# It didn’t adhere to any of the rules: the fascinating history of free jazz: Videos, Photos

- Link: https://jazzblues.eu/2021/09/28/it-didnt-adhere-to-any-of-the-rules-the-fascinating-history-of-free-jazz-videos-photos/
- Published: 2021-09-28T16:40:35+01:00
- Author: https://JazzBlues.EU

**In documentary Fire Music, the hostile reaction that met the unusual genre soon
turns into deep appreciation and a lasting influence.**

When Miles Davis first heard the music of Eric Dolphy, a key figure in the free 
jazz movement, he described it as “ridiculous”, “sad” and just plain “bad”. Upon
encountering the early sounds of free jazz pioneer Ornette Coleman, Thelonious Monk
said “there’s nothing beautiful in what he’s playing. He’s just playing loud and
slurring the notes. Anybody can do that.” The editors at the jazz world’s bible,
Downbeat Magazine, went further, initially criticising the entire genre as a force
that’s “poisoning the minds of young players”, jazz critic Gary Giddins recalled.

![Alan Skidmore performing in the late 1960s.](https://i0.wp.com/i.guim.co.uk/img/
media/d13d9804ec56203cd9329e4a30c29e0fb63319e4/0_105_3696_2218/master/3696.jpg?resize
=640%2C384&ssl=1)

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Given the revolutionary nature of the music, it’s no surprise that many in the field
greeted it with such disdain. “Free jazz didn’t adhere to any of the rules of what
was considered music at the time,” said Tom Surgal, director of the new documentary
Fire Music, which covers the history and breadth of the movement. “There wasn’t 
a single musical tenet this music did not defy.”

A foundational figure in the genre, Cecil Taylor, had a word of advice about that.“
The same way that musicians have to prepare, listeners have to prepare,” he said
in a vintage interview used in the film. But when the movement started in the late
50s and early 60s, few were in any way prepared. Bebop ruled jazz at the time, exemplified
by well-established stars like Max Roach, Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, each
of whom presented then codified approaches to solos, rhythms and melody. As exciting,
erudite and skilled as their work may have been, their approach had become familiar
enough to spur artists like pianist Taylor and saxophonist Coleman to seek something
new.

Coleman followed a similar trajectory. His first album, Something Else!!!, issued
in 1958, had a daring that would grow exponentially. The title track of his 1960
album, Change of the Century, could be taken literally as it heralded fresh ways
to balance dissonance, cacophony and virtuosity. But the real line-in-the-sand moment
didn’t arrive until the next year, with the release of an album that gave this emerging
style both its name and its mission: Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation. Credited
to the Ornette Coleman Double Quartet, the set featured two self-contained groups
of players performing at once. Each quartet featured a bass and drum player as well
as two wind instruments. On the left channel listeners could hear Coleman on sax
and Don Cherry on trumpet; on the right Eric Dolphy on bass clarinet and Freddie
Hubbard on trumpet. The near 40 minutes of music they spun represented an almost
unbroken improvisation, anchored by a few set sections that, ironically, tended 
to be the most disruptive. Still, the result had its own sense of order and logic,
not to mention a surprising beauty, once you adjust to it. “This wasn’t a musical
circle jerk,” said Surgal. “It was a symbiosis. There’s a lot of interplay and empathy
at work. It’s very much about musicians listening to each other.”

It’s also about their balance of freedom and discipline. “Improvisation is informed
by passion and conditioned by knowledge,” Taylor said in a vintage interview used
in the film.

![Free jazz musician Ornette Coleman performing in 1971.](https://i0.wp.com/i.guim.
co.uk/img/media/8f2ce6eb1afbb3de2087abe3db2caf1dee4b4f77/0_0_683_1024/master/683.
jpg?resize=640%2C960&ssl=1)

Free jazz musician Ornette Coleman performing in 1971. Photograph: Jean-Pierre Roche/
Photo credit: JP Roche. Image courtesy of Submarine Deluxe

As controversial as this work may have been at the time, Surgal said its creators
didn’t feel they were in any way refuting their predecessors. “The free jazz musicians
weren’t casting aspersions on what came before,” he said. “In their minds, they 
were simply creating the next step.”

More, even the wildest of them had firm roots in established genres, informed by
music from the places in which they grew up. In the music of the Fort Worth-born
Coleman, for instance, Surgal believes “you can hear the rough-hewn Texan sound 
of Arnette Cobb or Eddie ‘Lockjaw’ Davis. To me, Ornette was always playing the 
blues. He just had a unique interpretation of it.”

At the same time, the exploratory quality of the music reflected the musicians’ 
experimentation with their own psyches. “A lot of the free jazz musicians, especially
the ones in New York, were experimenting with hallucinogens and that experience 
was informing the music,” Surgal said. “In many ways, this is the undocumented psychedelia.”

Small wonder, the rock musicians of the day took note. The expansive and noisy solos
of late 60s psychedelic rock used some of the principles of free jazz to blow out
the bounds of the blues that first inspired them. The fractured guitars in songs
like the Byrds’ Eight Miles High borrowed from the angularity and skittishness of
free jazz. Leader Roger McGuinn has often spoken of the cues he took from John Coltrane,
who himself moved from bebop to the world of free jazz with his classic, 1966 album
Ascension. Paul McCartney listened to the music of the free jazz saxophonist Albert
Ayler while writing songs for the Revolver album and various Beatles attended shows
by the London-based free improv band AMM. You can hear the clear influence of this
music on British art-jazz bands like Soft Machine as well as on the avant garde 
UK keyboardist Keith Tippett, who channeled the very soul of Cecil Taylor with his
unhinged piano work in pieces like King Crimson’s 1970 single Cat Food.

By the mid-70s, a second wave of New York avant garde players created a scene of
their own. Due to their difficulty in getting gigs, they began hosting shows in 
their own living spaces, spawning the loft jazz movement. Their efforts just preceded,
and sometimes mingled, with the city’s no wave “punk jazz” movement, led by acts
like the Contortions, Mars and DNA.

Not only did the New York-bred free jazz movement affect artists beyond the genre,
it also seeded scenes across the US, in places like Chicago and St Louis, as well
as ones in Europe and the UK. In one case, it may even have had a connection to 
outer space: the free jazz artist Sun Ra claimed that he and his music came straight
from Saturn. Importantly, each of these artists and scenes had their own take on
the music. “Free jazz is not one thing,” said Surgal. “This music is nothing if 
not varied.”

At the same time, the artists found unity in their uncompromising nature. Unfortunately,
that often made it difficult for them to make a living. Club owners were resistant
to it, so gigs were hard to come by, at least in the US. The film chronicles several
attempts by the musicians to organize themselves to gain decent pay, but their independent
natures made coordinated efforts a challenge. More, the movement was marred by the
young deaths of some of its central players during its prime era. In 1964, Eric 
Dolphy died at the age of 36 from issues related to his undiagnosed diabetes. Three
years later, Coltrane succumbed to liver cancer at 40, and Ayler died in a presumed
suicide in 1970 at 34.

By the 1980s, key parts of jazz began to take a more conservative turn. A new movement,
dubbed rebop, aimed to return the genre to pre-free jazz values. Surgal blames the
subsequent refutation of the avant garde on “a conspiracy of revisionists”. He fingers,
in particular, “Wynton Marsalis and his brother Branford who have done everything
they could to minimize the exposure of this music and to denigrate its contributions.
The critic Stanley Crouch led the assault.”

Meanwhile, in the world of alt-rock, devotees abound, from Thurston Moore of Sonic
Youth and Nels Cline of Wilco (who each serve as executive producers of Fire Music),
to members of Superchunk. Today, some young, math-rock groups, like Black Midi and
Squid, have applied free jazz’s dissonance and mania to guitar-oriented sounds. 
However well-regarded many of these musicians may be in certain circles, however,
Surgal sees them as outsiders and so, by necessity, exemplars of the DIY tradition.“
DIY is normally used in relation to punk or hardcore but these guys were the OGs
of that,” he said. “They had to self-release records and find alternative places
to play when they were turned away by the clubs. Their story is a great example 
of self-determined people who believed in a sound they knew deserved to be heard.”

![John Coltrane performing (year unknown) as seen in Fire Music.](https://i0.wp.
com/i.guim.co.uk/img/media/78bd648c32e0c2385ac3fd7a31ae5a42feb8d2b3/0_52_2812_1687/
master/2812.jpg?w=640&ssl=1)

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