“We did not only play free music – we just played,” bassist Ubadah McConner wrote of the sessions he ran for three decades at his home in Pontiac, Michigan, a few miles north of Detroit, where he was born in 1939. McConner only came to playing in the late 1960s. By then he was already 28 and had been a hardcore follower of jazz on record, in print and in person for 15 years. When he finally picked up the bass, he did so without any prior training.

McConner never appeared on a commercial recording, but according to informed people in the Detroit area, he was undoubtedly an excellent musician. Earning a living as a General Motors worker, McConner operated at such a distance from the music business that his name is unlikely to ring bells, even for diehard free jazz enthusiasts.