Paul Bley recorded Ballads in New York in 1967, two years before ECM existed, and the label released it in 1971 as its tenth title. Its three long pieces by Annette Peacock are slow, open free ballads. ECM describes these recordings as capturing "the sound of a genre being born", and many listeners hear the label's own sound starting here.
Two piano trios share the record, both with Barry Altschul on drums. Gary Peacock plays double bass on the session of 28 July 1967, Mark Levinson on the session of 31 March. Walt Mundkowsky, writing in La Folia, notes that the music was first planned as a double album for ESP. This half became the ECM release, and the rest appeared later on Bley's own label as Virtuosi.
Side one of the original LP holds Ending, more than seventeen minutes long despite its title. Bley carries most of the thematic material, returning to a few phrases and leaving space after them, while Peacock and Altschul move around him rather than keeping strict time. The piece builds slowly and then loses energy, which Tyran Grillo of ECM Reviews heard as "a broken dam letting out its final drops". On the second side, So Hard It Hurts runs over twelve minutes. Altschul plays more on the drum heads than the cymbals, Levinson takes a larger part, and Bley breaks Peacock's lines into fragments that stay unresolved. Mundkowsky described the tunes as skeletal, stretched almost to the breaking point, and compared the bleak mood to Shostakovich's string quartets.
In her account quoted by ECM, Annette Peacock recalls critics describing this music as "sparse, understated, minimal, radically lyrical". The free ballad, she adds, became requisite for players working with the label. Opinion has never been unanimous, and Eugene Chadbourne in AllMusic admired the sound while doubting the austerity rewards close listening. Reviewing the 2019 reissues in Jazz Journal, Michael Tucker wrote: "If I had to choose one album as key here, it would be Paul Bley's Ballads."
This CD edition of ECM 1010, first released in 1971, was reissued on 18 January 2019 in the Touchstones series. ECM launched the series in its 50th anniversary year to bring back key catalogue titles in cardboard fold-out sleeves.
