Now Jazz Now

Thurston Moore, Byron Coley & Mats Gustafsson teach you free jazz history

I’ve learned a lot from Byron Coley over the years. We’ve never met (that I know of), but his Underground column in Spin magazine introduced me to two of my favorite records of all time, Borbetomagus’s Live In Allentown cassette (reissued several years ago with my encomium to it, originally published in The Wire, serving as liner notes) and Dredd Foole & The Din’s Take Off Your Skin (which I wrote about here).

Coley and former Sonic Youth guitarist Thurston Moore have been friends and collaborators for decades, and beginning in the late ’80s and early ’90s, they both developed an interest in free jazz. Serious record collectors, they hunted down and proselytized for now-legendary titles and total obscurities alike, at a time when almost nobody else cared about that music at all. Moore’s Top Ten Free Jazz Underground list, originally published in the Beastie Boys’ Grand Royal zine and circulating online ever since, was a crucial shot across the bow, introducing indie/alt boys and girls to screaming saxes and pounding pianos.

A few years later, at the turn of the century, Coley and Moore curated the amazing JazzActuel box, a 3CD compilation of tracks from the BYG-Actuel label that included mind-blowing music from Archie Shepp, Sunny Murray, the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Dave Burrell, Sun Ra, Anthony Braxton, Jimmy Lyons, Frank Wright and many more. This set, which I snapped up the minute I saw it, sold well enough that most of the label’s catalog was reissued on CD and LP; I bought many of the individual releases, as well as contemporaneous titles on ESP-Disk’ and other labels. That same year, John Corbett’s Unheard Music Series launched, bringing to light more incredible titles by Joe McPhee, Peter Brötzmann and many others, and I soaked those in, too.

Now, Coley and Moore (via the latter’s Ecstatic Peace publishing imprint), with help from Swedish saxophonist and fellow record collector — he calls himself a “diskaholic” — Mats Gustafsson, have put together the book Now Jazz Now: 100 Essential Free Jazz & Improvisation Recordings 1960-1980. Neneh Cherry (stepdaughter of trumpeter Don Cherry) and saxophonist Joe McPhee also contribute.

The book was announced in October last year, and I pre-ordered a copy instantly. It finally arrived just before the end of the end of the year, and I’ve been splashing around in it ever since. It’s not a cheap book, but if you’re a fan of this style of music, it’s invaluable. Trust me, no matter how steeped in out jazz you are, there are records in here you’ve never even heard of, never mind heard.

I don’t know how the list was determined (were there meetings? listening sessions? was there voting?), only how it’s presented. First, we get six pre-1960 recordings by Mary Lou Williams, Stan Kenton, Charles Mingus and pianist Spaulding Givens, Lennie Tristano, Sun Ra, and Cecil Taylor that point the way toward what was to come. The list proper begins with Albert Ayler’s Spiritual Unity, released in 1965 but “which we all agreed was timeless,” as Coley explains in the foreword. After that, it’s chronological (and within a given year, alphabetical by the leader’s last name), so for example we get titles from 1963 by Giorgio Gaslini, Prince Lasha/Sonny Simmons/Clifford Jordan/Don Cherry, Jimmy Giuffre, Tom Prehn, and Sonny Rollins.

When you know the territory as I do, it’s kind of fascinating to see which albums made the cut from extraordinarily fecund labels, scenes and eras. For example, of the dozens of albums recorded by the crooks at BYG-Actuel during the summer of 1969, when hordes of US free jazz players descended on Paris for the Pan-African Festival and wound up sticking around for a while, only four are chosen: Dave Burrell’s Echo, Archie Shepp’s Blasé, Jimmy Lyons’ Other Afternoons, and Alan Silva and the Celestrial Communication Orchestra’s mammoth triple LP, Seasons (from 1971). I love all those records, but would be hard pressed to choose between them and the Art Ensemble of Chicago’s Reese and the Smooth Ones, Grachan Moncur III’s New Africa, a couple of other Shepp titles (Poem For Malcolm or Yasmina, A Black Woman), Frank Wright’s One For John… you get the idea.

In a similar vein, a number of non-Albert Ayler albums on the ESP-Disk’ label are included, but they’re titles by Gato Barbieri, Paul Bley, Steve Lacy, the New York Art Quartet, Charles Tyler, and Patty Waters… all worthy, but that leaves out classics like Noah Howard’s At Judson Hall, Frank Lowe’s Black Beings (William Parker’s first recording!), and Frank Wright’s Your Prayer, albums which have brought me tremendous joy for decades.

Anyway. The variety of music that is included is astonishing, and covers all territories; this is not a US-centric book at all. You’ll learn about crucial titles from the UK, the EU (France, Germany, Italy), Scandinavia and Japan, and I guarantee many of them will be brand-new to you, as they were to me. Many of them have been out of print forever, and are likely to remain mythical, since they’re probably not even floating around on whatever sites you download rare FLACs from. But rest assured, copies are sitting somewhere in Mats Gustafsson’s gigantic record vault.

Now Jazz Now is not written like a textbook. It’s written like a series of frantic “you gotta hear this!” emails from your record-collecting buddies. There’s plenty of factual information — personnel, recording dates, etc., etc. — but you also get valuable life advice like “Just play [Peter Brötzmann’s Machine Gun] loud and play often and revelation shall be yours.” Inarguable, and I should know; I’ve been listening to Machine Gun for about 25 years now, and haven’t gotten tired of it yet. The same goes for John Coltrane’s Meditations (over 35 years for that one; I first heard it in high school), Julius Hemphill’s Dogon A.D., Noah Howard’s The Black Ark, Sonny Sharrock’s Black Woman, all of which are included here.

Free jazz has brought me more pure joy than any other form of music, and the more I listen, the more I hear — because (and if you’re a subscriber to this newsletter, I shouldn’t need to tell you this, but just in case) it’s much, much more than “Blow, man, blow! Go crazy!” Anthony Braxton, Ornette Coleman, Julius Hemphill, Roscoe Mitchell, and Cecil Taylor, all of whom came out of “free jazz,” are major American composers who have radically expanded our notions of what was (and is) possible. And their records will make you grin like a maniac and howl at the moon. And as a music fan, isn’t that the best of all possible worlds?

Here are two lists to get you started:

My 10 Favorite Albums From Now Jazz Now

1. John Coltrane, Meditations (Impulse!, 1966)

2. The Peter Brötzmann Octet, Machine Gun (Brö, 1968)

3. Julius Hemphill, Dogon A.D. (Mbari, 1972)

4. Sonny Sharrock, Black Woman (Vortex, 1969)

5. Sonny Rollins, Our Man In Jazz (RCA, 1963)

6. Noah Howard, The Black Ark (Freedom, 1972)

7. Alan Silva and the Celestrial Communication Orchestra, Seasons (BYG/Actuel, 1971)

8. Sunny Murray, Sonny’s Time Now (Jihad, 1965)

9. The Frank Wright Quartet, Church Number Nine (Odeon, 1971)

10. Milford Graves, Bäbi (IPS, 1977)

10 Albums From Now Jazz Now I Want To Hear ASAP

1. Togashi Masahiko Quartet, We Now Create (Victor, 1969)

2. Contemporary Jazz Quartet Featuring Sonny Murray, Action (Debut, 1965)

3. Ric Colbeck, The Sun Is Coming Up (Fontana, 1970)

4. François Tusques, Free Jazz (Disques Mouloudji, 1965)

5. Tom Prehn, Axiom (Sonet, 1963)

6. G.L. Unit, Orangutang! (Odeon, 1970)

7. Michel Portal, Our Meanings And Our Feelings (Pathé, 1969)

8. Percussive Unity Live, Only Change Is Unchanging (Sue Music Group, 1977)

9. Edward Vesala Trio, Nana (Blue Master, 1970)

10. Masahiko Sato Trio, Penetration (Toshiba, 1972)

Buy this book.

That’s it. See you Friday!