IMO. even ayler might not have clean sounding chord voicings, but some of the movement/progession in the bass sounds very distinctly jazz to me. i think most people who use it as a blanket term without knowing what hard bop/west cost/big band etc would probably not like 'free jazz' at all (i don't really like it much either), but they'd hear what instruments were playing and how it was mixed and still think it was jazz, even if they hated it