NOAH HOWARD

(Above: What might be one of the last photos of Noah Howard, taken in August of this year.) 

Saxophonist Noah Howard died on September 3. There's a great tribute post, with lots of rare music, at Destination: Out. I interviewed him back in 2006, for The Wire, and found him to be one of the nicest guys I'd ever spoken with, right up there with Charlie Haden. The story can be found in my book Sound Levels. Right now, though, The Wire has posted the complete transcript of our conversation at this link. Here's a little bit:

How did you get started when you came to NYC?
I always want to pay tribute to Sun Ra, because when I came to this town I was a really young kid, and I didn't have enough experience, and even if I had, I couldn't get into Basie's orchestra in the reed section, I couldn't get into Ellington's orchestra, and Sun Ra had the only orchestra. So we all played in the Sun Ra Arkestra. And I loved it - he taught me a lot of things. One minute we would be playing a Fats Waller thing from 1926 and then he'd go flip-flop, and we'd be into space. He trained and helped a lot of guys. Marion Brown played in that band, even Pharoah [Sanders] played in that band from time to time. And [John] Gilmore was a master saxophone player, a monster. Me and Marshall Allen, we're still friends. The last time I met Marshall, I was going to Boston to do a gig and he was going to Amherst for a gig. We spent the whole hour on the train talking. Cause we all come out of that era, and we love each other. We're survivors, cause most of our friends have gone to musicville - the upper room.

So how did you get signed to ESP?
Me and Albert Ayler were very good friends. Very, very good friends. And Albert was the star at ESP at that time. Everybody was working on the Lower East Side - we were all working at Slugs, on Third between C and D or something like that. That was the Birdland of the new music at that time. And Albert knew what I was doing, he heard me. I was working my way up from the bottom. They wouldn't give me a week, they would only let me play on Sunday afternoons, and then both Sunday and Mondays, and gradually moving up the ranks like that. The other guys were a little bit older than me, like Pharoah and all those guys, so they got the big slots. So what transpired was, Albert was like the Sonny Rollins of this new label that was putting everybody out. So he said, 'Listen, call this guy and go see him.' Bernard [Stollman] was living on Riverside Drive in the upper 90s. Albert told me to send him a tape, so we recorded some stuff from a rehearsal, he put it on and sat there and listened and after about sixty seconds, he said 'So when do you want to record?' I said, 'Excuse me?' This was on a Saturday, and he said, 'Is Monday okay? Are you available Monday at 10 AM to go in the studio?' So I said yes, and went out shaking. This guy had just offered me a recording contract! We had been rehearsing, the band was together, but it just hit me in the face because I didn't know it was coming down.

And here's the link again. Go check it out. Howard was a smart, funny dude, and his music is well worth your attention. His two ESP-Disk albums, Noah Howard Quartet and At Judson Hall, are available as digital downloads, The Black Ark is in print on CD from the Bo'Weavil label, and some other stuff is out there here and there. Dig in.

GRAPPLING WITH THE ORGAN

I'm not a big fan of organ jazz. Never have been. I tried really hard to like Larry Young some years ago, because I was informed by well-regarded critics that I should, but very little of his output did a thing for me. The Princeton University library had his Mosaic Records boxed set, so I had someone who worked there get it for me and I dutifully explored its contents (six albums under his leadership and three credited to guitarist Grant Green), ultimately being bored by almost everything except a few isolated tracks from Of Love and Peace and Mother Ship, the latter of which wasn't even released in Young's lifetime, I don't think. I also picked up Lawrence of Newark when that was reissued, and though some of its spacey Afro-psych-drone stuff is interesting, I still prefer Pharoah Sanders's and Alice Coltrane's contemporaneous work.

I've heard even less by Jimmy Smith - only two of his Blue Note albums, House Party and The Sermon!, and nothing else. I have a Mosaic Select three-CD set by Big John Patton, and that's got a few enjoyable cuts, especially ones from the latter half of the Sixties when he got a little trippy/adventurous, but overall I just have the same aversion to the Hammond B-3 that I do to straightahead jazz guitar. It's too limited, and most of those limits are self-imposed.

All this is to say that I've heard two organ albums in the last month or so that have surprised the hell out of me.

The first is the latest release from Norwegian avant-improv ensemble Supersilent, simply titled 9. I wrote about it here, and like I said in that review, it's not jazzy or even particularly musical; it's an hour or so of dark, throbbing, sputtering, humming ambient music, best understood as a kind of tribute to early, classic Tangerine Dream. It's really too bad that a) Supersilent never give their albums titles, and b) Coil already took Music to Play in the Dark, because that's what 9 is, really - the best late-night listening since Disc Two of Miles Davis's Pangaea, Neil Young's Dead Man soundtrack or Godflesh's "Pure II," none of which sound anything like it. 9 is one of the most unique pieces of music I heard last year - my favorite Supersilent release, in fact.

The other organ-centered album I've been digging is Decoy's Vol. 1: Spirit, a free improv session featuring Alexander Hawkins at the keys, John Edwards on bass and Steve Noble on drums. I'd previously heard that rhythm section on NEW's Newtoons, where they were backing extremely electric guitarist Alex Ward in a live racket that reminded me of Raoul Björkenheim sometimes and Dick Dale other times. I'd also heard Noble in duet/single-combat with Derek Bailey on an awesome disc called Out of the Past, recorded in 1999 but only released last year. Both Newtoons and Out of the Past made my Top Ten list for the Village Voice's jazz critics' poll, and I'm wondering now if I'd heard Spirit earlier, if it might not have joined them up there. Hawkins is a thoroughly assaultive player, definitely rooted in free jazz but exploring a powerful riffing style closer to Iron Butterfly or Deep Purple's Jon Lord than Smith, Young or Patton, and the Edwards/Noble team is as crushing as ever, seemingly trying to dismantle their instruments as much as play them. The disc has six tracks ranging from just under three minutes to just over fourteen, and every one is unremittingly intense and thoroughly awesome. (There's already a second release, Vol. 2: The Deep, with five more tracks, but that one's vinyl-only, and limited to 300 copies. Luckily, Forced Exposure's PR guy sent me a CD-R, and I'm very much looking forward to checking it out.)

And speaking of Deep Purple...