The New Wave in Jazz LP: Live at the Village Gate March 28, 1965

One of the joke punchlines of 1960's free jazz was: " They call it free jazz because nobody is paying to hear it". It was the New Wave In Jazz and it was not accepted by everyone.

Yes free jazz is a micro niche inside the niche of jazz. Those hardy souls who dare enter the realm of free jazz can gain many rewards, though it is an acquired taste.

 Impulse Records probably came the closest to actually making free jazz a viable commercial music.

John Coltrane's A Love Supreme sold 500,000 records by 1970, a mind boggling number, typically only Miles Davis could command those kinds of sales with a instrumental modern jazz record.

Impulse to their credit, allowed artists like Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders, and Archie Shepp incredible latitude to create new and mostly noncommercial music.

Some of the best albums from this era were from Sanders, who combined many world music elements along with a new age almost hippie culture aesthetic.  His 1969 masterpiece Karma is a perfect example with vocalist Leon Thomas yodeling his was to free jazz immortality.

The pictured vinyl record is a concert album featuring the young studs of the free jazz movement, Grachan Moncur III, Shepp, Sanders, and underrated trumpeter Charles Tolliver and saxophonist Albert
Ayler.

 I am almost ashamed to admit it I paid through the nose for this one, it was one of the last Coltrane albums I wanted for my collection, $80 was steep.

But the near mint vinyl original does sound pretty sweet sonically. The CD remastered releases adds 23 minutes of music to the album from Grachan Moncur III.  Most people who can't get past the abrasive sound within free jazz, can't get to a point where they hear the blues. I know I hear it.

When I hear Albert Ayler I hear a return to the basics, a sound that goes way back to the fields possibly. Funny how the new thing sounds in many ways like the old thing.

Art Blakey and the Jazz Messenger: Hard Bop, Columbia 6 Eye Vinyl, 1957

I can't think of an album more aptly titled than this session from 1957, Hard Bop.

 Hard bop, a term used to describe this harder and more blues based sound opposed to be-bop, which was a lighter yet more complex music that involved rapid chord changes .

Hard Bop the album, on Columbia Records was one of the few Art cut for the label.

 Jackie McLean on alto sax, and Bill Hardman on trumpet offer a front line support that was one of Blakey's more underrated units.

This, along with the RCA Victor album A Night in Tunisia "not the Blue Note Album" are fine example of this band.

The pictured vinyl copy  is one I found at a Catholic charities thrift shop. I remember  that day fondly, as I spent a good 200 dollars in there, with about 50 of the 100 records I found going directly into my collection.

 A bunch of rare big band mostly from Clare Fischer, Johnny Richards, and Stan Kenton. These were all first presses in excellent condition.

Trumpeter Bill Hardman is a name you don't hear much, I think that might be because he played with Blakey in the 50's and again in the 70's, but never appeared on a Blue Note messengers album. I think this has been a big reason he is lost in the shuffle.

Outside of Blakey, Hardman did not lead that many sessions of his own, just seems to be bad luck and circumstance, because he is a fine player in the Clifford Brown tradition.