I'm a big fan of the original ODD COUPLE, and I always enjoyed Murray as a recurring character, so while I'm saddened to hear about Al's death, I am happy to see that he lived to the ripe ol' age of 96.
I recently heard that the reason Murray became a fixture for the entire run of THE ODD COUPLE was because Al ended up working really well with both Tony Randall and Jack Klugman that the producers decided to expand on his character beyond having him being just another one of Oscar's poker buddies (the others were pretty much phased out by the second season).
Al was also apparently the only one who was able to break Tony up, and Tony was hard to break up on the set: there's a blooper on the Season One DVD (and I think on YouTube) where you can see Al's nose sticking through the peep-hole in the door and Tony starts cackling like a mother hen over it.
All in all, he kind of reminds me of someone like Joe Raposo: just a nice teddy bear of a man.