Slugs' Saloon

Album review

The Slug's Saloon dates are among the recordings that established Albert Ayler's reputation as the iconoclastic legend he was. This May Day performance featured Albert on tenor saxophone, brother Donald on trumpet, Lewis Worrell on bass, Michael Sampson on violin, and a very young Ronald Shannon Jackson on drums. While the recording quality may not be up to some modern-day stereo fascist's standards, there's plenty of fidelity here for most listeners. This is Ayler at his most beguiling and powerful. The set opens with "Truth Is Marching In," which begins with the refrain line from "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" and turns it inside out into a gospel chant before Ayler just turns his saxophone on the audience like he's some Old Testament prophet, screaming and screeching through the middle as Jackson sticks with him every step of the way, triple timing his bull-roaring wail. The theme is one note played in various cadences; each member begins his solo in turn and soon the entire process of music-making has been reversed -- speaking in tongues has been realized, although everyone on the bandstand and in the audience realizes what's happening. Next up is Donald Ayler's "Our Prayer," which begins with a beer polka theme crossed with a carnival song and turns into marching band music, before becoming unglued in an atonal fury of pure gospel shouting and blues hollering to the heavens. Vol. 1 (the stronger of the two) closes with the truly astonishing "Bells." It's true that Ayler only had a few compositions to his name, but it didn't matter since they were all so open they could be reinterpreted a thousand ways. "Bells" is Ayler's masterpiece, beginning with a mournful violin line that's doubled by Donald and then harmonically amended by Worrell and Albert. This is an offering, a funeral march about to happen. The end of the world has already come and the dead are being mourned. The one phrase is repeated over and again, changed little by little, until at five minutes it is a song of joy. And at nine minutes it's a free jazz blowout that is so thunderous there are dropouts in the mikes. By 16 minutes the cover has melted from your skull and the sun is shining from within and without and you have been transformed forever. Yeah, you need this that bad...what are you waiting for?

© Thom Jurek /TiVo