1965 · Album
Before There Was Sound
Recorded 1965 (shortly after AACM's first meeting in May 1965) · Nessa Records · Released: 2011
The AACM's First Breath, Forty-Six Years Later
The band was already blazing its own trail, even before the world knew to listen.
Before There Was Sound arrived in 2011 as a ghost transmission from 1965. No one heard it when it was recorded. The session sat in the WUCB radio station archive for nearly half a century before Roscoe Mitchell and Nessa Records exhumed it, and when it finally surfaced, critics understood immediately what they were holding: the AACM's birth certificate, taped just months after the organization's first meeting. Chicago Reader critic Margasak placed it honestly—not as groundbreaking as what followed, but evidence that the trail was already being blazed. John Litweiler, writing for Point of Departure, caught something deeper: "Here's one to gladden the heart, a CD full of song, swing, youth, energy, creativity." He'd waited years to hear this music and found it mattered more musically than historically.
The quartet—Mitchell on saxophone, Fred Berry on trumpet, Malachi Favors on bass, Alvin Fielder on drums—had been working together for close to a year when Fielder brought them into the studio. They were young, hungry, and already thinking past bebop. The pieces breathe. "Mr. Freddy" dedicates itself to Berry's playing, and "Jo Jar" honors Joseph Jarman, absent from the session but present in spirit. This is collective music before the AACM made that phrase essential.
Where this sits in Mitchell's catalog is complicated. It predates Sound (1966), his official debut, but only in time, not in release. Listeners approaching Mitchell for the first time should start with Sound. This record is for those who've already heard what came next and want to witness the moment before it all accelerated. It's the sound of four musicians finding each other.
