David Murray hauled his tenor sax over to the late-'70s avant-garde campfire to prove that a younger generation had some hot coals to heap on the '60s' fading flames. After he'd helped restoke the squeal & squawk, Murray put his very special lips to every other aspect of jazz, and that's what we heard with this night's prodigious trio.
We didn't know what to expect from young California drummer Malachi Whitson, but he rocked, cracking his snare with confidence and moving from style to style with ease, sticking to the middle of the beat and never overplaying -- Murray could fly like a kite, knowing his anchor would hold. Although we did expect exceptional depths of spiritual connection from bassist Roberto Miranda, he still surprised us, putting us into a heart-thumping trance on the opening African Bo Diddley beat of "Nektar" and locating especially resonant doublestops reminiscent of Jimmy Garrison, an influence that rarely crops up in his playing. Sitting in a chair, he felt a course through Murray's flood of notes, sometimes easing into a walk, as on a jumpy Butch Morris number, sometimes taking a more direct part in the conversation. Murray has teamed with bassists from Fred Hopkins to Richard Davis and Ron Carter, but you could hardly imagine a more natural pairing.
Murray brought his entire inventory. Left to solo virtually uninterrupted, he took full advantage, and this was no scale fest -- whether on platforms of Latin, blues or straight jazz, he sounded like a country lawyer pleading his summation with eloquence, wit and neighborly straight talk, taking a break after hours for a little romance. His tone still showed hints of the Archie Shepp guttiness and Albert Ayler vibrato that first drew him to jazz, but he limited his controlled squeaks to just the moments when they mattered most. Murray's extremely refined technique involved the whole mouth and throat, not to mention the chest, taking off from methods used by those old bar saxists or marching-band players who had to compete with the ambient noise. In this little room, in fact, he wouldn't have needed a microphone, but it was useful so we could hear the subtle shapings he was producing around the edges of the mouthpiece. What a flow, too, with the notes tripping out like water over pebbles in a streambed, and a few striking examples of circular breathing (one incorporating quick octave jumps). And stories -- about L.A.'s music history, his wife's necktie business, and how Butch Morris used to cry when musicians wouldn't play his tunes the way he wanted them to.
David Murray has just grown and grown. He's 67; let's see him when he's 77. But let's not wait till then.
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If you're having a party, and you also want to remember a great recently departed saxist, put on "Gwotet" by David Murray & the Gwo-Ka Masters featuring Pharoah Sanders, from 2004. Crazy rhythm stuff, guaranteed to make the dead dance.
PHOTO BY DEBI DOORZ.