Interview with percussionist Sunny Murray, an American Master, who dishes some hard truths about labels ESP and BYG Actuel:
Those two, ESP and BYG, were the biggest profiteers of avant-garde music in the world. So these days I record for the younger cats, Michael [Ehlers, of Eremite] and J?me [Gnin, of Fractal], I have no problem with them, they treat me good. Japanese companies are good, I get my royalty checks... But the real dinosaurs were ESP and BYG, because they didn't pay NOBODY. You're dead as far as they're concerned. I've been dead for thirty-two years. Now they've re-released everything so it's like you're dead two times.
So, kids, if you must have the ESP and Actuel reissues, buy them, copy them, and return them. My 2 bits.
Murray also tells some other stories:
When I first got a drum set in New York around 1957, I was so happy, I was sharing the apartment we had with a bass player on 3rd Avenue, I came home with the drums, I pushed them all the way down 3rd Avenue (how I got 'em was a friend had a club, and the club got raided, and everybody got busted, so my friend had all these instruments, bass, drums left, and he called me and said “You a drummer. Take 'em.?I packed 'em up, got 'em downstairs, wheeled 'em down 3rd Avenue feeling good!). Got 'em upstairs, set 'em up... and I had one Max Roach record at that time, “Ezz-Thetic?or something, made just after Clifford [Brown] died, when he had Kenny Dorham [this would appear to be “Max Roach Plus 4?on EmArcy from 1957, which features George Russell’s “Ezz-Thetic?. ... Anyway I played that record, and we took some cheap wine, 35 cents a bottle, “Death Valley? “Thunderbird?shit, and we cooked it, we heated it up, and we took some nutmeg, a spoonful of nutmeg and then we smoked some J... And I played and I played and I played (nobody complained in those days!), and then I lay on the bed and ?this is still clear in my mind ?I was so smashed that I began to levitate and honest to God I saw SID CATLETT standing there, and he was like smiling, and I was looking at Sid Catlett and I was tripping and he... dissolved right inside me. I swear today, I'll never forget that. (Pause) And I fell boom back on the bed. I got back on the drums and I was playing, man! And three years later I was playing with Cecil. Six years and I was playing with John. I went up like that in drums, man... I still believe that's still some part of my success, that the spirit of this man has been... not haunting but, part of me. I find now Catlett's spirit is one of the most liberating in music. It's one of those burning bush experiences for me.
