James Marcellus Arthur "Sunny" Murray (September 21, 1936 – December 7, 2017) was an American musician, and was one of the pioneers of the free jazz style of drumming.

During this time, he played with musicians such as trumpeters Red Allen and Ted Curson, pianist Willie "The Lion" Smith, and saxophonists Rocky Boyd and Jackie McLean.

"[3] Murray stated: "We played for about a year, just practicing, studying — we went to workshops with Varèse, did a lot of creative things, just experimenting, without a job.

"[4] In 1961, Murray made a recording with Taylor's group that was released under the auspices of Gil Evans as one side of Into the Hot.

The album features Ayler, Don Cherry, Henry Grimes, and Lewis Worrell, as well as Jones, who recites his poem "Black Art".

Val Wilmer wrote: Murray's aim was to free the soloist completely from the restrictions of time, and to do this he set up a continual hailstorm of percussion.

His concept relied heavily on continuous ringing stick-work on the edge of the cymbals, an irregular staccato barrage on the snare, spasmodic bass drum punctuation and constant, but not metronomic, use of the sock-cymbal (hi-hat).

The sheer physicality of his approach assures a broader spectrum of timbres than those usually achieved by players utilizing conventional posture.

Murray's dance in fast motion... creates the illusion of several drummers performing simultaneously, a stuttering strobe effect akin to how Duchamp caused his nude to trip the light fantastic down a staircase...

He has an astute gift for playing off extreme tonal contrasts, high-pitched cymbals ringing in counterpoint to earth-moaning bass drum tones...

"[5] Referring to Murray's rapid fluttering of the bass drum and washes and waves of cymbal noise, bassist Alan Silva stated "...it was the end of swing as we know it.

"[20] At one point he attempted to design a different kind of drum set that would be "more in touch with the human voice in terms of humming and screaming and laughing and crying.

"[21] With Albert Ayler With Louie Belogenis With Dave Burrell With Arthur Doyle With Khan Jamal With Keshavan Maslak With David Murray With Archie Shepp With Alexander von Schlippenbach With Cecil Taylor With others