Related:

Thanks to reader David Anderson, I was pointed to some thoughts about Bley from the mindblowing guitarist Nels Cline:

‘When I was working at the record store back when, there was a painter who came in all the time to buy jazz records, which he listened to while he worked. We would often end up in discussions and gently heated bouts of opinion regarding records, and I was always trying to get him to get into Paul Bley. But he always said the same thing: “His stuff is just too…COOL for me”, by which I think he meant both cool as in hip and cool as in icy.

There is no doubt in my mind that Paul Bley was, musically-speaking, the hip kind of cool. Just take a listen and look at the man circa 1966! But icy?… I think “considered” is what describes what may be mistaken for “icy” – his cogent use of space, dissonance, all with a decidedly bluesy, neo-Ellington inflection – which is just fucking cool, yes. But beyond these coolness considerations, I feel drawn into a very personal world, an intimate state of reverie informed by highly developed musicality and restrained yet palpable emotion. Maybe you can dig what I am saying – if you listen…’

…and if you read the whole thing.