Holy Ghost: The Life and Death of Free Jazz Pioneer Albert Ayler

Albert Ayler (1936–70) was a fascinating, innovative avant-garde jazz saxophonist, who certainly deserves a great book about his life and influence. Unfortunately, this is not that book. New York–based Ayler was less concerned with a traditional or western sense of melody than with creating modernistic “geometric shapes” with sound. He occasionally received positive reviews from his recordings and European tours, but the general public has rarely been able to digest that kind of music. Despite the support from musicians like John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Eric Dolphy, and Albert’s younger brother Donald, he recorded for a label with little distribution power and had trouble keeping a consistent band. He struggled to find a receptive audience and financial success before his mysterious death at 34. Koloda (an attorney with a master’s degree in musicology who is a friend of Ayler’s brother) is clearly a fan, and he’s written an exhaustively detailed biography, the result of two decades of research. There’s a benefit to having so much information in one book, but Koloda tends toward presumptive psychoanalysis of Ayler’s social and musical motivations.