Some Jazz Records: Sunny Murray Clippings (Part 2)

Comments on recordings from musicians and other actors of the jazz scene. Random and not-so-random listening cues from the archives.

Source: It’s a Raggy Waltz

Max Roach, Max Roach Plus Four, EmArcy MG-36098, 1957, LP.

Sunny Murray was among the many musicians interviewed by Jason Weiss for his Always in Trouble: An Oral History of ESP-Disk’, the Most Outrageous Record Label in America. "At nineteen, a buddy across the street at an after-hours joint said, 'Murray, you’re a drummer, right. Come over here. I got this set of drums. They got left when the police raided everybody.' I went and picked up my first drum set," Murray recounted to Weiss. "I pushed it all the way down Third Avenue. I had found a little teeny room, and the first thing I did was I set them up and put on a Max Roach record loud as I could, and practiced. New York don’t care if you practice!" Telling Dan Warburton about this episode (and a subsequent vision of Sid Catlett), Murray gave indications that the record was Max Roach Plus Four, the first album made by the drummer after the death of trumpeter Clifford Brown.

Cecil Taylor Quintet, Hard Driving Jazz, United Artists UAL 4014 (UAS 5014), 1959, LP.

"Remember that album, they eventually made it John [Coltrane]'s album [under the title Coltrane Time], but originally it was Cecil [Taylor]'s album, Hard Driving Jazz?" Sunny Murray asks in William Parker’s Conversations. The session pairing Taylor and Coltrane took place in October 1958. "The only one who was a little uncomfortable was [trumpeter] Kenny Dorham, 'cause I talked to him about it later. And [drummer] Louis Hayes said, 'You’ve been playing with the crazy man! I like him!' Louis Hayes did some slick shit with CT. He just followed CT’s left hand. I was checking it out, 'cause he felt uncomfortable but he said, 'I was straight with his left hand!' It was beautiful! Don’t go nowhere. Stay there with his left hand! And it came out perfect, you know."

Source: LondonJazzCollector

Herbie Nichols Trio, Herbie Nichols Trio, Blue Note BLP 1519, 1956, LP.

Before Sunny Murray played with Cecil Taylor, the pianist’s drummer was Denis Charles. "When I started to rehearse with Cecil I wanted first to do a good job, and if you listen back to certain records I still was keeping time," Murray said during a Wire blindfold test conducted by Dan Warburton. "I figured out a way mathematically to play time with Cecil. Denis had his way. He got encouraged by Max [Roach] playing with Herbie Nichols." As A. B. Spellman wrote in Four Lives in the Bebop Business, Nichols found little club work and Murray is certainly referring to recordings, 1955-56 sessions first issued as the Herbie Nichols Trio. "I was really hungry to find somebody that could help me move, and in terms of drummers, Max was the closest," Murray continued. "Because at that time he was playing rhythms that beboppers definitely wouldn’t play. I used to ask beboppers to play 3/4 and they refused. The only one they’d play was 'Jitterbug Waltz.' It was John [Coltrane] that brought out 3/4, and 6/8 and 12/8, all those different rhythms. We didn’t even play Caribbean rhythms. The only Caribbean thing the black community knew was [sings] 'Run Joe' [by Louis Jordan]."