David Murray

[JohnS]

Still my favourite - new cd out in June.

[Guest donald petersen]

well the japanese must like him a lot also since they released so many discs.

and the italians since black saint/soul note cranked out a bunch.

i don't particularly care for him but it's tough to say he can't play. he does have a very nice breathy (and i guess derivative?) tone on slower tunes.

i would second a rec. for morning song-it ends with a nice duet with ed blackwell.

[RDK]

As for the downloadable emusic offerings, the live Sweet Basil discs are very good and I'm really digging his duet album with Dave Burrell.

[robertoart]

I was speaking to a well known Coltrane-linked saxophonist who was saying the other day he thought David Murray was a complete white critics darling joke who couldn't play at all. I'm passing no judgement myself as I've never heard his music.

He was championed at one time especially by Stanley Crouch.

In the liner notes to 'Home,' Crouch calls Murray the most gifted tenor player of his generation. Could there be a peception that because many players of Murray's generation were given the opportunity to document their music by European and Japanese labels and not US ones that they were only appreciated by white critics and audiences.

[Larry Kart]

I was speaking to a well known Coltrane-linked saxophonist who was saying the other day he thought David Murray was a complete white critics darling joke who couldn't play at all. I'm passing no judgement myself as I've never heard his music.

Not this white critic.

[relyles]

And so the David Murray debate is revived.

[Hot Ptah]

The value of a jazz board like this one is evident from this thread. Here I was, blithely going along for years enjoying David Murray both live and on the more than 100 CDs and LPs of his that I had gathered, and I never knew that I was listening to someone who is not very good. What was I thinking of?

How could I be such a fool?

I like "Santa Barbara and Crenshaw Follies" from "The Hill". After reading this thread, that is the only Murray song that I still like.

[BFrank]

The value of a jazz board like this one is evident from this thread. Here I was, blithely going along for years enjoying David Murray both live and on the more than 100 CDs and LPs of his that I had gathered, and I never knew that I was listening to someone who is not very good. What was I thinking of?

How could I be such a fool?

I like "Santa Barbara and Crenshaw Follies" from "The Hill". After reading this thread, that is the only Murray song that I still like.

[Man with the Golden Arm]

WONDER IF HIS WIFE IS STILL HOT!

[kh1958]

WONDER IF HIS WIFE IS STILL HOT!

I don't think he's still married to the beautiful woman on some of his covers.

[Guy Berger]

I was speaking to a well known Coltrane-linked saxophonist who was saying the other day he thought David Murray was a complete white critics darling joke who couldn't play at all. I'm passing no judgement myself as I've never heard his music.

I have no clue how the white critics feel about him, but the "couldn't play at all" claim is crap -- whoever told you that has no clue what they are talking about.

Guy

[LarryCurleyMoe]

I liked Murray best when WSQ was a fresh concept...Saw them live with Hemphill & co. many years ago at Oberlin's Finney Chapel...Ming was "acting the bitch" in the green room/before & after the gig

"Flowers for Albert" is a very rewarding composition/performance...

But, like so many here, I'm not really blown away by David's playing...some GREAT MOMENTS though...

[RDK]

WONDER IF HIS WIFE IS STILL HOT!

I don't think he's still married to the beautiful woman on some of his covers.

So now even she thinks he's overrated as well?

[Larry Kart]

I was speaking to a well known Coltrane-linked saxophonist who was saying the other day he thought David Murray was a complete white critics darling joke who couldn't play at all. I'm passing no judgement myself as I've never heard his music.

I have no clue how the white critics feel about him, but the "couldn't play at all" claim is crap -- whoever told you that has no clue what they are talking about.

Guy

Leaving me out of this -- and please do -- if that "well known Coltrane-linked saxophonist" that Soul Steam cited is someone whose music you respect (BTW I don't know who that saxophonist is), would you still feel that there is no room at all for disagreement here?

Edited May 2, 2007 by Larry Kart

[Guy Berger]

I have no clue how the white critics feel about him, but the "couldn't play at all" claim is crap -- whoever told you that has no clue what they are talking about.

Guy

Leaving me out of this -- and please do -- if that "well known Coltrane-linked saxophonist" that Soul Steam cited is someone whose music you respect (BTW I don't know who that saxophonist is), would you still feel that there is no room at all for disagreement here?

Yes. In that case I would lament that a talented musician is talking out of his ass.

edit: Let me clarify my statement -- there's definitely room for disagreement about whether Murray is a good or bad saxophonist. But to suggest that the guy "can't play at all" is just plain ludicrous.

Guy

Edited May 2, 2007 by Guy

[Peter]

WONDER IF HIS WIFE IS STILL HOT

Which one? He's been married many times. It's been said that he releases soooo many records in a effort to stay on top of his support payments.

[marcello]

Not a big Murray fan but I thought I would post one of my photos when I felt he was a nice new player.

This I believe, was his first gig in NYC. Charles Bobo Shaw is on drums.

Studio Rivbea - July 1976

Guy - that opinion of the saxophonist that Soul Stream quotes, is not a isolated one at all among fellow musicians.

Edited May 2, 2007 by marcello

[Guest donald petersen]

i keep asking-but what happened to bobo shaw?

he had some nice albums from the mid 70s up until the mid 80s.

i mean i guess abdul wadud, for instance, seems to have vanished from recordings around the same point or maybe i stopped looking but i guess my interest is piqued because i have an LP of bugle boy bop where someone scribbled IS A JUNKIE THIEF under bobo shaw's name on the front cover.

[Soul Stream]

I was speaking to a well known Coltrane-linked saxophonist who was saying the other day he thought David Murray was a complete white critics darling joke who couldn't play at all. I'm passing no judgement myself as I've never heard his music.

I have no clue how the white critics feel about him, but the "couldn't play at all" claim is crap -- whoever told you that has no clue what they are talking about.

Guy

Well...the guy who told me that was a Blue Note artist with a pretty solid musical background. Disagree with his opinion, but he does know what he's talking about...if what we're talking about is music.

[Soul Stream]

I just wanted to add.... That if you like David Murray's music, that's great. Enjoy it. Who cares what anyone else thinks, no matter who it is. I seriously have never heard his music. So dig it, if you dig it! Life and music can't really be judged. Beauty is in the ear of the behearer...

[JSngry]

Whenever I hear a "Coltrane-linked saxophonist" say that somebody can't "play at all", it inevitably means one of two things - that the player really can't play at all, or that the player is not somebody who plays with/from a conventional theoretical basis that has been more or less "mastered".

"Coltrane-linked saxophonists" far too often have this view of music as something that there's only one way to approach, that way being an exhaustive study/interenalization of chords, scales, progressions, etc. In short, theory. To them, the theory is the gateway to the music, and if you don't know all that stuff inside & out before moving on (or not), then you can't "play at all".

That's a notion with which I fundamentally disagree as much as I fundamentally agree. If your worldview is such that you want to make music that "needs" those things in order to speak, then yeah, you better learn it and learn it well. But that's not the only worldview in which valid, absorbing, even "essential" music can be made. Far from it. Even then, though, there needs to be a sense of self-possession relative to the music, that you are doing whatever it is you're doing with some sense of control at some level. And Murray has always had that, even when the results were pretty frantic.

To say that Murray can't "play at all" is absurd. To say that he began as a player with much "homework" left undone isn't. But he's done a great deal of that work, and now his "shortcomings" and/or "strengths" are more better evaluated subjectively than objectively.

The most humorous reaction to Murray's playing I've hever heard was from a "Coltrane-linked saxophonist" who said that Murray "couldn't play" because his shit "didn't make any sense". When I pointed out to him the technical intricacy of Murray's "nonsense", and that you couldn't execute like that w/o a lot of practicing, this cat just went off about how it doesn't matter at all if he'd practiced or not, he just couldn't play, period. Meaning, of course, that the possibility of personal choice as to how music "should" be played doesn't exist, that there's only one set of "rules", and that you either follow them or else you ain't "playing". That is utter and total bullshit. Murray used to be "funny" about changes sometimes, but he was never like that about the saxophone. To me, that matters.

95% (guestimated) of the "Coltrane-linked saxophonists" (hell, let's not limit it to just saxophonists...) that I know/know of are masterful "players" with next to nothing really personal to say. I think they get into this "if you can't do this, then you can't play" trip as a hedge (subconscious or otherwise) against having to confront that. I'm anything but a big "David Murray Fan", but if I have to choose between him & some guy really "exploring" the possibilities inherent in the ChromoMixiaLydiPhononic Multi-Diminugmented scale, hey, if I don't leave both of 'em behind (which these days I most likely will), I'll take Murray. Because at least Murray's music is going to have some conveyance of life outside the practice rooms.

[RDK]

As someone who doesn't play at all, can someone spell out for me just what a professional musician might actually mean (whether you agree with him or not) when he says that someone like Murray can't play at all. I can't fathom what one can possibly mean by this. It obviously has more to do with just owning a sax, blowing into it, and making sounds...

[JSngry]

As someone who doesn't play at all, can someone spell out for me just what a professional musician might actually mean (whether you agree with him or not) when he says that someone like Murray can't play at all. I can't fathom what one can possibly mean by this. It obviously has more to do with just owning a sax, blowing into it, and making sounds...

They mean that his note choice is not grounded in conventional theory. And sometimes they're right, and sometimes I really do think that Murray skates (or has skated in the past) in that regard. It's one thing to go outside the changes with direction, it's another thing entirely to flat out play wrong notes.

They also mean that he's worked up a set of easily-contrived "devices" that he uses in lieu of conventional saxophone technique. And again, sometimes they've been right. But he's refined and expanded a lot of those devices to the point where I think that they can now be considered a legitimate personal vocabulary.

They also mean that his swing is funny. And that's something that still bugs me about him. He can swing his rapid-fire shit like a mofo, but his eighth notes still sound funny to me. And I don't know if he's yet to discover that between the eight & thirty-second notes lie the sixteenth note... But still, he does what he does and I have to think that his sense of swing is his own. If he really wanted it to be otherwise, it would be by now.

They also mean that his time is funny sometimes. And sometimes it is. Sometimes there's a sense of rushing (both within the line & in terms of the structure) in his playing that I find pretty distasteful. But only sometimes.

So yeah, the guy has not been without flaws. And as Larry Kart somewhat noted a while back, if you want to hear this style tenor really played really right, check out Ed Wilkerson & get on with it. But to say that Murray just flat out can't play is so much inbred anality, as is the "white critic's darling" which almost always translates as "Gee, I put in hours learning to play this instrument correctly and nobody cares."

Well hey there, Mister Phil Woods In Waiting, big fucking shit. Try using that "skill" for an end other than itself and we'll share a tear. Until then, go get a gig where people who don't know any different think you're a hero who's gotten screwed over by the world.

Opportunities abound!

Edited May 3, 2007 by JSngry

[Guest donald petersen]

that is what interested me-because it could be true but also someone could have owned the record previously and thought that bobo shaw looked like a junkie on the front (he has those cheesy short braid kind of things) and wrote it for fun. i dunno...where did i buy it? princeton record exchange? academy records? this is weird...i can't remember.

[Soul Stream]

Whenever I hear a "Coltrane-linked saxophonist" say that somebody can't "play at all", it inevitably means one of two things - that the player really can't play at all, or that the player is not somebody who plays with/from a conventional theoretical basis that has been more or less "mastered".

"Coltrane-linked saxophonists" far too often have this view of music as something that there's only one way to approach, that way being an exhaustive study/interenalization of chords, scales, progressions, etc. In short, theory. To them, the theory is the gateway to the music, and if you don't know all that stuff inside & out before moving on (or not), then you can't "play at all".

That's a notion with which I fundamentally disagree as much as I fundamentally agree. If your worldview is such that you want to make music that "needs" those things in order to speak, then yeah, you better learn it and learn it well. But that's not the only worldview in which valid, absorbing, even "essential" music can be made. Far from it. Even then, though, there needs to be a sense of self-possession relative to the music, that you are doing whatever it is you're doing with some sense of control at some level. And Murray has always had that, even when the results were pretty frantic.

To say that Murray can't "play at all" is absurd. To say that he began as a player with much "homework" left undone isn't. But he's done a great deal of that work, and now his "shortcomings" and/or "strengths" are more better evaluated subjectively than objectively.

The most humorous reaction to Murray's playing I've hever heard was from a "Coltrane-linked saxophonist" who said that Murray "couldn't play" because his shit "didn't make any sense". When I pointed out to him the technical intricacy of Murray's "nonsense", and that you couldn't execute like that w/o a lot of practicing, this cat just went off about how it doesn't matter at all if he'd practiced or not, he just couldn't play, period. Meaning, of course, that the possibility of personal choice as to how music "should" be played doesn't exist, that there's only one set of "rules", and that you either follow them or else you ain't "playing". That is utter and total bullshit. Murray used to be "funny" about changes sometimes, but he was never like that about the saxophone. To me, that matters.

95% (guestimated) of the "Coltrane-linked saxophonists" (hell, let's not limit it to just saxophonists...) that I know/know of are masterful "players" with next to nothing really personal to say. I think they get into this "if you can't do this, then you can't play" trip as a hedge (subconscious or otherwise) against having to confront that. I'm anything but a big "David Murray Fan", but if I have to choose between him & some guy really "exploring" the possibilities inherent in the ChromoMixiaLydiPhononic Multi-Diminugmented scale, hey, if I don't leave both of 'em behind (which these days I most likely will), I'll take Murray. Because at least Murray's music is going to have some conveyance of life outside the practice rooms.

.o.k...my 'coltrane-linked' saxophonist is George Braith...