David Murray

Gut Bucket Swing....

This photo of Sun Ra was taken in NYC in 1978. It was part of Painting with Light: The Photography of Ming Smith, a survey of New York-based artist, Ming Smith. The exhibition premiered last year at the Pippy Houldsworth Gallery.

Ming Smith was born in Detroit in the 1950s but grew up in Columbus, Ohio. In her 20s, she moved to New York and befriended Grace Jones, who invited her to Studio 54 the first night she performed there in 1978.

While in New York, she worked with a wide network of fellow artists, musicians and dancers. She was the first, and for many years, the only woman member of the Kamoinge Workshop, a collective of black photographers based in New York. Here they are in 1973.

This group formed with the joint aim to challenge negative representation of black communities and to develop photography as an artistic practice. In 1975, she was the first African American woman photographer to have work acquired by The Museum of Modern Art, New York. That same year she met and married jazz musician David Murray. She toured with him through Europe and Africa, expanding her portfolio with photos like these.

Ming designed many of David Murray’s early album covers, like these:

And here is a self-portrait on one of my favorite David Murray albums:

This is a great track from that album. AACM veteran, George Lewis, steals the show with his lugubrious trombone:

While in Europe during the late 1980s, I had been reading about David Murray in The Wire magazine, but it wasn’t until after the service when I returned to Monterey, California that I was able to get a hold of his music. Interestingly, it wasn’t until 1991 at the North Sea Jazz Festival in the Netherlands that I saw him live. By then, he had already become a legend.

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From Pomona to NYC 1970s Loft Scene

In 1972, when the director of the Newport Jazz Festival, George Wein, shifted the festival from Newport to New York, he hired mostly traditional players to perform. In response, trumpeter James DeBois, bassist Juma Sultan, and saxophonist Sam Rivers joined a crowd of “new-jazz” musicians at Studio We who decided to throw their own counter-festival in 18 locations across the city. I like this cool shot of trumpeter Ted Daniel outside Studio We at 193 Eldridge Street.

Studio We was one of the earliest jazz lofts. According to Sultan, “The main point is that the lofts offer exposure for musicians. Exposure is what it is all about. You get that only by slowly working your way into the marketplace, or by creating your own showcase, which is what we did.” Other lofts soon followed, like Studio Rivbea, Ali’s Alley and Ladies’ Fort. One of the most important new musicians who came of age in the NYC jazz lofts was David Murray.

David Murray grew up in Oakland and entered the music and journalism program at Pomona College in LA. An independent study class on saxophone tradition from 1958 to the present took him to NYC in 1975, where he interviewed legends like Cecil Taylor, McCoy Tyner, Ornette Coleman, and John Cage. However, it was Dewey Redman that told him to “put down the pen and pick up that horn.” He took Redman’s advice and left college to enter the sub-culture of New York’s jazz loft scene.

He was a quick study. In 1980, the Village Voice named David Murray Musician of the Decade.

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In a David Murray French documentary ''I am a Jazz Man”, he said: “I hope, if I am lucky, that I can represent what is happening now. Right now - in this 21st century. I’m hoping that I can help to interpret and to help somebody to understand what’s going on in this world by the way I sound.”

If you want to learn more about David Murray, watch Parts 1 & 2 of this very interesting, short documentary.

David Murray’s sound is what instantly attracted me to him, when I first heard him on the radio in California. Now, after all these years, I realize that, like Lester Young, Paul Gonsalvez, and Albert Ayler, I could hear David Murray’s voice in his sound.

I think David Murray achieved his goal. Perhaps more than any other living saxophone player, he represents what’s happening now in that Big River called Jazz. What David Murray says to me is that Black Music Matters. I hope the world is listening….

David Murray’s sound is unmistakable in his tribute to another great tenor, Lester Young:

Here’s one more for the road:

Next week, we’ll return to the north side of the Chicago River, where I met Ken Vandermark, Mats Gustafsson and Peter Brötzmann. It was during this time of my Jazz journey that I was really introduced to and then struggled to understand Free Jazz.

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If you like what you’ve been reading and hearing so far on our journey, please share my newsletter with others - just hit the “Share” button at the bottom of the page.

Also, find my playlist on Spotify: From Fred Astaire to Sun Ra.

Feel free to contact me at any time to talk shop. I welcome and encourage that….

Until then, keep on walking….