African-American tenor saxophonist whose innovations in style and technique were a major influence on free jazz.

As a boy, Ayler studied saxophone with his father, with whom he played duets in church. In his mid-teens he played in rhythm-and-blues bands, and as a young alto saxophonist in Cleveland, he mastered the bop style and repertoire. He began playing tenor saxophone in U.S. Army bands (1958–61), after which his playing became increasingly distant from standard harmonic practices. His first commercial recording, with Danish musicians in 1962–63, included “Summertime,” a masterpiece of dynamic and harmonic contrasts, and exhibited the big sound, multiphonics notes, and overtone cries that came to characterize his work.

Subsequently Ayler not only rejected standard jazz harmonic practices but also eschewed tempered pitch. Virtually all of his mid-1960s playing was in distorted sounds, including low-register honks and a wide, wavery vibrato, resulting in imprecise pitch; furthermore, he usually played his solos at the fastest possible tempos. Even amid these extremes of sound and violent emotion, his soloing was uniquely structured. Despite his radical improvising, the extended themes of his works such as Bells and Spirits Rejoice (both 1965) are in the styles of diatonic, pre-jazz music such as 19th-century hymns, folk songs, marches, and bugle calls. His accompanying bassists and drummers proved equally radical by providing momentum and interplay but not pulse.

Ayler's music was controversial in his lifetime, and he led his small bands only periodically. Nevertheless, his concepts, especially his saxophone techniques, influenced other musicians virtually since he settled in New York in 1963, and his song “Ghosts” (1964) is a jazz standard. In the late 1960s he experimented with jazz-rock fusion music. On Nov. 25, 1970, about 20 days after he disappeared, his body was found in the East River in New York City.