Sunny Murray


James Marcellus Arthur "Sunny" Murray was one of the pioneers of the free jazz style of drumming.

Biography

Murray was born in Idabel, Oklahoma, where he was raised by an uncle who later died after being refused treatment at a hospital because of his race. He began playing drums at the age of nine. As a teen, he lived in a rough part of Philadelphia, and spent two years in a reformatory. In 1956, he moved to New York City, where he worked in a car wash and as a building superintendent. During this time, he played with musicians such as trumpeters Red Allen and Ted Curson, pianist Willie "The Lion" Smith, and saxophonists Rocky Boyd and Jackie McLean.
In 1959, he played for the first time with pianist Cecil Taylor and, according to Murray, "or six years all the other things were wiped from my mind..." "With Cecil, I had to originate a complete new direction on drums." Murray stated: "We played for about a year, just practicing, studying — we went to workshops with Varèse, did a lot of creative things, just experimenting, without a job." In 1961, Murray made a recording with Taylor's group that was released under the auspices of Gil Evans as one side of Into the Hot.
In 1962, Murray went to Europe for the first time with Taylor and saxophonist Jimmy Lyons. During that time, the group made a stylistic breakthrough; Murray stated: "We were in Sweden and we had finally decided to be free... The way Cecil and Jimmy and I were playing, we could absorb any different thing at that period, because we were so fresh!" While in Denmark later that year, the trio recorded the influential concerts released as Nefertiti the Beautiful One Has Come.
That same year, while in Sweden with Taylor, Murray met saxophonist Albert Ayler. With Ayler, the group recorded together for Danish television as the Cecil Taylor Unit, and, upon returning to the United Status, the group performed at the Take Three club in Greenwich Village and at Philharmonic Hall, Lincoln Center in New York City on December 31, 1963 as the Cecil Taylor Jazz Unit, with Grimes back on bass. Murray stated that Ayler "didn't know New York from a can of beans. So, he came over to my house, and I took him to meet Archie and all the cats." Murray continued to play with Ayler, and went on to join Ayler's trio with bassist Gary Peacock.. Murray recorded a number of albums with Ayler, including the historic Spiritual Unity. Val Wilmer wrote that Murray was "one of those crucial figures in jazz who appear just at the time they are needed. His unchained approach to percussion gave Ayler the freedom to travel his own road that had hitherto been lacking." Murray also stated that he played with John Coltrane in 1964, and was offered a spot in Coltrane's band, but turned it down.
Murray went on to record his own compositions under his own name, beginning in 1965 with Sonny's Time Now, which was released on Leroi Jones's Jihad label. The album features Ayler, Don Cherry, Henry Grimes, and Lewis Worrell, as well as Jones, who recites his poem "Black Art". Later, when he moved to Europe, he released three recordings on BYG Actuel. In addition, he continued to play and record as a sideman for a variety of musicians. In 1980, he reunited with Cecil Taylor for the recording of It Is in the Brewing Luminous, and in 1996, he recorded with Taylor again, resulting in the album Corona, released in 2018. He died on December 7, 2017 from multiple organ failure at the age of 81.
A documentary on Murray, entitled , was released on DVD in 2008 by director Antoine Prum.

Style

Murray was among the first to forgo the drummer's traditional role as timekeeper in favor of purely textural playing. Val Wilmer wrote:

Murray's aim was to free the soloist completely from the restrictions of time, and to do this he set up a continual hailstorm of percussion. His concept relied heavily on continuous ringing stick-work on the edge of the cymbals, an irregular staccato barrage on the snare, spasmodic bass drum punctuation and constant, but not metronomic, use of the sock-cymbal. He played with his mouth open, emitting an incessant wailing which blended into the overall percussion backdrop of shifting pulses... is playing often seems to bear little relation to what the soloist is doing. What he did do, though, was to lay down a shimmering tapestry behind the soloist, enabling him to move wherever he wanted."

Concerning Murray's tenure with Albert Ayler, John Litweiler wrote: "Sunny Murray and Albert Ayler did not merely break through bar lines, they abolished them altogether." Amiri Baraka described Murray's playing as follows:

Watching Sonny play, as he swoops and floats, hovers, lunges, above and into the drums, it is immediate... his body-ness, his physicality in the music. Not just as a drum beater but as a conductor of energies, directing them this way and that way. Just scraping a cymbal this time, smashing it the next. Both feet straight out with the bass drums. His rolls and bombs the result of body-mined spirit feel. He wants "natural sounds," natural rhythms. The drum as a reactor and manifestor of energies coursing through and pouring out of his body. Rhythm as occurrence. As natural emphasis...
You hear him moaning behind his instrument, with his other beautiful instrument. His voice. The sound of feeling. The moan, a ragged body-spasm sound, like some kind of heavy stringed instrument, lifting all the other sounds into prayers.

Murray acknowledged the influence of Hermann Helmholtz in developing his unique approach to the drum kit, stating that "Helmholtz gave me the technique I needed." Referring to Murray's rapid fluttering of the bass drum and washes and waves of cymbal noise, bassist Alan Silva stated "...it was the end of swing as we know it. It became so fast it became slow. Sunny Murray is the first drummer who ever played the theory of relativity." Murray described his own musical goals as follows: "I work for natural sounds rather than trying to sound like drums. Sometimes I try to sound like car motors or the continuous crackling of glass... not just the sound of drums but the sound of the crashing of cars and the upheaval of a volcano and the thunder of the skies." At one point he attempted to design a different kind of drum set that would be "more in touch with the human voice in terms of humming and screaming and laughing and crying."

Discography

As leader

with Robert Andreano and Bob Dickie
with Albert Ayler
with Billy Bang
  • Outline No. 12
with Louie Belogenis and Michael Bisio
  • Tiresias
with Tony Bevan and John Edwards
  • Home Cooking In The UK
  • The Gearbox Explodes!
  • Boom Boom Cat
  • I Stepped Onto A Bee
with Art Blakey and his Jazz Messengers
  • Art Blakey and his Jazz Messengers/Sonny Murray Quartet-1968
with Christian Brazier
  • Peregrinations
with Dave Burrell
  • High Won-High Two
  • Echo
with Eugene Chadbourne
with The Contemporary Jazz Quartet
  • Action
with Jacques Coursil
  • Trails of Tears
with Arthur Doyle
  • Dawn of a New Vibration
  • Live at Glenn Miller Café
with David Eyges
  • Crossroads
with Cheikh Tidiane Fall and Malachi Favors
  • African Magic
with Charles Gayle
  • Illuminators
with Charles Gayle and William Parker
  • Kingdom Come
with Burton Greene and Alan Silva
  • Firmanence
with Gunter Hampel
  • Journey to the Song Within
with Khan Jamal
with Jimmy Lyons
  • Jump Up/What To Do About
with Walter Malli
  • Geh' langsam durch die alten Gass'n
with Sabir Mateen
  • We Are Not at the Opera
with Kenny Millions
  • Loved by Millions
  • Mayhem in Our Streets
  • No Money No Honey
with David Murray
  • Recording N.Y.C. 1986
  • A Sanctuary Within
with Mark O'Leary
  • Ode To Albert Ayler
with The Reform Art Unit
  • Subway Performances
with Archie Shepp
  • Live at the Pan-African Festival
  • Yasmina, a Black Woman
  • Black Gipsy
  • Pitchin Can
  • Bill Dixon 7-tette/Archie Shepp and the New York Contemporary 5
  • St. Louis Blues
with Aki Takase
  • Clapping Music
with Cecil Taylor
  • Air
  • Into the Hot : released under Gil Evans's name. The Cecil Taylor Unit appears on three tracks.
  • Cecil Taylor Jazz Unit, The Early Unit 1962
  • Nefertiti, the Beautiful One Has Come, Nefertiti, the Beautiful One Has Come, and Trance )
  • It Is in the Brewing Luminous
  • Corona
with John Blum
  • Astrogeny
with Tchangodei and Sonny Simmons
  • Perfekte Leere - Liebe 2002
with Telectu
  • Quartetos
with Jacques Thollot
  • Thollot in Extenso ; voice on one track
with Clifford Thornton
  • Ketchaoua
with Assif Tsahar and Peter Kowald
  • Ma
with Francois Tusques
  • Intercommunal Music
  • Intercommunal Dialogue 1&2
with Alexander von Schlippenbach'