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Arthur Doyle

Saxophonist/flutist/singer Arthur Doyle is hardly alone in his position as a marginal jazz figure. In an art form known for its many trials and tribulations (both artistic and financial), Doyle hasn't made his situation any easier by attempting to carve a singular path along the music's outskirts. The fact that he has done so, however, is what makes his music so unique. Performing in a style he calls "free jazz soul," Doyle combines the liberated freedom flights of the avant-garde with the gritty, gut-wrenching emotion of gospel and R&B.

The second of five children, Arthur Doyle was born in Birmingham, AL, on June 26, 1944. He attended college at Tennessee State University where he quickly built a circle of contacts in the Nashville music scene, playing with Louis Smith (Horace Silver) and Walter Miller (Sun Ra). Following brief stints in Detroit, playing in a big band led by Charles Moore, and back home in Alabama with R&B outfit Johnny Jones & the King Casuals, Doyle left for New York at the age of 23.

Still essentially a bop player, Doyle quickly became acclimated to the more radical environment surrounding the city's bustling loft scene. Shortly after his arrival, the saxophonist hooked up with drummer Milford Graves and began sitting in on dates with Pharaoh Sanders and Sun Ra's Arkestra. Declining a possible job with the latter outfit, Doyle instead joined a small combo led by Noah Howard, performing on the sessions that produced The Black Ark (1969). Concerted efforts by jazz's mainstream to stifle the practitioners of the "new thing" took their toll, however, and Doyle vanished from the scene from 1972-1974.

He would not appear on an album again until 1976, ending a seven-year period of recorded silence with his blazing tenor work on Graves' Babi Music. The following year, he led a quintet of his own in a performance at a New York loft dubbed the Brook. The results were documented on his landmark Alabama Feeling and released in a limited pressing of 1000 copies. Amongst the crowd that night was an admiring guitarist named Rudolph Grey. The pair met that evening and soon devised plans for an outfit of their own. Debuting at Max's Kansas City as the Blue Humans, they proceeded to play a series of New York dates with drummer Beaver Harris. Doyle abandoned the project shortly after, the increasingly bleak situation for free jazz players in the states convincing him to move to Paris in 1982.

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Arthur Doyle

Read "Arthur Doyle" reviewed by John Sharpe


Better known by repute than in person saxophonist Arthur Doyle is nonetheless a free jazz legend. Though active since the '60s he has garnered barely a footnote in the written accounts of the music's history, not helped by a diminutive discography on obscure independent labels in limited pressings. But he has persevered and his rediscovery by a younger generation hungry to experience noise allied with passion led to a late career resurgence of sorts. Doyle was born in ...

189
Live Review

Arthur Doyle Is Still Magick

Read "Arthur Doyle Is Still Magick" reviewed by Jay Dunbar


Arthur Doyle Group Tonic New York, NY January 18, 2006While the legendary Arthur Doyle appeared a bit lost amidst the microphones surrounding his seat on stage, the soul of the man rolled on through the young cadre of musicians who joined him on stage (Yes, Daniel Carter is still young) and the heart-felt excitement he spurred from the small group of devotees who came out to witness this rare performance. Peerless as he imparts ancient ...

199
Album Review

Arthur Doyle & Sunny Murray: Live at the Glenn Miller Cafe

Read "Live at the Glenn Miller Cafe" reviewed by Derek Taylor


Arguably more able to engender polemical reaction than any other living saxophonist, Arthur Doyle stands noticeably apart in the free jazz canon (if there can rightfully be considered such a thing). A pariah to some, a prophet to others, he approaches his instruments in manner that makes the term ‘idiosyncratic’ seem painfully inept. His sound and phrasing are such to elicit immediate opinion. A fellow saxophone iconoclast Charles Gayle works on an analogous level, but even his detractors have been ...

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Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

Live In NYC

Audible Hiss
2012

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Five Poems For The...

Audible Hiss
2012

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In Solo

Audible Hiss
2012

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Ghosts II

Audible Hiss
2010

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No More Crazy Women

Audible Hiss
2005

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