Sunny Murray

James Marcellus Arthur "Sunny" Murray (September 21, 1936 – December 7, 2017) was an American musician, and was one of the pioneers of the free jazz style of drumming.

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, "[f]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.

(Bassist Henry Grimes was supposed to join them, but fell ill at the last moment. ) 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.

(According to Murray, after hearing Taylor's group perform, Ayler approached them and said "I've been waiting for you, man. You're the guys I've been waiting for." He also recalled that Taylor "jumped half out of his chair" the first time Ayler played with the group. ) With Ayler, the group recorded together for Danish television as the Cecil Taylor Unit (the track "Four," featured on the Ayler box set Holy Ghost, was recorded during this time), and, upon returning to the United States, the group (with Ayler) 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.

(The concert also featured Art Blakey and The Jazz Messengers and the John Coltrane Quintet featuring Eric Dolphy.) 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 (Shepp) 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".

(Murray stated "It’s a strange record because Albert and Don [Cherry] are playing like this [makes screeching sound]." ) 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.

A documentary on Murray, entitled Sunny's Time Now: A Portrait of Jazz Drummer Sunny Murray, was released on DVD in 2008 by director Antoine Prum.

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 (hi-hat).

He played with his mouth open, emitting an incessant wailing which blended into the overall percussion backdrop of shifting pulses... [H]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 died on December 7, 2017, from multiple organ failure at the age of 81.