadio tape. Both the emotional-expressive range and the melodic compass are narrower, the use of dynamics is more restrained, and the rhythmic organization far less audacious. There, as in the two other pieces, Ayler seems to keep his more revolutionary inclinations in check, as if hesitating between "in" and "out," possibly hampered by the high regularity and the even, smooth playing of the rhythm section. Following the radio session, the same lineup went on a mini tour, playing for dance around Helsinki. As far as Katz could remember, Ayler was well-received everywhere they went, even if "many of the listeners and the people dancing must have thought he was crazy." A black musician was a sensation in Finland at that time–even more so than in Sweden. Ayler was back in Stockholm by mid-July (he had just turned 26.) It is a bit strange, however, to realize that the first time ever that jazz aficionados were specifically invited to listen to him on the air was in the remotest of all north European countries, then at the far end of the western "free" world.

Bengt Nordström has pinpointed another summer ’62 event that in his estimation signaled a new stage in Ayler’s progress toward artistic maturity. Off a distant section of the island of Kungsholmen, where more or less illicit activities could be pursued out of sight of the straight world, was moored the Storken visprom, a barge aboard which ballad singers as well as jazz musicians were featured, and narcotics sold. One day that "Frippe" and his protégé had ventured over there, Ayler played solo during intermissions, and that’s when Nordström heard him for the first time play in the definite manner that would become his signature. Hitherto, if the "power" was already salient in his playing, the lines and shapes were kind of blurred.

By the beginning of autumn, Ayler’s disturbing presence could no longer be ignored, even if most people were doing their best to play its significance down one way or another. To some of them, as Spets points out, he was a "laughingstock," and Edström further observes that "his competence was denied and he was displayed as the most horrible and ugly thing there was, which people liked to talk about when they lowered themselves to the extent that they needed to find a reference that was lower than anything else they could imagine." Lindqvist’s friend Ann-Mari has perhaps best summarized his particular status on the Stockholm scene when she half-jokingly, half-affectionately recalled how he was such a familiar presence in the subway with his green leather suit, that after a while you couldn’t tell him from the green-painted walls of the stations. But one man at least–Nordström–knew that Ayler’s time had come, and by October the pace of things had suddenly accelerated. The Golden Circle had quickly succeeded a slowly dying Nalen as the new jazz Mecca in Stockholm, and famous American musicians were either booked at the club, or would come over to join in a jam session after performing at the Concert House. A yet not too well known trumpeter, Don Ellis, who happened to be in town, had created a minor sensation when taking part in one such session alongside stars from the Gerry Mulligan and Horace Silver groups on the 11^th of October. The following night he was back at the Circle, where the newly formed quintet of drummer Janne Carlsson was featured as part of a "Swedish week" program. Nils Edström was there as usual, in his quality of de facto house photographer, but can only remember the two horn players–Lasse Färnlöf on trumpet, and Christer Boustedt on alto sax. Ellis was invited onstage and soon set out to take a leading part in the proceedings; Boustedt had retreated to the back of the stage, listening and enjoying the interplay between the two trumpeters. Nordström and Ayler were sitting below the stage and, after Ellis had vainly attempted to bring the Swedish saxophonist back into playing, Ayler saw an opportunity and told his compatriot he could play with him. As witnessed by Edström, "he wasn’t really taken seriously, but he picked up his saxophone and jumped onto the stage. And he played, as he thought, just as usual, with this enormous dynamic and energy." Ellis had already worked and recorded with distinguished avant-gardists like Dolphy, George Russell, and Paul Bley, and was held by the cognoscenti to be on a par with them. But now, Edström goes on,

he started to feel noticeably uncomfortable and leaves the stage to join Boustedt by the window. And in addition he picks up his mouthpiece and begins to walk around the club tooting a lot of nonsense notes, not in order to take part but to demonstrate. Ayler stands there playing and again has the experience that everybody else stops playing, probably because they want him to stop playing. And then the spotlights began flashing and blinking. It was all very embarrassing and uncomfortable, and I really thought that that was an act of vandalism. So Albert is forced to stop playing. This was followed by Don Ellis walking up onstage with his trumpet; he stamped in a beat, played a very short note followed by a long note, and then he took his trumpet and went out and did not come back. He didn’t even have the gig; he was an ordinary restaurant guest who was inspired to take the opportunity for doing some promotion for himself and sit in with the band. That was his so-called function. But I suppose he was hit by fear and trembling, and no doubt he was feeling a bit put out because Ayler had taken over and evidently got a lot of the attention. Because he really did get that! Don had no understanding for Ayler and refused to listen. By just disappearing he wanted to make his mark that the evening was totally ruined for him.

The whole episode was handled in pure "Frippe" fashion: Once his resolve was made, he put all his energies and resources into the realization of his plan. Ayler himself was rather hesitant, judging from what he told Daniel Caux eight years later: "… he [Nordström] said, ‘Albert, I want you to make a record.’ I said, well … I didn’t know if I should make a record then, because I felt I wasn’t developed like I wanted to be developed. So he said, ‘It is necessary to make a record. …’" As summed up by Edström, "[I]t wasn’t possible to stop Frippe, it never has been."Having heard that Ayler was to play at "Café Mejan," the students’ club premises of the Academy of Arts on the island of Skeppsholmen, he reacted promptly and bought a professional tape recorder, allegedly on the same day the recording took place: Thursday, October 25–two days before the end of Taylor’s engagement at the Golden Circle. How Ayler got the gig is hard to ascertain: there’s a rumor that he was called as a replacement for the group initially scheduled, and Nordström may have been instrumental in securing his protégé the job. Sune Spångberg, the drummer on the date, seems to remember being called by "Frippe" to do the gig, along with bassist Torbjörn Hultcrantz. The two musicians were working partners since the days of the legendary "Jazz Club 57" group, the pioneering ensemble of the rebel generation of Swedish jazz, fronted by Bernt Rosengren. The same closely knit rhythm team had been heard alongside Bud Powell twice that same year at the Golden Circle, the last time in September. That was when Spångberg had "caught the eye of a smiling black man at a table quite far away, who emanated a singularly radiant charisma"–Ayler. (Most of Spångberg’s quotations included in this section are from a text he wrote in 1992 at the request of a university researcher working on strong psychological experiences related to music.) After introducing himself, the drummer invited Ayler to come and sit in on a biweekly gig he was playing with the Rosengren group at the Gondolen restaurant. That was the only time Spångberg and Hultcrantz had, for a brief moment, played with him before October 25. (Incidentally, on that particular evening another Swedish legend of the tenor saxophone, the late Börje Fredricksson, was subbing for Rosengren.)

Much has been made of the two Swedish musicians’ alleged inability to make sense of what was happening musically with Ayler during the Academy of Arts session, and to adapt their own playing to the requirements of a most unconventional situation. However, such a reading fails to account for the sense of shared musical adventure, of real, if frail, togetherness that one gets from listening closely and with sympathetic ears to the resulting LPs or CDs–no small achievement, considering the surroundings and the "gap" between the Swedes’ acquired musical habits and Ayler’s utter departure from any semblance of legitimate playing. Even so, Spångberg insists, "We were together … I swear, we were so very close in our hearts when we played. There was no hesitation, nothing; just right on, with love." He and Hultcrantz at least were used to relying on their feeling and intuition more than on learned methodologies. Spångberg, who Edström characterizes as a "so-called integrity drummer," says of himself, "I always played with my ears, I’m no skilled or schooled musician, I’ve never been." The photographer is certainly correct when, after reporting "how much fun [Hultcrantz] thought it was that someone turned up who didn’t play like everybody else," he concludes, "And it turned out that in order to appreciate what Ayler had to offer and to intellectually assimilate a content that was enriching demanded fellow musicians with a certain experience, and vulnerability, and freedom from prejudice." Following are the written personal recollections of one participant and one eyewitness to the session,beginning with excerpts from Spångberg’s aforementioned 1992 text:

The hall where we played was desolate and empty, with an echoey acoustic. Passersby peered in curiously from time to time, but for the most part they soon disappeared elsewhere in the building, to where there was music that was more danceable and easier to listen to. One exuberantly intoxicated jazz fan did manage to hold out through the entire proceedings, singing and yelling, and whistling ecstatically. … We, ourselves, were eager to play, and felt extraordinarily good together. … We played standard evergreens, well known to most jazz musicians of my generation: 8-bar forms, with chord patterns and rhythms that were part of our musical second-nature. On the basis of this common musical heritage, we met now without the slightest advance planning. To come loose in swinging interplay with others, experiencing happiness when everything falls into place, these things have vouchsafed me in great measure throughout my life as a musician. Earlier the same year, Torbjörn and I had the great pleasure of accompanying our idol, Bud Powell. … On that occasion the ground rules for making the session were no doubt clear and unambiguous. But now, together with Albert Ayler, this whole experience was a matter of an entirely different way of traveling. For sure, I have never experienced such ease of flying. Everything about it was like a giddy adventure of bearing or bursting. Can we feel the ground? Are we keeping it up? Is my time right? Are the harmonic patterns okay? And at the same time, that relaxed, self-evident reciprocity. … Audacious phrasing and capricious rhythmic groupings, often with unexpected leaps and displacements, made it so that the form itself was broken up to float in suspension. Ayler moved with superb freedom in a music that was transparent and seemingly without bar lines. What deliverance and release to yield to all this as a participant! Like being lifted up high and empowered to discern unending possibilities! A spontaneous and unhesitating flood of inspiration, at the same time conscious and unconscious. Like a blessed gift of grace–it isn’t I who is playing–I allow myself to be played. But if for a moment I would ask myself how this condition is possible, logically to seek to understand how it happens–then in an instant I would lose everything, the wholeness is broken ...

… At that time I was a dedicated fan of Coltrane and Ornette Coleman, and all of a sudden I was experiencing something a step still further out stylistically. I believe that myself and the buddy who went there with me comprised the only audience at the place [incidentally, Holmqvist was not the whistling man]. It was invariably chaotic and crazy at these art-student gatherings, but not this early in the evening and not at all in the sense that Albert Ayler represented. What the hell is going on? Regarding me as initiated and possibly responsible, several people put this question during the course of the evening about the organically growing, wild and unruly music that was proffered. From the occasion in question, I remember most clearly Albert Ayler’s brusque playing, his locutions and cussedly abrupt projection, thanks be to the fabulously inspirational effect the music had on the Swedish accompanying musicians. Sune Spångberg has subsequently confirmed how, with the sudden shock of the instant, he grew accustomed to Ayler’s music. Sune was not only asked to play drums without the slightest hesitation, he succeeded furthermore in doing just that. Ayler proclaimed to his fellow musicians and those who were prepared to listen, the creative joy of discovery. That is my clearest impression from my memories of this session. What the hell is going on? The posing of this question still appears as pressing and apt for the shape of jazz to come.

Probably in the early part of November, Ayler wrote again to his Army band buddy, Lucius White in Chicago:

… I am in Copenhagen now playing with Cecil Taylor I joined his group in Stockholm. He said that I play the strongest sax he ever heard. I made a record in Sweden, here I will [be] recorded with Cecil I will send you a copy. We go to Germany from here and to Rome. Back to New York at the Five Spot. Trane in Stockholm on the 21^st, I will go up on my day off for the big session … I will be happy to go back to New York … I will be here until the 5 of December. …

At the urging of Erik Wiedemann and the jazz writer and tennis champion, Torbern Ulrich, a radio recording-session with Ayler and the Taylor trio had, as a matter of fact, been scheduled. Such a fitting conclusion to Ayler’s adventure of experiencing artistic birth in Scandinavia, was never to materialize, due to what Wiedemann later called with perfect diplomatic restraint "a series of misunderstandings." In truth, the actual circumstances of that failed occasion are rather derisory. After the beginning of the session had to be repeatedly delayed–perhaps Ayler was late, or no drum set was available at the radio house, and Murray had to go get the one he used at the Montmartre club–Taylor went out for food and allegedly started making a fuss at a nearby sausage stand when he was given a Danish variety of ham sandwich in place of the hamburger he had ordered. (Hamburgers then were not yet a familiar item of so-called American worldwide cultural hegemony.) The incident caused further delay and when Taylor finally got back to the radio house, all the scheduled studio time was gone. Now the people in charge were utterly prevented from giving musicians they deemed irresponsible a second chance; Wiedemann and Ulrich had to plead Ayler’s case, arguing that he should not be penalized for somebody else’s faults. It was finally agreed that the saxophonist would be recorded at a later date, but with other accompanists. A piece of ham, it seems, had gotten in the way of a significant musical convergence being properly documented. … However, a TV recording with the same four musicians did take place before they all left Copenhagen, only this time the usual roles were reestablished: Taylor as the leader, and Ayler as an additional saxophone voice. Fortunately, if the original videotape is lost for good, a decent audio copy of the session has been preserved. During the performance’s approximately 23 minutes, Ayler is captured at the exact point of transition where, leaving behind the old jazz frame of reference he had hitherto been content to undermine from within, he inserts for the first time his personal world of sounds and sound-producing techniques in a musical territory fully compatible with them. Not that he had thoroughly integrated the pianist’s universe–Jimmy Lyons is the one who can be heard really working with the material at hand, as his improvised lines develop in close relationship to the shapes and patterns Taylor extracts from his keyboard. But, whereas Lyons’s discursive thinking still has him sounding like a logical extension of Charlie Parker, Ayler’s seeminglydisjointed bursts and shrieks cut straight through the complex densities of the music to hasten the disclosure of its very trance-like core. He thus appears like a precious fellow-traveler to Taylor–who in turn provided him at a crucial juncture with just the congenial musical environment he needed to fully come into his own. Unfortunately, Ayler’s plans of further traveling in Europe and then returning to New York with the pianist, were brought to naught when the envisioned gigs in Berlin and elsewhere failed to materialize. After their protracted engagement at the Montmartre had expired, Taylor, Lyons, and Murray had no alternative but to return home, leaving their sensational discovery stranded in Copenhagen. Ayler may have remained there for a while, and in fact Murray claims to have delayed his own departure by nearly a month, so that he could spend some more time with his new friend. In any event, at some point during their spell in Copenhagen the two buddies crossed paths with a local alto sax player who was soon to move to New York, too: John Tchicai. The Danish-Congolese musicianremembers Ayler taking part in jam sessions at Vingården, along with Niels Bronsted on piano, himself and Max Bruel on saxophones, Lars Malther or Benny Nielsen on bass, and different drummers, including Preben Willeberg (plus Murray sitting in once in a while).

Around Christmastime Ayler was back to Stockholm, in time to spend the holidays with Anna-Britta Westerman. Something Different!!!, the LP privately produced by Bengt Nordström out of the October 25 session, was out now and Westerman remembers "Frippe" and Ayler listening to it at her place. Adorning its sleeve was the color picture Nils Edström had been requested to shoot in an emergency, one particularly dark autumn morning at the Observatory Park, up the hill from Sveavägen. By the beginning of January 1963, though, Ayler was back to the old routine of playing commercial gigs, this time at the Don Pedro restaurant up in Gothenburg, with the group of a blues singer—pianist from Galveston, Texas–Candy Green. According to Westerman, Ayler was hired for the entire month. But now, his ears still ringing with the extraordinary music he had played with Taylor, his patience was wearing thin. Green, a wise, practical man gifted with a solid intelligence, could feel that something was wrong with the saxophonist he had hired. Ayler was "acting strange" and Green found him "a bit ridiculous," as he allegedly told the Swedish blues (big-) band leader, Gugge Hedrenius, whom he met and worked with around that time. The pace of things was quickening again for Ayler, anyway. By January 14 he was back to Copenhagen, to be recorded at last for the Danish Radio’s "Jazz 63" program. To accompany him, Wiedemann and Ulrich had called two Danish musicians who had already worked together on a number of occasions, the pianist Niels Brønsted and the very young bass prodigy Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen, as well as an African-American drummer from Rhode Island, Ronnie Gardiner, who had been in Copenhagen for a mere three or four months–hardly a regular working unit, as has sometimes been alleged. The resulting Debut LP,My Name Is Albert Ayler, released in the spring of 1964, has generally received a more favorable critical appraisal than its confidential Swedish predecessor. If the point was to give people a relatively innocuous, or at least gradual, introduction to the world of Ayler, My Name… did that well enough. And yet, if it weren’t for "Summertime", the whole album would amount to little else than a step backward for the saxophonist, especially when compared to the music he had been able to play with Taylor. For one thing, the accompanying musicians this time were really "oblivious to his conception from start to finish"–to redirect Val Wilmer’s appreciation of Ayler’s Swedish sidemen on Something Different!!! Gardiner, who settled in Stockholm shortly afterward, still regards himself as a "swing and bebop drummer." When interviewed by the author, he could only repeat over and over again how new to him, and different from anything else, it had been to play with Ayler. The implication is clearly that the liberties with the jazz conventions taken by the saxophonist made for a rather uncomfortable playing situation: "He was so free for us … one is not used to being that free." However interesting the experience was to the drummer–and contrary to what happened with Spångberg–it had no "liberating" effect on him, and no lasting influence on his musical orientation. As for Brønsted, he frankly admits that he "couldn’t relate to [Ayler’s] style of music" and that he did not like the record at all: "I think it is embarrassing to hear. … But especially my own playing is horrible on that record." The pianist-turned-theosophist (he quit playing music in the mid-’70s) liked Ayler as a person but is skeptical as to the extent of his technical abilities–something he finds very difficult to evaluate in a musician who plays so differently from everybody else. "Because you don’t know if what comes out of the horn comes out voluntarily or by chance. I think a little bit of both. … But I don’t think he was completely in control of what was happening with his fingers … He was more like a big heart trying to expressing himself through a limited ability." Brønsted nonetheless concedes that Ayler had "a certain control of his tone, histone color or what you call it: the harmonic sound of his horn," as well as "a lot of things to express," and that "on ‘Summertime’ maybe, he said some of them." Ørsted Pedersen has not cared to answer this writer’s inquiry about his participation in the My Name… date. Nothing in his rich career as an impeccably "straight-ahead" jazz master-bassist would seem to suggest that he ever had much inclination toward or sympathy for the unconventional approach to that music that Ayler exemplified. A good illustration of the discrepancy between the latter and his assigned rhythm section can be found at the end of "Billie’s Bounce": Ørsted Pedersen seems anxious to counterbalance the effect of Ayler’s solos, built around a sort of highly distorted image of the tune, with a straight re-exposition of its head on the bass–in turn answered with a brief saxophone call and followed by an ultimate bass run. The whole record is a case study in misunderstanding:Ayler’s joyous/melancholic farewell to the old jazz format he was henceforth irremediably estranged from, coupled with the inflexible adherence of the trio to that same format, and their determination to do the job in accordance with the rules of their craft, regardless of the resulting clash.

In a strange temporal shortcut, that somewhat anachronistic occasion was shortly followed by a highly significant encounter. The very next day, or so it seems, the Sonny Rollins quartet featuring Don Cherry was in town for a concert at the Falkonercentret.Interviewed on the air as part of an Ayler birthday celebration program on WKCR, New York, Cherry gave a full description of that eventful night:

… When I was in Stockholm I met Moki, she told me about the saxophone player from America by the name of Albert Ayler, that I must hear. So, that particular night in Copenhagen, Sonny Rollins and I were talking on the stage after we played the concert. And Sonny was that way that he would talk about the music and how we can better the music, and we tried to feel what had happened that night, and we were on the stage talking and everybody had left. … So, as we were talking and had been talking, and the time passed, someone was standing over in the wings, left side of the stage … and they were taking the lights off, and everything off, we had been talking a long time. So, as we walked out towards the left side of the wings, this person was standing there, with a leather suit on, and a sort of white Russian winter hat; it was very cold, one of the coldest winters in years. And he said, ‘My name is Albert Ayler, and there’s a jam session at this club, Montmartre, would you like to go?’ I said, ‘Fine, we go up and change clothes and wego.’ So him and I and Sonny Rollins went over to the hotel and got our keys, and Albert went to my room with me, and I changed, and then we took a taxi to the Montmartre. When we got to the Montmartre, I think Don Byas and Dexter Gordon were there, but I don’t know whose gig it actually was. But they were jamming, it was late at night, I guess it was just a jam session they would have at the Montmartre when there was a concert. And I think Niels-Henning Ørsted was playing bass, Alex Riel was playing drums, and I don’t remember who was playing piano that night. But anyway, I got my horn and we all jammed, Don Byas, Dexter Gordon, and myself. And I think we played some up-tune, a standard, and we all played a ballad. And Dexter Gordon played a ballad and, you know, Dexter says there’s one time in all tenor saxophone players’ life when he must play ‘Body and Soul’! And Don Byas played a ballad, and I think Iplayed‘I Cover the Waterfront’. And then, after I finished playing two choruses of the ballad I was playing, then I heard this sound say, ‘dium dee dee dium …’ and that was Albert Ayler tearing up my spine. And it was the same kind of feeling I had felt when I first heard Ornette in Watts, many years ago. And anyway, that was my night of meeting and hearing Albert Ayler, and I never forgot it. And this is clear, and such a purity and sound, and such a spiritual essentialness, in his playing.

That was it. Within three months Ayler’s name and his unmistakable voice had entered the consciousness of some of the major figures at the forefront of innovation in jazz–including Coltrane, who, while in Copenhagen for a concert on November 21, had met him and possibly heard him play at the Montmartre. Ayler returned to Gothenburg but only to fly back, from there to New York. He did not finish the gig with Green, and the restaurant people called Westerman in Stockholm to inquire whether he was there. All that was left of him at her place was his personal Bible. He was on his way.

-- Marc Chaloin