After a few years spent living in Sweden and touring with Cecil Taylor's Jazz Unit, Ayler moved to NYC to begin imposing his revolutionary style of jazz on the world through a number of groundbreaking records. Spirits, recorded at Atlantic Studios in New York City on 24 February 1964, was his first effort. Recorded a few months prior to his landmark album for ESP-Disk, Spiritual Unity (but only released in Europe on Denmark's Debut Records), for the occasion Ayler recruited Norman Howard (a Cleveland-based trumpeter), well-known bassist Henry Grimes, drummer and right-hand man Sunny Murray and the then-unknown bassist Earle Henderson. This historic early disc is essential Ayler.
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