The Musical Box

rashied ali.

An extraordinary improvisatory voice on percussion and a free-jazz journeyman for nearly 50 years, Rashied Ali died on Wednesday at the age of 76.

Perhaps not an immediately recognizable name to some, Ali collaborated with such masterful and diverse jazz innovators as Lee Morgan, Albert Ayler, Don Cherry, Pharoah Sanders, Archie Shepp, James Blood Ulmer, Jackie McLean, Gary Bartz and dozens of others. He also operated a New York club from 1973 to 1979 called Ali’s Alley that catered to the avant garde. But like Ali himself, the venue operated without blinders on and kept an open ear out for a variety of adventurous jazz styles.

Topping Ali’s underappreciated legacy, however, will always be his mid ‘60s work with John Coltrane. Like Sanders, he was a key band key band member as Coltrane’s more spiritually inclined music plunged deep into the avant garde. Though limited to roughly three years, the alliance produced a flood of music that included three rugged, exploratory classics: 1965’s Meditations (which featured Ali playing alongside Elvin Johns, the workhorse drummer from Coltrane’s previous quartet), 1966’s Live at the Village Vanguard Again! (which is split between breathtaking versions of Naima and My Favorite Things) and one of the great avant garde excursions of all time, the improvisational drum sax/drum recording  Interstellar Space. The latter was cut five months before Coltrane’s death in 1967.

Ali performed in Lexington in April 1998 as part of a tribute to ‘60s jazz spearheaded at the Kentucky Theatre by the acclaimed bassist and educator Richard Davis. Though full of engaging music, especially a mantra-like vamp on Coltrane’s immortal A Love Supreme, the evening turned ugly with Davis and an audience member exchanging verbal barbs in the midst of the concert. Many patrons walked out. Still, exchanges between Ali and pianist Stanley Cowell possessed an arresting, conversational flow.

Recommended Ali listening: a wonderful 1991 Coltrane tribute with saxophonist Charles Gayle and the extraordinary bassist William Parker titled Touchin’ on Trane, the two Judgment Day recordings from 2006 that Ali cut with his quintet and, for those hungry for the heavy stuff, Interstellar Space.