David Murray
the making of a progressive musician
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/jazz.v1i2.173Keywords:
David Murray, Coleman Hawkins, Stanley Crouch, Jazz innovation, Political economy, Tenor SaxophoneAbstract
David Murray has been a leading innovative jazz musician for the last thirty years. He has been a prolific recording artist and concert performer, and an eclectic collaborator within and outside the jazz tradition. This paper explores the cultural and political economic context in which he works as a professional musician and in which his work is listened to and understood. Reinterpreting Scott DeVeaux’s notion of the ‘progressive musician’, Murray’s work is discussed in terms of the venues, record companies and wider media in which he performs, and the different ways in which ideas of progress have both changed over time, and been interpreted in the US and UK. It also explores the important role of critic Stanley Crouch in the development of Murray’s career and the wider critical context in which the meanings and value of jazz are discussed. The analysis is based upon a historiography of Murray’s career and recorded output and an examination of original press coverage and primary interviews with key music industry personnel. Conclusions are drawn about distinctly different European and African American ideas of progress and tradition in jazz, and about the infrastructure that sustains working jazz musicians.
References
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Baker, Houston A. (1987) Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.
Baraka, Imamu Amiri, and Amina Baraka (1987) The Music: Reflections on Jazz and Blues. New York: Morrow.
Berman, Marshall (1982) All that is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Blesh, Rudi (1946) Shining Trumpets: A History of Jazz. New York: A. A. Knopf.
Boynton, Robert S. (1995) ‘The Professor of Connection: A Profile of Stanley Crouch’. The New Yorker, November 6.
Case, Brian (1978) ‘Sleeve Notes’. Conceptual Saxophone SGC 1007.
Collins, Lisa Gail and Margo Natalie Crawford (2006) New Thoughts on the Black Arts Movement. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Crouch, Stanley (1977a) ‘Jazz Lofts: A Walk through the Wild Sounds’. The New York Times Magazine, April 17: 40–42, 46.
——(1977b) ‘Sleeve Notes’. Live at the Lower Manhattan Ocean Club.
——(1980) Sleeve notes to Ming. Milan: Black Saint.
——(1990) Notes of a Hanging Judge: Essays and Reviews, 1979–1989. New York: Oxford University Press.
Davis, Francis (1986) In the Moment: Jazz in the 1980s. New York: Oxford University Press.
DeVeaux, Scott Knowles (1997) The Birth of Bebop: A Social and Musical History. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Ellison, Ralph (1959/2001) ‘The Golden Age, Time Past’. In Living with Music: Ralph Ellison’s Jazz Writings. Ed. Robert G. O’Meally. New York: Modern Library.
——(1972) Shadow and Act. New York: Vintage Books.
Ellison, Ralph, and Albert Murray (2000) Trading Twelves: The Selected Letters of Ralph Ellison and Albert Murray. New York: Modern Library.
Elworth, Steven B. (1995) ‘Jazz in Crisis, 1948–1958: Ideology and Representation’. In Jazz among the Discourses. Ed. Krin Gabbard. London: Duke.
Finkelstein, Sidney Walter (1948). Jazz: A People’s Music. New York: Citadel Press.
Floyd, Samuel A. (1990) Black Music in the Harlem Renaissance: A Collection of Essays. New York and London: Greenwood Press.
Friedwald, Will, and Yuval Taylor (2002) The Future of Jazz. Chicago: A Cappella.
Gennari, John (2006) Blowin’ Hot and Cool: Jazz and its Critics. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.
Giddins, Gary (2007) ‘New York’s “Loft Scene” of the 1970s’. In Jazz File: The Shape of Jazz Today. Ed. Robert Abel. London: BBC Radio 3.
Gridley, Mark C. (1997) Jazz Styles: History and Analysis. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Hughes, Spike (1933a/R1993) ‘Ellington at the Palladium’. In The Duke Ellington Reader. Ed. Mark Tucker. New York: Oxford University Press.
——(1933b/R1993) ‘Impressions of Ellington in New York’. In The Duke Ellington Reader. Ed. Mark Tucker. New York: Oxford University Press.
Jack, John (2007) Interview with author. London. http://tinyurl.com/39tv38.
Jones, LeRoi (1966) Blues People: Negro Music in White America. London: Jazz Book Club.
Kelsey, Chris (2007) ‘David Murray Biography’. All Music Guide. http://tinyurl.com/ 2o3tts.
Kofsky, Frank (1970) Black Nationalism and the Revolution in Music. New York and London: Pathfinder Press.
Kuhn, Thomas S. (1970) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Ledbetter, Les (1975) ‘Festival Fans Stream to Lofts and Studios’. New York Times, July 1: 36.
Lemke, Sieglinde (1998) Primitivist Modernism: Black Culture and the Origins of Transatlantic Modernism. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.
Lewis, George E. (2002) ‘Experimental Music in Black and White: The AACM in New York 1970 to 1985’. Current Musicology 71-73: 100–157.
Litweiler, John (1992) Ornette Coleman: The Harmolodic Life. London: Quartet.
Locke, Alain Le Roy (1925) The New Negro: An Interpretation. New York: A. and C. Boni.
——(1936) The Negro and his Music. Washington, DC: Associates in Negro Folk Education.
Looker, Benjamin (2004) Point from which Creation Begins: The Black Artists’ Group of St. Louis. St. Louis: Missouri Historical Society Press.
Mandel, Howard (1999) Future Jazz. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.
Martin, Henry (2002) Jazz: The First 100 Years. Belmont, CA: Schirmer/Thomson Learning.
Murray, Albert (1970) The Omni-Americans: New Perspectives on Black Experience and American Culture. New York: Outerbridge & Dienstfrey.
——(1976) Stomping the Blues. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Murray, David (1997) Telephone interview. Alain Le Roux, Le Jazz 4.
——(2005) David Murray interview on Jazz on 3, BBC Radio 3.
Mwanga, Kunle (2005–7) Earth Art Productions [a website of concert flyers], http:// www.earthartproductions.com/.
——(2007) Email interview with author.
Nicholson, Stuart (2000) David Murray interview. Jazzwise. November 2000.
Palmer, Robert (1976a) ‘Jazz: David Murray on Saxophone’. New York Times. October 15: 81.
——(1976b) ‘Loft Jazz Goes on a Three-day Toot’. New York Times. June 4: 49.
——(1977a) ‘The Pop Life’. New York Times. June 22: 73.
——(1977b) ‘A Jazz Festival in the Lofts’. New York Times. June 3: 36.
Panish, Jon (1997) The Color of Jazz: Race and Representation in Postwar American Culture. Jackson, MI: University Press of Mississippi.
Parsonage, Catherine (2005) The Evolution of Jazz in Britain, 1880–1935. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Rockwell, John (1974) ‘Face of Jazz is Changing Visibly’. New York Times, June 4: 33.
Rooks, Noliwe M. (2006). White Money/Black Power: The Surprising History of African American Studies and the Crisis of Race in Higher Education. Boston: Beacon Press.
Ross, Andrew (1989) No Respect: Intellectuals and Popular Culture. New York and London: Routledge.
Sarup, Madan (1993) An Introductory Guide to Post-structuralism and Postmodernism. New York and London: Harvester Wheatsheaf.
Scaruffi, Piero (2006) David Murray. http://www.scaruffi.com/jazz/murray.html.
Shipton, Alyn (2001) A New History of Jazz. London and New York: Continuum.
Stearns, Marshall Winslow (1956) The Story of Jazz. New York: Oxford University Press.
Thomas, Lorenzo (1995) ‘Ascension: Music and the Black Arts’. In Jazz among the Discourses. Ed. Krin Gabbard, 256–74. Durham: Duke University Press.
Tucker, Mark (1990) ‘The Renaissance Education of Duke Ellington’. In Black Music in the Harlem Renaissance: A Collection of Essays. Ed. Samuel A. Floyd. New York and London: Greenwood Press.
Ulanov, Barry (1952) A History of Jazz in America. New York: Viking Press.
Vincent, Ted (1995) Keep Cool: The Black Activists who Built the Jazz Age. London and East Haven, CN: Pluto Press.
Werner, Craig Hansen (1999) A Change is Gonna Come: Music, Race and the Soul of America. New York: Plume.
West, Hollie I. (1977) ‘The Development of a Bright Star’. Washington Post, June 12.
Williams, Martin T. (1970) The Jazz Tradition. New York: Oxford University Press.
Zukin, Sharon (1982) Loft Living: Culture and Capital in Urban Change. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Published
2008-04-06
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Wall, T. (2008). David Murray: the making of a progressive musician. Jazz Research Journal, 1(2), 173-203. https://doi.org/10.1558/jazz.v1i2.173
