David Murray

Murray has worked with a number of jazz’s most important drummers, including Rashied Ali, Roy Haynes, Andrew Cyrille, Steve McCall, Billy Higgins, Ed Blackwell, Sunny Murray, Ralph Peterson, Hamid Drake and more. This 1991 duo CD was his sole encounter with percussion legend Milford Graves, and it’s a standout even in his vast discography. Graves, who started out as a trap drummer in Latin bands, is always more about the up-top than the down-low; he rumbles across the toms and snare, tagging the cymbals as he goes, but kicks the bass drum much more rarely, and he’s not interested in “time” as much as “pulse”; his drumming is built around human biological rhythms, so listening to it for long enough feels like it changes the way your blood rushes through your veins. A linear, melody-based player like Murray is going to be left with only one option: to float on top of the endlessly swirling percussive ocean, occasionally matching Graves’ energy but mostly pursuing his own interests, playing long winding lines, often ending in high-pitched squeals, with the drums as a constant backdrop.

Gwo-ka is a polyrhythmic folk music, played on hand drums, originating on the islands of the Guadeloupean archipelago in the Francophone Caribbean. It dates back to the 17th century, but modern gwo-ka performers like drummer and vocalist Klod Kiavue have updated the music somewhat, adding electric bass, congas, and djembe. Gwotet is Murray’s third collaboration with Kiavue, and the music is sweeter and rougher by turns than on 1998’s Creole or 2002’s Yonn-Dé, where they first took the band name David Murray & The Gwo-Ka Masters; some pieces feature as many as eight horns, and gentle, almost highlife-esque guitar. But Murray’s solos frequently reach screaming heights of ecstasy, and when special guest Pharoah Sanders turns up on “Ouagadougou” and “Ovwa,” the energy level goes through the ceiling.

This 1992 release is one of Murray’s mellowest non-ballad releases; it’s an organ jazz date with Don Pullen at the keys, Stanley Franks on guitar, and Andrew Cyrille on drums. Cyrille’s innate precision and sharp, cracking snare are perfect for these bluesy, soulful grooves, and Franks mostly stays out of the way as Pullen and Murray dig deep without ever exploding the way the listener might expect. This is old-school soul jazz in the mid ’60s Blue Note tradition, with just a few avant-garde outbursts to keep things exciting.

One of David Murray’s best-loved groups comes roaring out of the gate on their 1980 debut. The front line consists of Murray on tenor sax and bass clarinet, Henry Threadgill on alto sax, Olu Dara on trumpet, Lawrence “Butch” Morris on cornet, and George Lewis on trombone, with pianist Anthony Davis, bassist Wilber Morris, and drummer Steve McCall in support. The five compositions, all by Murray, combine the fullness of Ellington with raucous free jazz intensity. Opener “The Fast Life” lives up to its title, exploding at punk-rock speed, and even the title piece, a romantic ballad written for Murray’s wife at the time, boils with intensity.

David Murray grew up in a Pentecostal family, so this 1999 album of hymns and gospel songs, with Fontella Bass on lead vocals, makes sense. The band features trumpeter Hugh Ragin (whose solos might be more thrilling than Murray’s), guitarist Stanley Franks, keyboardist Jimane Nelson, funk bassist Clarence “Pookie” Jenkins, drummer Ranzell Merritt and percussionist Leopoldo Fleming. The opening version of “How I Got Over” will have the congregation on its feet, and much of the rest of the album is traditional and equally well-known material like “Nobody Knows The Trouble I’ve Seen,” “A Closer Walk With Thee,” and of course “Amazing Grace,” which Murray plays on bass clarinet.

Murray’s big band wasn’t that big — only 11 players — but the lineup was absolutely stacked: Olu Dara on cornet, Baikida Carroll on trumpet, Vincent Chancey on flugelhorn, Craig Harris on trombone, Bob Stewart on tuba, Steve Coleman on soprano and alto saxes, John Purcell on alto sax and clarinet, Rod Williams on piano, Fred Hopkins on bass, Billy Higgins on drums, and Lawrence “Butch” Morris conducting them. There’s a little bit of Ellingtonian swing, a little bit of New Orleans polyphony, and a whole lot of Murray soloing with the band swaying behind him.

When one considers how much Coleman Hawkins is buried underneath the Albert Ayler-isms in David Murray’s saxophone style, it’s astonishing that he didn’t record the older man’s signature piece, “Body and Soul,” until 1984’s Morning Song. He returns to the standard on this 1993 quartet date with pianist Sonelius Smith, bassist Wilber Morris and drummer Rashied Ali. He’s in a supporting role on the title track, backing singer Taana Running and delivering a mellow solo that never tries to outdo Hawkins’ immortal 1939 recording. The album’s other highlights include the opening “Slave Song,” the pounding “Remembering The Chief Of St. Mary’s,” the bluesy “Odin,” and the closing “Cuttin’ Corners,” a duo with Ali that’s an obvious tribute to the drummer’s work on John Coltrane’s Interstellar Space.

This 2016 trio session turned out to be pianist Geri Allen’s final recording — she died in 2017 — but the feeling throughout is joyous and celebratory, the sound of three musicians feeling their individual and collective power, particularly Terri Lyne Carrington, who’s one of the hardest-hitting drummers around. On a version of Ornette Coleman’s “Perfection,” they’re joined by trumpeter Wallace Roney, trombonist Craig harris, and bassist Charnett Moffett, but otherwise it’s wall-to-wall power trio action (punctuated by multiple thrilling sax-drums and piano-drums duo passages).

Murray’s second album, released in 1976 and reissued on CD at twice its original length in 1991, is a live quartet performance from the Ladies’ Fort, one of the better-known New York performance spaces of the loft era. Murray, joined by trumpeter Olu Dara, bassist Fred Hopkins and drummer Phillip Wilson, churns through seven pieces, several of which he would re-record many times. As the album’s title hints, there’s a lot of Albert Ayler in his melodies and his early style, but the music swings pretty hard at times, too, pointing to the traditionalism that would manifest more and more strongly in the ’80s.

This 1986 trio album, featuring bassist Richard Davis and drummer Joe Chambers, is an interesting one-off. Murray never recorded with this rhythm section again, and they took him into different zones than he would explore with his quartet or octet. Davis, a brilliant bassist who’s worked with everyone from Andrew Hill to Van Morrison (he was the de facto bandleader on Astral Weeks), delivers a stunning bowed solo on Murray’s “Santa Barbara And Crenshaw Follies”; later, the trio romp through Duke Ellington’s “Take The Coltrane” and Chambers switches to vibes on a lovely version of Billy Strayhorn’s “Chelsea Bridge.”