Featured Label,
The New Wave of Jazz: Free and Avant-Garde Sounds of 1960's Impulse! Records
Established by Creed Taylor in 1960, the catalogue of Impulse! Records features some of the most forward-thinking jazz music of its time. Though the volume of its output has waned in recent years - save for some excellent up-and-coming artists like Sons of Kemet - the first decade of Impulse's existence was hugely prolific, and many of its first recordings featured soon-to-be influential artists like Albert Ayler, as well as many featuring heavy involvement from John Coltrane. While there was still plenty of commercially-minded jazz music released on the label during this time, that first 10 years also saw the release of many still-revered free, avant and spiritual jazz recordings - and we've compiled a list of some of our favourites here.
Abstract New Sounds: The House That 'Trane Built
Just a quick disclaimer: you're going to see quite a bit of Coltrane here, in no small part due to the massive contributions he made to Impulse! during the label's first few years, both on his own and others' recordings. Ascension marked a significant change in Coltrane's output, an ultimate tipping point into the complete avant-garde sounds, eschewing the comparatively more traditional bop-influenced music he'd previously been associated with. Originally released twice with two different takes, modern releases of Ascension include both the 'Edition I' and 'Edition II' recordings.
Available Format: CD
The enigmatic Charles Mingus' first release on Impulse! was the ambitious avant-garde ballet The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady, in equal part drawing on influences from big band and Third stream, realised with a twelve-piece ensemble carefully arranged by Mingus. Described by Mingus himself as "ethnic folk-dance music", it's one of his most visceral releases and a true masterwork.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC
Like I said, lots of Coltrane on this list - but we couldn't miss out A Love Supreme. Releasing only a year before Ascension, this quartet recording is a through-composed, four-part suite, and by no exaggeration Coltrane's most beloved and influential recording; besides enlightening others to the possibilities of jazz music as a whole, it also marks one of the first codified spiritual jazz recordings.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Deluxe Edition
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC
Archie Shepp's 1965 album Fire Music gave rise to a musical movement among Black musicians under the same name, with the material itself ranging from the positively haunting 'Malcolm, Malcolm Semper Malcolm' (dedicated to Malcolm X), probably the most rough-around-the-edges version of 'The Girl From Ipanema' you'll ever hear (it's a good thing, I promise), to a challenging rendition of Duke Ellington's 'Prelude to a Kiss'.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC
Referenced by its title, four of the five tracks on Four for Trane are re-workings of Coltrane tunes, rearranged by Archie Shepp and his trombonist Roswell Rudd. The line-up on Four for Trane is hardly nothing to sniff at either, with flugelhornist Alan Shorter (brother of Wayne), alto player John Tchicai (whom Shepp had worked with in the New York Contemporary Five), Reggie Workman and Ornette Coleman regular drummer Charles Moffett forming the band here. This release was the first of many for Shepp on Impulse!, followed quickly by the more original-focussed Fire Music the following year.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC
Releasing the year after the passing of her husband John, Alice Coltrane's first solo album A Monastic Trio draws heavily on the spiritual avant-garde jazz sounds that had been brewing on the label ever since A Love Supreme. All the works here are original, and Alice plays both piano and harp throughout the record, as well as being joined by saxophonist and Coltrane disciple Pharoah Sanders on the first track 'Ohnedaruth'.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC
Albert Ayler's first recording for Impulse! - thanks to John Coltrane's recommendation - is a collection of recordings taken from the Village Vanguard and Village Theater in New York, between 1966 and 1967; Ayler even plays alto rather than the tenor sax he's normally known for in tribute to Coltrane. This is heavy stuff - violent music and not always easy to digest, but if your ears are tuned for it you'll find some of Ayler's best early work.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC
The ambitious Liberation Music Orchestra was the first album that bassist Charlie Haden ever recorded as bandleader, and did so with a full twelve-piece backing band that included Paul Motian, Carla Bley and Don Cherry. Fuelled partly by Haden's fascination for Spanish Civil War tunes - you'll find 3 of those on this album - Liberation Music Orchestra also contains material credited to close Haden collaborator Ornette Coleman, as well as Bley. An intriguing mixture of Spanish folk songs, contemporary avant-garde and free jazz, it made for quite the first impression for Haden back in 1970 (I realise I'm breaking the rule a little here, but it was recorded in 1969!).
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC
As Archie Shepp paid tribute to John Coltrane, so too did Marion Brown to Shepp; though the Shepp material in question here is only half the package. Three for Shepp also features three Brown originals informed in equal part by his contemporaries in the avant-garde and the African American folk music; though Marion Brown's music was often overshadowed by some of his more commercially successful counterparts on Impulse!, it still remains some of the strongest in its catalogue.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC
One of Coltrane's key disciples also had quite the run of albums on Impulse! himself; Karma is pure spiritual jazz in the vein of A Love Supreme, and while Sanders didn't take as much from Coltrane ideologically as say, Archie Shepp, he expanded greatly on his musical technique - particularly Coltrane's signature 'Sheets of Sound' style of soloing.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC
Coltrane's final recording before his death is also one of his most extreme; a duo recording with drummer Rasheed Ali, Interstellar Space is comprised of an extended suite that was - from the sounds of it - put together as a somewhat spur-of-the-moment session when Ali was visiting Rudy Van Gelder's recording studio.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC
Joshua Lee - Jazz Content
