Sonny Sharrock

Biography

Warren Harding “Sonny” Sharrock was born on August 27, 1940, in Ossining, New York. As a teenager, he started out singing doo-wop. After hearing John Coltrane on Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue when he was 19, he wanted to play tenor saxophone, but asthma kept him from it. He later described himself as “a horn player with a really fucked up axe.”

In the late 1960s, he worked with Pharoah Sanders and Byard Lancaster, making his first recorded appearance on Sanders’s 1967 album Tauhid. He also played on several records with flautist Herbie Mann and appeared uncredited on Miles Davis’s A Tribute to Jack Johnson. Between the late 1960s and mid-1970s, three albums came out under his own name: Black Woman, Monkey-Pockie-Boo, and Paradise—the last of which he later disowned. After Paradise, Sharrock mostly stepped away from music for the rest of the 1970s and early 1980s.

He divorced his wife and musical partner Linda in 1978 and took jobs as a chauffeur and a caretaker for children with mental disabilities. Bassist and producer Bill Laswell convinced him to return to recording, and he appeared on Material’s 1981 album Memory Serves. In 1986, he joined the group Last Exit alongside Laswell, saxophonist Peter Brötzmann, and drummer Ronald Shannon Jackson. During the late 1980s, he also played often with the New York band Machine Gun and led his own group.

With Laswell’s support, Sharrock experienced a creative resurgence, remarking in a 1991 interview that he had gone twelve years without making a record, then made seven under his own name in five years. He died of a heart attack in Ossining on May 25, 1994, at age 53, just as he was about to sign his first major-label contract.

Later career and death

Laswell produced most of Sharrock's later recordings, including the entirely solo Guitar, the "metal-influenced" Seize the Rainbow, and Highlife. Sharrock's band at the time featured Abe Speller on percussion, Lance Carter on drums, Charles Baldwin on bass, and David Snider on keyboards. These albums were followed by Ask the Ages in 1991, which featured Pharoah Sanders and drummer Elvin Jones. One writer described Ask the Ages as "hands down, Sharrock's finest hour, and the ideal album to play for those who claim to hate jazz guitar."

Sharrock recorded music, including the opening and ending themes, for Cartoon Network's Space Ghost Coast to Coast with drummer Lance Carter; this was one of the last projects he completed in the studio before his death. The Space Ghost Coast to Coast episode "Sharrock" carried a dedication to him at the end, and previously unheard music that he had recorded for the show was featured throughout most of the episode. On May 25, 1994, as he was on the verge of signing his first major label contract, Sharrock died of a heart attack in Ossining. He was 53 years old. He is survived by his second wife, Dannette Hill, and their daughter Jasmyn.