Pass Everything in My Soul: A Conversation with David Murray on ‘Francesca’

The love song is one of the oldest and most primal forms of musical expression, dating back to ancient Greece, if not earlier. Charles Darwin even theorized that the love song was the first form of human musical expression. Of course, the emphasis on romance in songs has continued to the present day. It is easy to label David Murray’s quartet album dedicated to his wife, Francesca (Intakt, 2024), as yet another in this long lineage. But that is only part of the story.

Make no mistake, the tenor saxophonist/bass clarinetist unequivocally expresses his deep feelings for his spouse on both the album and in our conversation. But it is only one of his two loves on the album. The other is his adoration of the history and development of jazz music. Surrounding himself with young artists – pianist Marta Sanchez, bassist Luke Stewart, and drummer Russell Carter – well-versed in the avant-garde, it is natural to expect Francesca to be a free affair. Intakt’s notoriety for experimental recordings would add further credence to this presumption. So would Murray’s long history of crafting creative music. He emerged from the New York loft scene of the 1970s with Flowers for Albert (Valley of Search, 1977), an album dedicated to Albert Ayler. Murray was also one of the four legs of the World Saxophone Quartet, an extension of the Black Artists’ Group, St. Louis’ answer to the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM). But a decades-long collaboration with Kahil El’Zabar and works with Henry Threadgill, Fred Hopkins, and Steve McCall also tie him to the Chicago powerhouse.

Instead, however, Francesca is a little more accessible. It is an album more indebted to Ben Webster and Dexter Gordon than Eric Dolphy or Pharaoh Sanders. The record does not ignore avant-garde music – Murray’s solo on “Come and Go” comes to mind – but, overall, it is a thoroughly melodic outing. Its eight tracks exude warmth and passion. As Francesca extracts ideas from the music’s past, it also avoids being mired in prior greatness; Francesca sounds thoroughly modern even as its roots are evident. It also digs into jazz’s own core by infusing ideas from gospel, Afro-Caribbean music, and more. The album is a clear statement on the continued vibrancy of the Great American art form. As a result, the group is invigorating – to the point that it seems to capture the energy of a live recording even though it was all captured in the studio. With an upcoming run at the historic Village Vanguard, a lucky few will get to experience the magic live.

PostGenre: Before getting into your new quartet, you have also been playing somewhat frequently with Kahil El-Zabar. How did you first meet him?

David Murray: Kahil and I met in 1975 on a basketball court in the South side of Chicago. I was staying at Don Moye’s House, whom I had met out in California. 

I had just moved to New York and went back to California to do a concert. On the way back, I drove up to Iowa with a friend of mine tbecause he had a saxophone for me, which I ended up selling to Jimmy Lyons. I brought the horn with me to Chicago. And then from Chicago, I flew back to New York. I had gotten a new apartment in New York and was ready to live there for a while.

But that’s how I met Kahil. I also went to hear him at, I think, the Transcendental East, a club in Chicago. And I was amazed at how connected he was with his drumming and words. It seemed like he had a spiritual connection to the universe, one that was quite different from what I had heard in California, which was a more hippie style. Kahil’s style was 100% African American. I mean, I had played with Africans before, but he played pure African American hand drums. He was playing the Earth drum at that time. And a few years later, we ended up playing as a duo. And we’re still going. We have another dup tour coming up right after my Vanguard engagement. We call it the Friends for Life tour. 

PG: You mentioned when you first moved to New York. Once in New York, you were part of the so-called loft scene.

DM: Yeah, I moved to New York in March of 1975 and met Kahil in, probably, October of that year. 

PG: One interesting thing about the loft scene is how much creativity came out of it, all during a period when jazz supposedly “died.”

DM: Yeah, depending on who you ask. I was certainly not dead. Nor was anyone else playing in lofts. But perhaps the music changed a bit. Maybe people were resetting it. I wouldn’t say it was a lost period because there was a lot of energy. There were musicians from Tokyo. There were cats from Chicago. There were cats from Florida. And so many more coming from California and Texas. They all seem to have hit New York. 

The loft scene was already there when I moved to New York. Ornette Coleman already had a loft [Artist House-]. Rashied Ali already had a loft [Studio 77]. Studio Rivbea was happening. Studio We was starting out. There were a lot of studios. The musicians were changing so much. Musicians were tired of focusing on entertaining other people and were mostly trying to play their souls. Sometimes it meant that instead of playing five-minute solos, l they wanted to play a thirty-minute solo. And whoever said that jazz died, I think they were some fake ass people anyway. 

PG: One of your best recordings from that period was Flowers for Albert, a quartet date with Olu Dara, Fred Hopkins, and Phillip Wilson. Of course, almost fifty years later, you are releasing a new quartet album. How do you feel you have changed the most since Flowers as both a performer and a composer, specifically in the quartet context? 

Dam: Well, my new quartet just came off of a tour where we played in Poland, Holland, and Germany, My quartet is on fire, man. The names have changed since back when but the music has remained fantastic. 

People say I’m playing pretty well these days, and I just got a new bass clarinet. Well, it’s an old clarinet but it’s new to me. It’s the same brand as the one that I had before. The old one’s wood was dying, and once the wood goes, that is pretty much it. But I have a better one now that I got from James Carter. I’m very happy with it. It plays very much like the other one, and it’s a more solid piece. 

But the song ‘Flowers for Albert’, has seen so many different changes over the years. I think I have recorded it around thirteen times across different settings.  And now I have lyrics for the song. Do you want to hear them? 

PG: Of course. 

DM: ‘The man was here, done came and gone. He left us here just singing his song that love and peace and joy. Divine will read the hate in people’s minds.’ And you do that again. And then it modulates through the bridge. ‘Whenever he played his saxophone, the Blues came out like Black folk songs. The schools and dues of jazz Preludes will finally make it cool for you. The man was here, done, came and gone. He left us here to sing a song of love and peace.’ And then I blow another solo. 

PG: That’s great. 

DM: But, in general, ‘Flowers for Albert’ is a song people ask for. You know, Duke Ellington had ‘Sophisticated Lady’ and I’ve got ‘Flowers for Albert.’ Every musician has a particular song that people ask them to play, and ‘Flowers’ is mine. 

PG: Do you ever get tired of the song?

DM: Definitely. But you have to find new ways to reinvent it. Play it with the big band or rearrange it. But it’s ultimately something that people want to hear. They come asking for that. I’m sure I’ll never record it again, but sometimes it gets recorded on live albums because people ask for it. 

But I’m writing a lot of new songs. This new album, Francesca, is probably going to win an award. 

PG: It is a fantastic record.

DM: Well, hold on. I think it’s going to be a dubious award. Have you seen the cover of the CD? 

PG: Yes.

DM: I think it’s going to be voted the worst CD cover in the history of jazz. The music is 100%, but that cover almost seems like it was made by some kids using awful graphics.

PG: What would you have preferred as a cover?

DM: I wanted to use another image for the cover. It’s a picture included with the liner notes. It is a picture of Francesca on a nude beach with only a tie. She made the tie. It has a wonderful design. Her ties are great. Actually, I’m going to wear one of her ties at the Village Vanguard. Her ties are very beautiful and creative. They’re one-of-a-kind. And the photo is from a wonderful beach in New Jersey. It was taken by a great photographer, Jules Allen.

There is also one piece on this album that has been animated by Francesca. Fantastic work that she produced along with a painter. I think it might be one of the first animations in jazz. We’ve been playing it on screens at every concert a few minutes before we begin playing. Then we come on and start with that song. It’s an amazing thing. And people very much get into it. It’s a shock to them to see the animation of a dog in Paris named Ninno. And in the liner notes, you can read about it in more depth. But when people are blowing each other up all across the globe, I think it’s fantastic that someone like Francesca would come up with a video about the life of a dog who ends up saving a man’s life. There is some humanity in it, and she’s trying to reach a little deeper into the hearts, minds, and souls of jazz lovers. 

PG: You mentioned how most of the compositions on Francesca are originals. But there is one song that is a cover of a Don Pullen tune. 

DM: Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. 

PG: What inspired you to add that piece, “Richard’s Tune”?

DM: Well, a few months ago, I did a gig with D.D. Jackson in [Washington] DC, and he greatly liked that song. And I think I had played it once with Don. It’s a song that we hadn’t recorded before. I don’t generally play many fast songs on the bass clarinet. But this song has some beautiful [chord] changes and it shows that I could play something fast on the bass clarinet. So it’s a kind of a milestone for me that we could put it on the album.

Don Pullen and John Hicks were my favorite piano players that I worked with. I’ve worked with some great ones, I spent a lot of time on the road with each of those guys, and they taught me so much about jazz in New York City. So, I use the song as a tribute to Don Pullen. 

PG: As far as your original compositions, are they shaped by your ability to circular breathe? It seems circular breathing would allow you to craft longer lines.

DM: No, I never really think about that. Circular breathing is just one of the little things that I do. I learned how to do it with Arthur Blythe. I don’t like to use it as a trick. I like to use it as a technique. People have mentioned that you could play longer phrases when you circular breathe, but that’s not why I do it. When I do it, I do it for power. 

Every time a new breath comes inside of my diaphragm, it increases in power. I can bend the note. I can overblow in different ways in different levels of overblowing to make it create another sound out of the instrument. The instrument has to be warmed up very well. I only use circular breathing sometimes. I don’t use it all the time. In the World Saxophone Quartet, we used circular breathing often to create different shifts of sound. If we wanted to play a quarter tone, sometimes we would use circular breathing to get there. I know some guys out there – like Kenny G – use it as a trick, but that’s stupid. I would hate to stoop to something that low.  Many musicians will probably never substantively use circular breathing, as I try to do, during their careers. Most just concentrate on the superficial use of it. 

But, to answer your question, no, I never consider circular breathing when composing. It’s just something that I do on stage. 

PG: A little earlier, you mentioned the World Saxophone Quartet. What do you think is the legacy of that group? 

DM: Well, the original World Saxophone Quartet of Julius [Hemphill], Oliver [Lake], Hamiet [Bluiett], and myself came out of the Black Artist Group in Saint Louis. Julius was from Texas, but he spent a lot of time in Saint Louis and got married in Saint Louis. Oliver and Hamiet were from there. I came from the West Coast, but even now, some people consider me a Saint Louis person because of my association with those guys.

But once Julius was out of the group – and there were a lot of natural causes that caused him to leave – he took the music with him. He was the main composer in the group. He probably composed half of the music that we played, and the rest of the pieces were split between us other three. We were never able to replace Julius. The band was never going to sound like the original band. We had some other great players like Arthur Blythe, James Spaulding, and James Carter, but it just wasn’t the same. But including the different people who came and joined us, the band lasted nearly forty-five years. I  think when Bluiett passed away and Oliver developed Parkinson’s [Disease] it was just no longer the World Saxophone Quartet.

I don’t have the energy to put into it to keep it alive after that. Right now, keeping my quartet on stage after this COVID business is enough. I still write for big bands. I don’t have a big band, but have the compositions if the right project comes along. I am duly ready to delve into larger compositions as well, but it seems like all of my attention should be on the quartet, at the moment.  

PG: Well, going through your many recordings, the quartet format seems to treat you well.

DM: I’ve had some great people in my quartets over the years. I’ve had Andrew Cyrille. Eddie Blackwell. Billy Higgins. I’ve had great players on every instrument. Ray Drummond. Fred Hopkins. John Hicks and the great Don Pullen. But this new quartet is different.

PG: How so?

DM: Now I’m sixty-nine years old. The other guys are in their forties, or close to. It’s very interesting to me, because I’m finally the older guy in the group. Before, I was fifteen to twenty years younger than everybody else. So now in a way, it’s my time. And I’ve got a killing wife who tries to keep me as healthy as I can. She’s also very creative and inspires me on many levels. It’s like a new life for me. 

PG: Did you intentionally seek out younger musicians in forming your new quartet?

DM: Well, I’m too old to drag out people my age. I’m lucky to get up on the stage myself. I needed some new energy. I needed new inspiration. I needed new thoughts from people who think differently than me. People with energy, especially drummers. It’s important to hear what the young minds are doing. 

But I didn’t select these musicians because of their youthfulness. I selected them because they’re the cream of the crop. They all have groups of their own. They inspire me on stage. And at the same time, I’m inspiring them. I’m teaching by example. 

PG: So, how did you select the specific members of the quartet?

DM: Well, they all came to me in different ways. I think Francesca put me onto Luke [Stewart]. She greatly liked his playing and made me aware of him. She’s got a pretty good ear and is a former singer herself, so knows music. 

As for Marta [Sanchez], back when I was putting the group together, I was planning to do some duets in Spain. I had heard of Marta and got her number. I called her to see if she would play the duets with me, thinking she was in Spain. But I realized she was in Brooklyn and had been there for twelve years. But we ended up playing together in Pamplona, where they run the Bulls every year. We played their jazz festival there – a beautiful festival. However, it culminated in disgusting bullfights.

And as far as Russell [Carter], I know him and his brother Rahsaan. They’re from DC, and I remembered them from a workshop with the World Saxophone Quartet several years ago. They were bound to be great musicians because their mother has been a radio host for a long time in DC and their father, Rusty, is a great tenor sax player. He showed up the other night when I played with D.D. I don’t think their parents are together anymore, but they certainly care about their kids. You’ll see one parent and one set, then the other at the other set. They raised their kids to be great musicians, and that’s amazing. They are also both very nice young men. They used to be in a group with me and my son Mingus called Class Struggle. We played a few times, and we had another brother, Chris Beck, in our ensemble too. In fact, on this most recent tour of Europe, Russell couldn’t play with the quartet because of his baby son, and Chris filled in. 

PG: As a quartet, the group explores some pretty wide areas of music – gospel, free jazz, Afro-Caribbean, Blues, soul, and many others. Do you see a large distinction between these different categories? 

DM: Well, all I know is that when I’m playing a set, I want to incorporate all different eras of music. I might want to play something that hearkens to the 30s or the 40s. Or maybe something that happened in the 50s or 60s. The Caribbean element comes from the twenty years I spent living in Paris, where I was reading up on the Haitian uprising and working with the poet Saul Williams, whose people are from Haiti. So are Andrew Cyrille’s people. But all of these elements are in my music. I’ve worked with many people from different parts of the world, and those experiences are all in my repertoire.

Also, I come from the Church of God in Christ which is the most powerful gospel in the United States. I grew up with [gospel singer] Tramaine Hawkins. She lived down the street from me. My mother was her godmother. We had two bishops in California, Bishop Cleveland and Bishop Crouch – Andre Crouch’s father. I think that background distinguishes me from many other saxophone players. Not everyone grew up with the saxophone in their hands and played through all of those [church] services. Reverend Bernard Johnson has that experience, but other than him, there are not many gospel saxophone players. And those that do play gospel don’t go too far into jazz. Things are changing now, but I try to pass everything in my soul on to the young people around me. 

The best thing I could tell a young saxophonist is to play in the church. I’ve noticed that universities have produced probably far more musicians-  saxophone players in particular – than in the past. There are maybe too many. If they want to be different in how they express themselves, they should play in church and try to get that feeling inside their music. Jazz itself has different elements – at least four or five –  inside it. And gospel is one of them, coming from the Spirituals. African rhythms and European music are also part of the music. The bigger holds you have on each of those different inputs, the better and stronger you’ll be.

‘Francesca’ is out now on Intakt Records. You can purchase it on Bandcamp. The David Murray Quartet will be performing at the historic Village Vanguard from May 21 to May 26, 2024. Tickets can be purchased here. More information on David Murray is available on his website.

Photo credit: Laurent Elie Badessi