Sonny's Time Now is an album by American free jazz drummer Sunny Murray, his first as a leader.

The album features Albert Ayler and Don Cherry, with whom Murray had recorded and toured during the previous year, along with two bassists, Henry Grimes and Lewis Worrell.

The track titled "Black Art" features Jones reading his poem of the same name, backed by the musicians.

"[1]) According to Jeff Schwartz,[2] bassist, Ayler biographer, and author of "Free Jazz: A Research and Information Guide",[3] Jones financed the recording, with Murray's choice of performers.

[4] The Jihad label released only three recordings: Black & Beautiful, which featured Jones reading poetry backed by Yusef Iman, his wife, and a Doo-wop group; A Black Mass, a play written by Jones about a mad scientist, with music by Sun Ra's Myth Science Arkestra; and Sonny's Time Now.

"[6] Writing for AllMusic, Brandon Burke stated: "Were it not for Murray's name on the cover, Sonny's Time Now could probably be misinterpreted as an Albert Ayler record... this is a much more fractured affair than most Ayler records of the time... one is presented with some exceptionally free music that doesn't appear, on the surface anyway, to be based on any predetermined structures...

"[7] In his book The Freedom Principle, John Litweiler wrote: "Trumpet and tenor improvise in opposition to the grim Murray tides, and the two rumbling basses in 'Virtue', and an intense LeRoi Jones poem... answered by the flutter of drums and the tempoless, free-form quintet.

Ayler does not dominate this recording... and he opens up in the 'Justice' collective improvisations, responding to Cherry's longer lines with snapping and snarling.

"[8] Thurston Moore included Sonny's Time Now in his "Top Ten From The Free Jazz Underground" list, first published in 1995 in the second issue of the defunct Grand Royal magazine.