Dave McMurray finds the sweet spot between Grateful Dead, jazz and Detroit sax soul

When Dave McMurray was making his name on the avant-garde underground of Detroit’s jazz scene decades ago, an album of Grateful Dead music was the furthest thing from his mind.

Now he’s got a pair of them: The veteran saxophonist is set to release “Grateful Deadication 2,” a nine-track tribute to San Francisco’s jam-band godfathers, with a guest list ranging from country maverick Jamey Johnson to keyboard stalwart Bob James.

Out Friday, the patchouli-flavored jazz album is McMurray’s third Blue Note Records release and follows his celebrated 2021 collection of Dead covers. He and his band will mark the release with a Thursday night show at the Magic Bag.

There they’ll perform the album in its entirety along with older material from McMurray’s repertoire — the solo stuff he’s created amid his long stints with artists such as Was (Not Was), Bob James, Kem and Kid Rock along with his studio work for a top-shelf array of musicians including the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan and B.B. King.

“I didn’t plan to do two of these,” McMurray says of his Dead albums. “But the audiences have been so cool. The jazz fans may not know these songs, but they like it because the band is good. And the jam-band fans really know this music.”

Like its 2021 predecessor — also largely instrumental — “Grateful Deadication 2” finds McMurray teasing out and emphasizing the melodic hooks that weren’t always so pronounced in the Dead’s own renditions, notably on cuts such as “Playing in the Band” and “Bird Song.”

“I approach this for songs that have melody, and Jerry Garcia had a bunch of great ones,” the saxophonist says. “I want people to know what I’m playing, and they do — they get it immediately. One of the greatest compliments I’ve gotten from serious Deadheads is: ‘I felt like you were singing.’”

McMurray and his studio players — including Detroit compatriots Wayne Gerard (guitar), Maurice O’Neal (keyboards), Luis Resto (piano), Ibrahim Jones (bass), Jeff Canady (drums) and Larry Frantangelo (percussion) — also find plenty of room to stretch, making musical explorations out of songs such as “China Cat Sunflower” and “The Other One,” featuring Bob James on keys.

What a short, strange trip it’s been: McMurray’s dive down the Grateful Dead rabbit hole began just five years ago, when he was tapped by old Detroit friend Don Was for a San Francisco festival date. It was an all-star affair that included Bob Weir and a performance of the latter-day Dead classic “Days Between.”

“We had a tape of the song, and I was like: ‘What the heck?’ It was really different. I didn’t know what I was going to do with it,” McMurray recalls. “But I got to rehearsal and it just turned into magic. When we played it in front the audience, they were hypnotized.”

Also impressed was Was, who invited McMurray to join him onstage with Bob Weir & Wolf Bros a few months later at the Fillmore Detroit. The saxophonist was getting increasingly enchanted by the music.

“I never saw the Grateful Dead in my future at all,” McMurray says of a career that started in the 1970s. “At that point, I didn’t really understand it. I knew the hits, of course, but I didn’t know the magnitude of it all.”

But in recent years, it clicked: “At first it was like, ‘Wait, where’s the verse?!’ Then I realized, 'Oh, they’re doing whatever they want to do.' There are odd measures. They play it differently every time. This was like Miles Davis or the Weather Report or something.”

As intrigued as he now was by the Dead’s songs, McMurray was initially intimidated to put himself in front of those veteran fans. He was nervous at his own first show covering the music, but when the crowd quickly went from “staring to dancing,” he knew it was working.

McMurray’s roots in Detroit music stretch back nearly five decades. The east-side Detroit native and Wayne State University alum cut his teeth with Faruq Z. Bey’s Griot Galaxy, the heralded progressive jazz band with a three-sax attack.

It was there that he caught the attention of Was, an Oak Park bassist, songwriter and producer who with friend David Weiss was concocting a freewheeling group they’d dubbed Was (Not Was). In the 1980s, McMurray became a fixture with the band and its traveling musical circus, including an early taste of European touring.

Session work quickly snowballed. McMurray was soon an in-demand hired gun in Detroit, working with George Clinton’s Parliament-Funkadelic projects at United Sound and with Anita Baker at Vanguard Studios. He worked closely with jazz pianist Geri Allen and even dabbled in the fledgling techno world, “trying to force my sax in,” he says with a laugh.

McMurray’s rising profile eventually landed him a solo deal with Warner Bros. Records in the early ‘90s, which was followed by a string of albums for a British indie label.

By that point, Was had cemented himself as an A-list, Grammy-winning producer in L.A., and he happily enlisted his old Detroit sax friend for sessions with the Stones, Dylan, Iggy Pop and others.

Kid Rock came calling in 2007, tapping McMurray for a sax contribution to the album “Rock n Roll Jesus.” It kicked off what became an eight-year tenure with Rock’s touring band, though McMurray’s role was initially limited.

“As it went on, he said, ‘You’ve got good instincts — just play wherever you want to play,’” McMurray recounts. “If he had something specific he wanted, he’d sing it for me. But otherwise, he just let me do what I wanted.”

McMurray signed with Blue Note in 2018, once again getting a boost from Was, now president of the fabled jazz label. “Music Is Life,” an album of soulful jazz originals, was released that year to glowing reviews, and “Grateful Deadication” arrived three years later.

For the new collection, McMurray and company holed up for several days at a studio in upstate New York, “where we had nothing to do but record music,” he says. After months of wrangling, McMurray and his team managed to catch the attention of Jamey Johnson, who stepped out of his rugged country persona to provide a tender vocal on “To Lay Me Down.”

“Jamey just added magic,” McMurray says. “I could tell when he walked in the door, he knew it in his mind, a feeling of what he wanted to do. He was in that lyric, taking it so seriously.”

“Grateful Deadication 2” will be released Friday on Blue Note Records.

Contact Detroit Free Press music writer Brian McCollum: 313-223-4450 or bmccollum@freepress.com.

Dave McMurray album release party

8 p.m. Thu.

The Magic Bag,

22920 Woodward, Ferndale

$15

themagicbag.com

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Sax man Dave McMurray revisits Grateful Dead with touch of jazz-soul