A FIRESIDE
CHAT WITH DAVID MURRAY
Being
a fan of tenors, I have long been a devotee of David Murray. Maliciously
maligned for his significant documentation
in the Eighties, Murray scaled down his recording output, which is quite
possibly one of the most frustrating things about this music. It is one
thing when Wynton puts out ten CDs in one year and they sound virtually
alike and are about as interesting as a summer blockbuster, but critics
should put their heads in the sand for limiting or even second guessing
a David Murray, who is the Madonna of jazz, reinventing himself in a contemporary
union with the times. I spoke with Murray on his recent and long awaited
return to Los Angeles and he spoke candidly about his distaste for the
current musical environment, his disagreement with the philosophy of Lincoln
Center and its standard bearer, the before mentioned Wynton, and his latest
Justin Time recording, unedited and in his own words.
FJ:
Let's start from the beginning.
DAVID
MURRAY: Let's see. I was playing music, I started taking lessons when
I was about five on piano. My mother was a pianist and she sent me to
a woman who was also the same teacher of Jerome Richardson twenty-five
years before in Berkeley, California. Anyway, when I was nine, I got a
saxophone in school, an alto sax and that night, I played in church. I
tried to play in church. My mother was a pianist in church and my father
was a guitarist. People suffered through listening to me and after a few
weeks, I could finally hold a tune and I was also studying in school.
The saxophone came pretty easy to me, I guess, after the initial few weeks
of learning how to blow it and learning all the notes. I had always been
watching my brother play the clarinet, so I kind of had an idea of how
it blew and what fingers would go on what keys from watching him play
the clarinet. So that was helpful.
FJ:
What troubles you about the current state of the music?
DAVID
MURRAY: I'm like a throwback or something. From my understanding of when
cats were coming up, blowing their horns in the Forties and in the Fifties
and Sixties, the whole criteria was to try and develop your own sound.
If you didn't have anything else, you would have at least your own sound.
That was the thing to have. That was your signature, your trademark, your
sound. Even piano players would have their own sound, the way they might,
the certain kind of pressure that they would come with. You can recognize
a piano player by his sound as well, even though it is an instrument that
is not set up with breath, but still, you can hear a sound in the piano
of the different individuals. You could recognize them from their total
sound. So with the saxophone, especially with the tenor saxophone, because
it is an instrument that is really based on sound and the breath. Finally,
the execution and the dexterity is probably the last thing that you recognize
about the tenor saxophone. It usually is the sound first. I think that
these days, I am hearing less and less of that. I am hearing people that
don't really want to have that signature sound or don't go after it. So
they are trying to make their sound be someone else's, when basically,
the sound is kind of like your DNA. It is your makeup. If you are conscious
of it, it will come on in and just let it happen because everybody has
different DNA. Your sound is that.
FJ:
What do you think is behind this lack of individuality?
DAVID
MURRAY: Well, because I think that there is a little problem. People these
days are trying to learn to play the saxophone because they think that
it is just a way, perhaps, to make money. Perhaps it is a way, they think
there is some kind of formula that they can follow in order to be a successful
kind of working musician. I never looked at it in terms of that. I always
wanted to just have my own thing or something that no one else had, rather
than being part of status quo. I see some kind of factory developing these
days. Education in music is a wonderful thing, but let's let some of these
educators let these kids know that individuality is probably one of the
most important things that they are going to need in order to be a real
star in jazz, somebody who can historically be counted on to pass on the
torch, rather than just be a musician capable of functioning in a Broadway
play or functioning in some band, some marching band or something, or
perhaps, just functioning as some kind of guy who is going to get on the
stage and play all the standards correctly and not miss one note and not
be recognized for who he is, but only for what he was able to cover. This
is my plight in jazz right now, is just trying to develop people before
their minds are totally corrupted by the radio. So it might be too late
for them. Like right now, I am trying to develop a jazz school in Dakar
in Senegal. Perhaps some of the young minds over there won't be taken
over by some of this garbage that they play on the radio to try indoctrinate
people to sound exactly the same.
FJ:
Lincoln Center seems hell bent on going backwards and exploring the history
of this music, almost in a museum quality. Can jazz progress on the shoulders
of remakes?
DAVID
MURRAY: I think probably because some people have this insatiable desire
to be adored by the public and perhaps, some people think that they might
need to erase some things that have happened in history in order to make
a new slate, to try to make themselves be the big hero or something. It
is a strange syndrome that I have seen happening. I have seen a few videos
that came out where, I've seen one video that Wynton Marsalis had something
to do with and it went straight from Ornette Coleman to Wynton Marsalis'
octet.
FJ:
What about the three decades in between?
DAVID
MURRAY: Oh, there was thirty years that got blanked out there. I don't
know what happened. That is a form of rewriting history and we have to
be very, I think it is very dangerous to try and rewrite history because
when history actually goes down and when time passes, people look back
and they will see something that was totally dishonest. What I see there
and when I listen to some of the things that he says, some of the things
that Stanley Crouch says, I realize that the dishonesty factor is very
high. It is almost like you are trying to bang somebody over the head
with something that is not true and if you keep hitting them over the
head with it, they will eventually believe it.
FJ:
Is Wynton just ignorant of the current dynamics of the music or is it
malicious and he is simply doing this to selfishly proclaim himself the
center figure for this music?
DAVID
MURRAY: I think it is malicious. I don't think he is ignorant at all.
No, not at all. Neither is Stanley Crouch. They are both very witty, in
fact. The combination, I think, is very dangerous.
FJ:
Jazz music seems inundated with cover bands. Why do people insist on looking
the other way?
DAVID
MURRAY: Exactly, Fred. I agree totally. When I play with the Grateful
Dead, Jerry Garcia and those guys, I think the thing that they appreciated
most about what I was doing was that I didn't sound like somebody who
had played with them before. I brought something to what they were doing
and that area and so they appreciated what I was doing, I think, perhaps
even more than some of the people in certain jazz bands. So I'm not quite
sure about when people talk about rock and jazz, I'm not quite sure where
all the brilliant minds are.
FJ:
Jerry Garcia was a strong proponent of yours.
DAVID
MURRAY: Yeah, and me him as well. It came out of the sharing that we did
with Bob Weir (guitarist for the Dead) and Taj Mahal and we were developing
this Broadway play that hasn't come to fruition yet, but it is certainly
coming. The writer of the play, Michael Nash, he wrote the libretto. He
brought me closer to the Grateful Dead and then one day, he suggested
to Bob that perhaps I sit in and all the guys in the Grateful Dead, they
had actually heard of me before. Those guys, they pretty much know about
everybody. Next thing I know, I'm hanging out at Bob's house and I get
a call and this guy whose name is Bob Dylan is on the phone and he wants
to talk to Bob and then he comes to me because Bob is not there and so
I met this guy on the phone and I ended up talking to him for about an
hour. Once you get into their little circle, you meet everybody. You also
understand that these people already know who you are. I mean, Bob Dylan
knew who I was and he knew what I was doing and he knew what kind of sound
I had. And then you find out about other people in the rock world who
actually know about you too. People in the rock world are not totally
ignorant to what people in jazz are doing and they want to share certain
things with jazz musicians, but sometimes, there is a little fear because
they may not want people to understand what they don't know. But with
these people, there was none of that. We shared ideas. I would bring what
I knew about jazz and what they knew about rock and we put it together.
Taj Mahal would bring what he knows about country and blues and all that
and bring it all together and we would make a music that's one. That is
what I call people really working together. I would like to see more of
that, especially with artists that are established, of coming together
and sharing different genres of the music. If someone were to listen to
all this music in a space capsule a thousand years from now, they're gonna
probably wonder how come all these people didn't play together. How come
they had this guy over her and this guy over there? How come they didn't
put all the good ones together? So that is what I am trying to do. I like
to play with all of the great people and I don't care what they play.
I played the other day with this Chinese piano player named Jon Jang and
we played some Chinese music and it was wonderful. So it is all open to
me. I'm doing the soundtrack for a Senegalese adaptation of Bizet's Carmen.
It is a lot of people that I am hooking up with all over the planet. I
am going to Cuba in October and I'm going to hook up with Chucho Valdes
and people like that and talk about doing a record and exploring some
different things in other areas because I am not a true believer of this
whole stigma of real jazz. I think that is a whole bunch of crap and Lincoln
Center can kiss my ass too.
FJ:
So David Murray should not be referred to as a jazz musician, but rather
a musician.
DAVID
MURRAY: Yeah, Fred, I would love to be known as that. To me, that is such
a limitation to be a jazz musician. I mean, what does that mean? I don't
know what that means even.
FJ:
Is there any area of jazz you have yet to explore?
DAVID
MURRAY: Oh, sure, there is. There are many things. There are many things.
Just making a good CD every time out is a great effort. It is a hard thing
to do, especially in this day and age when the market is totally convoluted.
To come with a CD that's pure, that's acoustic, that brings the spirit
and the soul to something technical, it is a very difficult thing to do
and people try to do it every day and they fail.
FJ:
I've noticed you have been playing more bass clarinet.
DAVID
MURRAY: Yeah, I try to keep it flowing. To me, it is like growing on a
tree or something. To me, I can't get more organic than playing on it.
I mean, I wish the saxophone was made out of wood. Unfortunately, it is
not. That is why I go to this bass clarinet because, to me, I am not a
real clarinet player per say. My brother played clarinet and so I am not
approaching it with these preconceptions that most clarinet players approach
it with. When John Carter asked me to play with the Clarinet Summit with
Alvin Batiste and Jimmy Hamilton, I was knocked over, because here are
some three great clarinet players who asked me to play bass clarinet with
them and I'm not even a clarinet player and I grew in that group and I
just treasure the time that I spent with those guys because I learned
a lot about the clarinet. They were happy that I was not a clarinet player
per say because I took other kinds of chances.
FJ:
James Newton and Bobby Bradford are ardent sponsors of your work, Newton,
even going so far as to assert that he would augment his schedule to perform
with you.
DAVID
MURRAY: Well, I appreciate that. Those are my real buddies and when I
say buddies, those are my teachers and buddies too. James Newton and I,
we've blazed some trails in Europe and in New York and I think he is the
greatest flute player in the world without question. I'm glad to see that
he's doing a lot of explorations. He just came back from a wonderful trip
where he did a concert with a great flute player and they developed a
whole concept and it was really beautiful. It was part of what I was doing
with my office in Paris, so we were able to share those things and hooked
up on the Duke Ellington thing and that was great. Now, Bobby Bradford
has been my, to me, Bobby has been my mentor. If there is one person that
I can say who pointed his finger and said to go here and go there and
showed me how to play chord changes and how to approach different forms
of writing and technical skills that I didn't have when I met him. In
a very casual way, he explained these things to me and really sent me
on my way to becoming what I have become. I owe a lot to him and to a
lot of others, but particularly to Bobby Bradford because of his genius.
He cannot only play because he plays a beautiful cornet and write wonderful
songs, but he is a great teacher. I can't say enough about Bobby Bradford.
FJ: Does it concern you that although you are the recipient of the Danish
Jazzpar Prize, your contributions go largely unnoticed in this country?
DAVID
MURRAY: Not really, Fred, because I've been recognized for some things
here. I've won a Grammy Award here. I won a Guggenheim Award here. I think
I am recognized in this country. I think I am recognized here somewhat.
Of course, I am not going to put America down because there are individuals
here who really know what's happening. Someone like yourself. I can't
really say, how can I say this? When I am living in Paris, what you see
coming out of America is that we have a great talent pool here in America.
Europe doesn't have that kind of talent pool, even when they put the countries
together, they still don't have that talent pool, that kind of brainpower.
That is why they put together the Euro dollar, to go against the dollar
because we have such brilliant minds that are thinking all the time here,
trying to figure out how to make money triple or quadruple itself. They
had to put many countries together to go up against these American minds.
In music, it is kind of the same thing. Jazz was born here in America
and the more I listen to European jazz, Dutch jazz or German jazz, French
jazz, whatever jazz, the fact is, it is still somewhat jazz and I'm not
sure that there is ever going to be an innovator coming out of Europe
when it comes to jazz. It is just that the pool is so big here that perhaps,
a lot of the creations that artists have in America are overlooked, overshadowed
because there is so much talent here. I think it has something to do with
that. I wouldn't say that America is lacking in the recognitions. No,
no, I wouldn't say that because I have been recognized for some things
that I have done, some of my efforts. Of course, there are always more.
I haven't won the big prize, but then, a lot of people who don't deserve
that big prize, get that big prize.
FJ:
The knock on David Murray has always been that he records too much, as
if your prolific level of documentation is depleting your well of music.
DAVID
MURRAY: I will tell you what, Fred, about that, I am kind of pissed off
because there are a lot of projects that I didn't get recorded. If you
want to know my truth about it, there are about twenty-five records that
I should have made that I didn't make. But I guess that could go under
the category of ego too, so I don't listen to critics so much when it
comes to what I should do about my life because every recording that I've
made, I've put my heart and soul into it and that is exactly what I wanted
to do at that moment in time. I could care less if they review it or they
don't review it. I've never been a believer in that so critics, maybe
they might not be fond of my productivity, but when I am dead and gone,
there will be a legacy left that I intentionally worked on. If they want
proof about it too, they listen to my recordings and you would note that
some people say that they get better and better and better.
FJ:
What is the motivation behind that kind of drive?
DAVID
MURRAY: Well, Ed Blackwell told me a story one time when I had been playing
with him for seven years. He said to me, he says, "You know David,
it is all good and all that, but for the last seven years that I have
been playing with you, you have been playing for the audience, and tonight
is the first night that you played with the rhythm section." I said,
"Damn, I didn't know you felt that way. I wish you would have told
me that seven years ago." He said, "Well, you weren't ready
to hear it then." So all that is saying is that I have gotten to
another level now where I can't, I don't want to be totally involved in
what the audience is doing with me or what I am doing with them or looking
at me like some kind of machine wind-up toy or something like that, but
trying to, in a way, you have got to remove the audience first and then
later on, you bring them in. I don't think of the audience as much as
I used to before he told me that because ultimately, the fire comes from
within. The real fire from the spirituality of the music comes from within
the band and when the band is totally in a cohesive setting, like as the
week goes on, when we get to Friday and Saturday nights, this band here
will probably jell into something totally cohesive (the band that Murray
is referring to is the one he performed with at the Jazz Bakery). Last
night was a show of force, but as we move on into this week, that force
will come from a calmer place and we will have developed some kind of
a core and then the music is really going to be happening.
FJ:
Does that fire still burn within David Murray?
DAVID
MURRAY: Oh, yeah, Fred, and the more I play, the more I have the opportunity
to play, especially with musicians of this caliber, it just gets more
exciting. The flame just becomes blue and white. It is so strong. But
it is not just me, Fred. There is a lot of people out here who I am, I'm
not the only one out here that is doing that. A lot of guys out here are
overlooked and they are totally downtrodden in this time. You have to
be strong out here and have thick skin and I have all of that.
FJ:
Let's touch on your latest Justin Time recording, Octet Plays Trane. Why,
at this stage in your career, have you chosen to interpret Coltrane's
music?
DAVID
MURRAY: Because when I younger, when I was growing up in Berkeley, there
was a lot of cats who were playing Trane. Everybody was trying to be Trane
and they were good at it, probably better than I would have been. I just
saw that everyone's sound was going towards Coltrane's sound and I really
didn't want my sound to go in that direction. I wanted to study the people
that Coltrane studied so I could maybe come up with my own sound. So I
went back to deal with people like Coleman Hawkins and people like Ben
Webster and Lester Young and Paul Gonsalves and all the way on up to Sonny
Rollins, Lucky Thompson, people like Clifford Jordan, people who I knew
and respected and then when I finally got to New York and met all these
people, Dexter Gordon, when I met these people, it was a great thing for
me because they took me in, Johnny Griffin, people like that. They took
me in and I became part of their peer group. That is why, in some ways,
I feel like I am a missing link in a way because a lot of people didn't
get a chance to rub elbows with these guys, but I got to New York just
at the time when these cats were really, really playing, but they weren't
being recognized. Then, I went onto Europe and I seen a lot of cats over
there and dealt with them. So just being able to be close to these kind
of individuals and for them to say, "Yeah, man, you have got your
own sound." People like George Coleman would always help you. I don't
know if it is so much like that right now because there is a bombardment
of young people coming in. For instance, Fred, I will give you an example.
A lot of cats come into today into New York. They graduated from Berklee
School of Music or what have you. They will come to New York and they
will start a band and the band will be the people that they were in school
with. They don't ever call people like, I mean, when I got to New York,
the joy of being able to pick up the telephone and call Eddie Blackwell
or Billy Higgins on the telephone and say, "Hey, man, I want you
to make a gig with me," or call John Hicks up and say, "Hey,
man," or Ray Drummond, "Hey, man, come on down. I've got a gig
down here at the Vanguard. I want you to make it with me." There
is nothing like growing up from a young age, from being twenty in New
York and then moving on out and to be able to have a band of people that
are twenty years older than you, twenty-five, thirty years older than
you and have like more than a hundred years of experience on the bandstand,
sometimes a hundred and fifty years of experience on the bandstand and
you are taking it all in as a young man trying to hang out with these
guys, but yet still, you are hiring them. This is the situation that I
don't see enough of today. See, the good band is going to be the band
that goes through generational differences. You are going to have cats
from different generations playing in one band. That's the band that is
going to be good. That's why Roy Hargrove has a good band.
FJ:
You are indeed the Jazzosaurus Rex.
DAVID
MURRAY: (Laughing) Well, thanks a lot, Fred. Thank you very much.
Fred
Jung is Jazz Weekly's Editor-In-Chief and can't believe people pay Pottery
Barn prices. Email Him.