Free Jazz fans of WATMM..

Here are some of the free jazz artists I enjoy: John Coltrane, Eric Dolphy, Ornette Coleman, Albert Ayler, Marzette Watts, Julius Hemphill, Oliver Lake, Horace Tapscott, Cecil Taylor, Don Cherry, Roswell Rudd, Grachan Moncur III, Charles Gayle, William Parker, Anthony Braxton, Rashied Ali, Fred Anderson, Hamid Drake, some Pharaoh Sanders, some Archie Shepp, Joe McPhee. (Free jazz is my favourite genre)

How bout you guys who don't just use jazz as a euphemism for old news drop in, embed some YouTube vids and/or have a good discussion about this stuff with me.

woot!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgrQhBTDfhk

I can't say it's my main genre, but I love stuff like Bitches Brew by Miles Davis. Don Cherry is very good too, I've listened alot to Brown Rice by him. I think it is more fusion than free jazz though.

Yeah I don't think Davis was ever really inclined towards Free Jazz. He had a hard enough time dealing with Monk!

I love john coltrane and miles davis.

coltrane's a love supreme was the album that introduced me to jazz.

Fuck yeah, man. Both editions of Ascension kick major ass. So awesome how the CD compiles em both one right after the other.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kr1JUabBx0w

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWiO5SFoh8g

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7iIXoDUczk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZy2s6-erdE

The albums that introduced me to Jazz were Lanquidity by Sun Ra and Black Saint and the Sinner Lady by Mingus

  On 8/11/2010 at 8:23 PM, vproc said:

Fuck yeah, man. Both editions of Ascension kick major ass. So awesome how the CD compiles em both one right after the other.

An impossible challenge whilst on acid! Many years ago I attempted to go the distance with headphones on........ Got to the end of Ascension I and quickly turned that shit off!!

  On 8/11/2010 at 8:24 PM, Capsaicin said:

Black Saint and the Sinner Lady by Mingus

Absolute unadulterated genius. I can't rave enough about this record

  On 8/11/2010 at 8:41 PM, Greg Reason said:

  On 8/11/2010 at 8:23 PM, vproc said:

Fuck yeah, man. Both editions of Ascension kick major ass. So awesome how the CD compiles em both one right after the other.

 

An impossible challenge whilst on acid! Many years ago I attempted to go the distance with headphones on........ Got to the end of Ascension I and quickly turned that shit off!!

 

  On 8/11/2010 at 8:24 PM, Capsaicin said:

Black Saint and the Sinner Lady by Mingus

 

Absolute unadulterated genius. I can't rave enough about this record

I'm proud of yuh, Greg. If I could still do acid, I would certainly want to listen to Ascension while frying.

Not exactly the "free" jazz that you are asking for but in a way it counts:-

http://iris-uti.blogspot.com/2010/08/skip-digging.html

I listen to a fair amount of free jazz. for a while I was flat out obsessed with cecil taylor. more recently I've been into the stuff that's not as purely freeform like mingus, grachan moncur III, jackie mclean (what a great tone he had).

  On 8/11/2010 at 9:09 PM, vproc said:

I'm proud of yuh, Greg. If I could still do acid, I would certainly want to listen to Ascension while frying.

Haha, it's been a llooonnnngggg time since I've touched the stuff!

I'm down.

  On 8/11/2010 at 8:24 PM, Capsaicin said:

Sun Ra

This. And I miss Pharoah Sanders in this Treath.

i fucking love coleman's 'free jazz'. it's like two bop quartets having a fight in stereo. in fact i mostly love the stuff from around then when the term was coined - eric dolphy's 'out to lunch' is fucking amazing. obv the later coltrane stuff as well - you can hear albert ayler influences as far back as maybe even impressions. ayler is one of these people i keep promising myself i'll properly explore one of these days, but i never get around to it.

when it comes to more modern stuff, flaherty/corsano duo are the shit (although they prefer the term 'fire music' to free jazz ). here they are with joe mcphee:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9U0OZpEgs0o&feature=related

chris corsano is actually a scary drummer.

oh yeah, noah howard's the black ark. this was supposedly lost to time until a couple of years ago when some mad jazzhead found a copy in an attic or something. this is an absolutely fucking incredible album.

  On 8/12/2010 at 12:26 PM, Mesh Gear Fox said:

I've never been too sure of the exact definition of free jazz but all "arty" jazz is good as far as I'm concerned

 

my favourite jazz albums share a similar disjointed and angular feel with little sense of resolve, i.e. bitches brew, ascension, out to lunch, miles smiles, point of departure, black saint and the sinner lady and the shape of jazz to come just to name a few. any more suggestions?

if you like out to lunch and point of departure, I would recommend albums like jackie mclean - one step beyond & grachan moncur iii - some other stuff.

for stuff like miles smiles, check out any of the other miles albums with the second great quintet such as e.s.p.

ascension is kind of like trane's version of ornette's album free jazz.

black saint and the sinner lady - I'd love to know if there are any other albums like this. I've got a few other mingus albums, but nothing like it.

one of the great things about jazz is that you can always check out stuff lead by the sidemen. so if you like miles smiles for example you could check out herbie hancock's stuff

  On 8/12/2010 at 12:26 PM, Mesh Gear Fox said:

I've never been too sure of the exact definition of free jazz but all "arty" jazz is good as far as I'm concerned

the term free jazz comes from (although coleman was not a fan of the term)

put it this way - you can trace a path of increasing free improvisation and movement further and further away of melody lines from the home key of a piece. more and more learning rules in order to break them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPkBktxxlGA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1GrP6thz-k

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kotK9FNEYU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4C6YAB-bLCU

and then ornette coleman released free jazz, which sorta didn't have a key and sounded like two jazz quartets having a fight:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrzOzgYL1-o

this inspired lots of other people, like peter brotzmann:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWiO5SFoh8g

you see the difference?

  On 8/12/2010 at 11:40 PM, kaini said:

  On 8/12/2010 at 12:26 PM, Mesh Gear Fox said:

I've never been too sure of the exact definition of free jazz but all "arty" jazz is good as far as I'm concerned

 

the term free jazz comes from (although coleman was not a fan of the term)

put it this way - you can trace a path of increasing free improvisation and movement further and further away of melody lines from the home key of a piece. more and more learning rules in order to break them.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPkBktxxlGA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1GrP6thz-k

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kotK9FNEYU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4C6YAB-bLCU

 

and then ornette coleman released free jazz, which sorta didn't have a key and sounded like two jazz quartets having a fight:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrzOzgYL1-o

this inspired lots of other people, like peter brotzmann:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWiO5SFoh8g

you see the difference?

One problem with this post, lad. Free Jazz came out 3 years before Out to Lunch! (1961 was before 1964)

curses, besides that i didnt do too bad though. i love that dolphy album, he had a really messed up approach to melody

The defining factor in free jazz is that the soloing has no holds barred. In more traditional forms of jazz, the soloing is based around the melody or the chords of the head. Free jazz can have head sections, or be entirely improvised. Both are valid and very enjoyable.

I recommend Otomo Yoshihide's New Jazz Orchestra's tribute album to Eric Dolphy's Out to Lunch! for those who are big fans of the original.

  On 8/11/2010 at 8:21 PM, Greg Reason said:

Yeah I don't think Davis was ever really inclined towards Free Jazz. He had a hard enough time dealing with Monk!

this is true. he brings it up in his autobiography a number of times..i always found that kind of odd because some of his 70s shit is just as out there as anything by coleman or ayler..

  On 8/15/2010 at 1:12 AM, Z_B_Z said:

  On 8/11/2010 at 8:21 PM, Greg Reason said:

Yeah I don't think Davis was ever really inclined towards Free Jazz. He had a hard enough time dealing with Monk!

 

this is true. he brings it up in his autobiography a number of times..i always found that kind of odd because some of his 70s shit is just as out there as anything by coleman or ayler..

yeah but while coleman and sun ra and coltrane (once he picked up the alto) were heading towards interstellar space, miles was getting 16 people on stage and bringing the jazz fusion and the funk and the corea and the mclaughlin, when he wasn't busy helping invent ambient music with in a silent way. it's definitely a point where different jazz people started heading off in wildly different directions though.

so while coleman and the rest went outwards, miles went inwards (stuff like a silent way.) i like that idea. just as avant garde, but in opposite directions.

  On 8/15/2010 at 2:05 AM, Z_B_Z said:

so while coleman and the rest went outwards, miles went inwards (stuff like a silent way.) i like that idea. just as avant garde, but in opposite directions.

well, inward on in a silent way, anyway (the in a silent way boxset is fucking crazy. you can sort of hear him assembling the album from melodic fragments). late 70s miles is best summed up by the live stuff for me though, which is not really that imo, it's more a sort of funk hive-mind

yeah his 70s live stuff is intense.. 'dark magus' destroys