Octo_Russ

David Murray [Ming's Samba] 

One of the greatest Jazz albums i own, and one of the success stories of my local library, i hired this out in late 1993, and loved it enough to get my own copy, i remember the moment that the whole thing 'clicked' for me, while on a train to London, looking out the window and thinking 'yeah, i get this!', it was a great moment for this album, and even more importantly for Jazz, some Soloist going fairly crazy, and skirting the very edge of tonality can still be music!, it opened up my way of thinking to fall in love with other Jazz albums, it's actually only a half filled album with not even 40 minutes of music on it, but quality more than makes up for lack of quality, with only 5 tracks, most lasting between 7-11 minutes, and one shorter track, but again quantity of tracks is more than made up by the sheer quality of those tracks, how Murray can spin long solos, full of ever increasing complex ideas, and how everyone else follows his line of thinking, what an excellent tight knit unit this is, this album featured in my Blog in the very first month [29th January 2010].

David Murray is American, though now lives in Portugal, he's now 57, he recorded this disc in 1988, the front cover photograph is by Ming Murray, which is his wife of the album name, it's a slightly long exposure shot, which shows nice movement, same with the back insert, i like the lettering, in opposite corners, large and small sizes, it's inventive, the track timings are a label i stuck on so i know where i'm at in each track, and the personnel list are transfers i rubbed on, i always like to know who exactly i'm listening to.

Tracks 1 & 3-4 were the best out of the five, and on this listen it was track 4 'Spooning' that i found extra brilliant, it's a Tango, the Drummer Ed Blackwell creates a martial gait in his drumming [0:00-0:08], and just listen to the way he hits that treble tom!, now that's the resonance i like from the drums, they make the drums sound so varied, and while Murray plays out the theme [0:08-1:42], and Blackwell gets some delicious hits in, and it's the Pianist John Hicks who takes the first solo [1:43-3:18], and in the background the Bassist Ray Drummond twangs away superbly, towards the end of Hick's solo, he gets really impassioned, Murray takes the next solo [3:18-6:29], simple-ish at first, but it isn't long before he starts throwing all sorts of spanners in the works, and there's individual tiny ideas that are chucked into the broth, some very lazy yet delightful bass notes [4:06-4:12], some almost tongue fluttering [4:21-4:35], there's squawking in there [4:43+], lazy legato wailing in higher registers [5:00-5:12], and blasting out what is probably the highest treble note that the tenor sax can do! [5:31-5:43], and almost trying to sound like words / language at one point [5:47-5:56], and yet all the time he stays true to the original theme, even though he de-constructs it to pieces, you can always hear the tune, Murray brings back the original theme in its natural glory [6:30-7:17], and it's so good to hear this again, Blackwell ends with the martial gait as at first as the outro fade [7:16-7:30], a tremendous track of exciting Jazz.

You can hear 1 minute samples of this album on the MP3VA site.