Spiritual Unity

As I've plugged away on Lee Santa's book these past weeks I've listened to a lot of jazz by the musicians Lee photographed in Europe, New York and California in the '60s and '70s.  Some of his earliest jazz photos, which he took while on leave when stationed with the US Army at Baumholder, Germany in 1966, were of Dexter Gordon in Copenhagen, Denmark.

I've been a big fan of Dexter Gordon's recordings for many years, and while Lee's photos from that Denmark date are not the most accomplished the reader will find in his soon-to-be published book, A Journey into Jazz:  Anecdotes, Notes and Photos of a Jazz Fan, they are historically significant.

They, like all the photos in the book, are an important addition to the history of jazz in the US, but they are of course even more important to Lee personally, as they signal the embarkation of an artistic life centered on his two great passions--photography and jazz.

They are important to me as well, because Lee was one of my earliest friends in Portland when we both arrived here from different places in 1977.  Our minds met on the subject of jazz that year, along with basketball and magic mushrooms.

I have to say I think this book will be special.  I've enjoyed editing and designing it and I think it's something I'll always be proud to be associated with--another addition to the list of books here at RBP that causes me to realize why I do the thing I do.

Lee tells the story of meeting Albert and Don Ayler in the lobby of Carnegie Hall on a summer evening in 1968 before the the curtain rose on a show featuring Alice Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders, which Lee was attending, and it is one of the book's many highlights.

The Aylers were in Carnegie Hall that night passing out flyers advertising their upcoming shows--which says a lot about the status of jazz as an art form in the US even in one of its best bygone eras, when one of the world's best saxophonists--equal to Sanders at least, who was playing at Carnegie that night--and his trumpeter brother were having to do their own advance work.

I can tell you that I wasn't real familiar with Ayler's music until I began to work on this project, though I knew he had some influence on Ornette Coleman and Sanders and even gave Coleman private lessons for a time.

I hadn't listened to Spiritual Unity for some reason, which is somewhat embarrassing for an avowed fan of saxophonists to say--especially one who takes a little pride in knowing Gordon, Coleman and Sanders, not to mention Trane.

It's even more remarkable given the heightened status of this 1964 recording among knowledgeable jazz fans internationally.

Albert Ayler died, an apparent suicide, in 1970 at age 34.  Like Spalding Gray many years later, he drowned in the East River.


TS