I'm still thinking about/reading about/listening to those early Art Ensemble of Chicago recordings from Paris.
George Lewis' A Power Greater That Itself is a fascinating book detailing the history of the Art Ensemble and the AACM, as well as the socio-political landscape and atmosphere of the times, but it's strangely non-descriptive of the music itself. If you were unfamiliar with the sound (and if so, then why are you reading that book?), you'd understand that the music was "original" "outsider" music collectively improvised by the ensemble, but you still wouldn't know what it actually sounded like. Lewis says that it wasn't the same as the "free jazz" of New York in the 1960s and that it incorporated many influences from modern European composers to Dixieland jazz to blues, funk, and rock, but the more elements added to the list, the less clear it is what it actually sounds like.
Fools rush in where wise men fear to tread, so I'll foolishly attempt to describe the indescribable. But where to start? Comme À La Radio, presented yesterday, was really French singer Brigette Fontaine's record with supporting instrumentation from the early Art Ensemble, but not really representative of their sound. It seems logical to start with the first recording under the Art Ensemble name, but which was that?
The early Art Ensemble and other AACM musicians recorded prolifically while in Paris. The French label BYG, aware of the unique opportunity provided by all those Chicago musicians residing in Paris, declared their intention to record 20 albums in one month. According to Lewis, "barely a month after their arrival in Paris," the Art Ensemble recorded their first album on July 7, 1969. "Four other Art Ensemble recording sessions quickly followed, including two for BYG, one for Polydor, and one for Le Chant du Monde."
The July 7 session resulted in the album People In Sorrow, recorded at Boulogne-Billancourt, a wealthy and prestigious commune in the western suburbs of Paris. People in Sorrow was first released in France at the end of 1969 on the Pathé label, then reissued in late 1971 in the US by Nessa.
However, BYG beat Pathé to the punch and recorded the Art Ensemble's A Jackson in Your House on June 23, 1969 at Studio Saravah in Paris, a couple weeks before the People In Sorrow session. An indication of how early a release Jackson was for BYG is its catalog number, BYG-2 (BYG-1 was Mu - First Part, a collaboration between Don Cherry and Ed Blackwell).
On June 26, three days after the Jackson session, the Art Ensemble recorded The Spiritual and Tutankhamun at Polydor Studios (Dames II) in Paris. However, The Spiritual wasn't released until 1972, and Tutankhamun until 1974, both on the Freedom (later, Arista Freedom) label.
That's three albums recorded before People In Sorrow, which is nonetheless still widely considered the "first" Art Ensemble of Chicago record. Consistent with Lewis' account, All Music and Discogs both list People In Sorrow first, while Wikipedia correctly lists it after A Jackson In Your House, The Spiritual and Tutankhamun.
But still, what does the music actually sound like? A Jackson In Your House opens with the title track. The very first riff, the opening to the LP and the world's first taste of the Art Ensemble, is a trumpet line that sounds not unlike Abblasen, the trumpet fanfare played by Wynton Marsalis and used as the theme by CBS News for their Sunday Morning broadcast. This is immediately followed by the sounds of the other musicians laughing through their instruments, accompanied by vaudevillian honks of a bicycle horn. And this, in turn, is followed by 90 seconds of near silence, but if you listen very closely, you can hear the opening theme repeated very softly on a vibraphone or some similar instrument. It's quite audacious for a piece to demand such close listening for well over a minute after only 10 seconds of introduction, but welcome to the AACM.
Soon the bass emerges from the near silence and leads into a repeat of the initial theme, followed this time by actual laughter. It's clear that no one in the studio is taking any of this too seriously. The bass carries things along, and soon a raspy voice starts singing, "One, two, three, there's a Jackson in your house" and other nonsense, followed by more laughter and hilarity. Someone says, "Jackson, that cat is something!" The theme is revisited as a New Orleans style two-step bounce and soon is restated again in a bluesy riff, all on the foundation of the bouncing bass lines. All along, various members of the Ensemble get a lick or two in, usually mockingly. It's a parody of a Dixieland funk genre that doesn't actually exist. It's humorous and fun, and the Art Ensemble are advising us not to take any of it too seriously.
Get In Line, the next cut, starts off like a military drill, with someone shouting "Soldiers, get in line!" and a chant of "Step fore! Step fore!" but after this brief taste of discipline, the track evolves into chaotic free-jazz blowing, with both some tasty licks and continued shouts of "Yeah! Yeah!" over the anarchy. The whole thing soon dissolves into cymbal washes and other percussion for the closing 90 seconds. Those listeners charmed by the carefree lightness of the first track are now running out of the room, while those who dismissed the opening as nothing but goofy parody are now coming back in.
The Waltz is, in fact, a miniature one-minute parody, a boozy, woozy composition similar to Carla Bley's Drinking Music (1969) or Frank Zappa's American Drinks and Goes Home (1967).
Erica closes the first side of the LP with some spoken-word poetry over quiet instrumentation. Quirky little notes occasionally are heard on harmonica and other instruments that belie the darker mood of the recited words, before the saxophone and bass take the lead from the speaker but continue the pensive and moody feel of the poem. It's free in the sense that there's no central melody to the piece, but unlike the chaos of Get In Line, there's a lot of quiet space between the gentle notes.
The final piece, Song for Charles, is an extended 17-minute track. I imagine it was probably the entire B side of the original vinyl LP. The composition is in memory of Charles Clark, a bass player who contributed to early AACM efforts before prematurely passing. Fittingly, it's opens with a showcase for Malachi Favor's bass, with trumpet and sax lines elegantly presenting the elegiac theme. The piece soon dissolves into abstract bits and snippets of words, sounds, and random instruments, and midway through, someone subversively demands, "Give me a hand with these bodies up in the basement." There's some bowed bass and jazzy trumpet lines, some marimba and some kalimba, but as soon as you start paying attention to any one part it fades away and something else emerges. It's playful in the same sense as the opening track, but even slower and quieter.
So what I'm trying to describe is almost the indescribable. It's not a jazz record, at least in any known genre of the music, and it's certainly not a pop or rock record. It's not in the European classical tradition, although one can hear influences of iconoclastic composers like Debussy and Ives. It's not any of these but it has parts of all.
And that's A Jackson In Your House, the actual first recording by the Art Ensemble of Chicago. It's by turns playful, irreverent, introspective, and moody. The French loved it because it was the newest new thing in jazz and it was happening right there in Paris. And it wasn't more of that Anglocentric rock music, either. True, it was American, but it was African-American and was open to association with the black power movement and the Black Panthers, which made the post-May '68 radicals happy. Man, that Jackson cat was something!
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