Murray, Albert L. 1916–

views updated Jun 11 2018

Albert L. Murray 1916

Novelist, essayist, biographer, philosopher

Attended Tuskegee Institute

Penned Autobiographical Trilogy

Worked with Count Basie

Selected writings

Sources

A well-known author and essayist, Albert L. Murray has been called, according to Malcolm Jones, Jr. in Newsweek, one of the most influential cultural figures of the twentieth century. Murrays writings cover a variety of subjects, most notably his focus on African-American culture and music. Although most clearly identified as a spokesperson for African-American culture and widely acknowledged as one of black Americas foremost thinkers, Murray himself rejected that label, pointing out that his skin is brown, not black (he prefers the designations Negro or colored), and that all Americans, black and white, share a common culture. He has called himself simply an American writer. According to Murray, that common culture is most eloquently expressed in blues and jazz music; somewhat like writer Amiri Baraka, who characterized black Americans as a blues people, Murray identified a blues idiom that gives Americans the spirit and wit to overcome adversity.

In novels, essays, travel narratives, poems, and other forms, Murray has expressed his ideas with at least three mutually reinforcing levels: he writes, in the broadest sense, about the blues, in a style that resembles the blues, creating works that embody what he sees as a blues aesthetic of survival, perseverance, and a positive spirit in the face of difficulty. The writer who has created this complex style took much of a lifetime to forge it; he did not publish his first book until his sixth decade.

Albert Lee Murray was born to a single mother in Nokomis, Alabama, on May 12, 1916. He was taken in and raised by a couple in the Magazine Point neighborhood of nearby Mobile, and his teachers recognized him as uncommonly intelligent while he was still a young child. Murray was sent to the Mobile County Training School, an institution whose strong-willed and oratorically gifted teachers were the source of an influence Murray has often acknowledged.

Attended Tuskegee Institute

Murray moved on to the flagship of the pre-integration system of black higher education in the South: the Tuskegee Institute. He studied the classics of European literature and received a bachelors degree in education there in 1939. Of special influence during this time were the works of Austrian novelist Thomas Mann, who incorporated the music of classical composers Beethoven and Wagner into his mode of storytelling.

At a Glance

Born Albert Lee Murray in Nokomis, Alabama, June 12, 1916; raised in Mobile, Alabama area. Married Mozelle Menefee, May 31, 1941, one child. Education: Graduated from Mobile County Training School; Tuskegee Institute, B.S. in education with much literature study, 1939; postgraduate work, University of Michigan, 1940, Northwestern University, 1941; New York University, M.A., 1948; University of Paris, Paris France, postgraduate study, 1950. Military service: U.S. Air Force, 1943-62; reached rank of major.

Career: Writer and educator. Taught at Tuskegee Institute, 1940s-50s; trained Tuskegee Airmen during World War II; moved to New York City, early 1960s; published numerous essays, 1960s; published first book, The Omni-Americans, a collection of essays, 1970; published trilogy of semi-autobiographical novels: Train Whistle Guitar, 1974; The Spyglass Tree, 1991; The Seven League Boots, 1996; worked with Count Basie on Basies autobiography, early 1980s; published several volumes of essays and musical criticism; numerous visting lectureships at various colleges and universities, 1970s-90s.

Selected Awards: Lillian Smith Award for fiction, for Train Whistle Guitar, 1974; ASCAP Deems Taylor Award for musical criticism, for Stomping the Blues, 1976; National Book Critics Circle Lifetime Achievement Award, 1996; numerous honorary doctoral degrees.

Address: 45 W. 132nd St., New York, NY 10037.

After doing graduate work at the University of Michigan and Northwestern University, Murray returned to Tuskegee, teaching English there for many years and also joining the U.S. Air Force. He became one of the trainers of the Tuskegee Airmen who distinguished themselves during World War II. Murray himself spent time in the great capitals of Europe during a stretch when he was stationed in Morocco; he studied at the University of Paris for a time. While stationed in the northeastern United States he completed an M.A. at New York University in 1948.

After retiring from the military with the rank of major in 1962, Murray moved with his wife and family to New Yorks Harlem neighborhood and turned to writing in earnest. His first book, The Omni-Americans (1970), collected essays he had published during the 1960s. In these writings Murray emphasized the idea of an American culture composed of a unique mixture of elements, taking sharp issue both with black separatists and with the predominant white sociological writings of the day that emphasized only grim pathologies in the black experience. Murray then published the travel narrative South to a Very Old Place (1972), an account of a trip he made to his hometown of Mobile, with side visits to Tuskegee, Memphis, and other locales; the book, containing vivid descriptions of Mobiles black community, embodied Murrays original and very musical prose style.

Penned Autobiographical Trilogy

Murrays other writings of the 1970s included the first novel of an eventual autobiographical trilogy, Train Whistle Guitar (1974), which depicted the coming-of-age of an intelligent Mobile youth named Scooter. The other two works of the trilogy followed Scooter to Tuskegee (The Spyglass Tree, 1991), and into a swing-era jazz band (The Seven League Boots, 1996); Murray considered himself a fiction writer foremost. For many years, however, music came to the fore in his writing.

In such books as The Hero and the Blues (1973) and Stomping the Blues (1976), the second of which won the music industrys Deems Taylor Award for music criticism, Murray expressed his ideas about the place of blues and jazz in American culture. According to him, the blues hero is not simply a musician but the embodiment of black experience and values. Murray also regarded improvisation within a framework of a communal tradition as critical to the spirit of confrontation that resulted in the improvement of the conditions of black life in America. In other works, such as The Blue Devils of Nada (1996), he argued that the blues animated the spirit of American life itself, offering inspiration not only to African Americans beset by racism, but to anyone troubled by the lack of meaning in modern life.

A passage from The Blue Devils of Nada illustrates Murrays unique style, seemingly composed by turns of Southern downhome speech and European didactic argument. In this passage, he argues that a complete realization of the blues attitude towards life is not only necessary for blacks but for any group of people. He says that, a fully orchestrated blues statement is a fundamental device for confrontation, improvisation, and existential affirmation: a strategy for acknowledging the fact that life is a lowdown dirty shame and for improvising or riffing on the exigencies of the predicament. In general, Murray states, suffering is a given, but can be overcome. To protest the existence of dragons (or even hooded or unhooded Grand Dragons for that matter) is not only sentimental but naive, he concluded.

Worked with Count Basie

Murray put his interest in music to work in practical realms in the 1980s, taking a decade off from his own writings to work with jazz bandleader Count Basie on his autobiography, Good Morning Blues (1985). He helped found and served on the board of directors of the Jazz at Lincoln Center concert series, a major institution that presented jazz as an art form comparable to classical symphonic music or opera. In the 1990s, approaching his 80th year, Murray once again began to write prolifically despite being slowed by a series of spine operations.

In addition to the second and third Scooter novels and The Blue Devils of Nada, Murray published a volume of poetry, Aubades: Epic Exits and Other Twelve Bar Riffs (2001), a new book of essays, From the Briarpatch File (2001), a collection of letters he had exchanged with his Tuskegee contemporary Ralph Ellison, and an art exhibition catalogue devoted to the work of his friend Romare Bearden. Late in life, Murray was feted with a parade of honorary doctoral degrees, one of them from his alma mater of Tuskegee. He was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Book Critics Circle in 1996.

Selected writings

The Omni-Americans, 1970 (essays).

South to a Very Old Place, 1972 (travel narrative).

The Hero and the Blues, 1973 (music criticism).

Train Whistle Guitar, 1974 (novel).

Stomping the Blues, 1976 (music criticism).

Good Morning Blues: The Autobiography of Count Basie, as Told to Albert Murray, 1985.

The Spyglass Tree, 1991 (novel).

The Seven League Boots, 1996 (novel).

The Blue Devils of Nada, 1996 (music and philosophy).

(Editor, with John F. Callahan) Trading Twelves: Selected Letters of Ralph Ellison and Albert Murray, 2000.

Aubades: Epic Exits and Other Twelve Bar Riffs, 2001 (poetry).

From the Briarpatch File, 2001 (essays).

Sources

Books

Contemporary Novelists, 7th ed., St. James, 2001.

Contemporary Southern Writers, St. James, 1999.

Periodicals

African American Review, Summer 1993, p. 287; Spring 1999, p. 168.

American Heritage, September 1996, p. 68.

New Republic, February 3, 1992, p. 39.

Newsweek, February 5, 1996, p. 60.

Publishers Weekly, February 26, 1996, p. 78; September 24, 2001, p. 91; October 1, 2001, p. 46.

On-line

Contemporary Authors Online, The Gale Group, 2001. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center, Gale, 2001, http://www.galenet.com/servlet/BioRC

James M. Manheim

Murray, Albert L. 1916–

views updated May 17 2018

Murray, Albert L. 1916–

PERSONAL: Born June 12, 1916, in Nokomis, AL; son of John Lee and Sudie (Graham) Young; married Mozelle Menefee, May 31, 1941; children: Michele. Ethnicity: "Black." Education: Tuskegee Institute, B.S., 1939; New York University, M.A., 1948; postgraduate work at University of Michigan, 1940, Northwestern University, 1941, and University of Paris, 1950. Hobbies and other interests: Recordings, photography, cookbooks, and gourmet cooking.

ADDRESSES: Home and office—45 West 132nd St., New York, NY 10037.

CAREER: U.S. Air Force, 1943–62, retired as major. Instructor, Tuskegee Institute, 1940–43, 1946–51, director of College Little Theatre; lecturer, Graduate School of Journalism, Columbia University, 1968; Colgate University, O'Connor Professor of Literature, 1970, O'Connor Lecturer, 1973, professor of humanities, 1982; visiting professor of literature, University of Massachusetts, Boston, 1971; Paul Anthony Brick lecturer, University of Missouri, 1972; writer in residence, Emory University, 1978; adjunct associate professor of creative writing, Barnard College, 1981–83; Woodrow Wilson fellow, Drew University, 1983; lecturer and participant in symposia.

MEMBER: International PEN, Authors League of America, Authors Guild, Alpha Phi Alpha.

AWARDS, HONORS: Lillian Smith Award for fiction, 1974, for Train Whistle Guitar; Litt.D., Colgate University, 1975; Deems Taylor Award, ASCAP, for music criticism, 1976, for Stomping the Blues; Lincoln Center Directors Emeriti Award, 1991.

WRITINGS:

NONFICTION

The Omni-Americans: New Perspectives on Black Experience and American Culture (essays), Outerbridge & Dientsfrey, 1970, published as The Omni-Americans: Some Alternatives to the Folklore of White Supremacy, Vintage Book (St. Paul, MN), 1983.

South to a Very Old Place, McGraw (New York, NY), 1972.

The Hero and the Blues, University of Missouri Press (Columbia, MO), 1973.

Stomping the Blues, McGraw (New York, NY), 1976.

(With Count Basie) Good Morning Blues: The Autobiography of Count Basie, Random House (New York, NY), 1985.

The Blue Devils of Nada, Pantheon (New York, NY), 1996.

(Editor, with John F. Callahan) Trading Twelves: The Selected Letters of Ralph Ellison and Albert Murray, Modern Library (New York, NY), 2000.

NOVELS

Train Whistle Guitar, McGraw (New York, NY), 1974.

The Spyglass Tree, Pantheon (New York, NY), 1991.

The Seven League Boots, Pantheon (New York, NY), 1996.

The Magic Keys, Pantheon (New York, NY), 2005.

SIDELIGHTS: Albert L. Murray's "mythic novels and fresh, discerning artistic and cultural criticism are sheer pleasure to read," states Booklist critic Donna Seaman, "but they provide more than a good time: they have helped define the essence of the African American aesthetic." Murray, a retired Air Force major, first gained recognition for his essay collection The Omni-Americans: New Perspectives on Black Experience and American Culture. In this book, he argues that black Americans have a distinctive identity of their own, developing a unique culture "which allows them to see themselves 'not as the substandard, abnormal non-white people of American social science surveys and the news media, but rather as if they were, so to speak, fundamental extensions of contemporary possibilities,'" says Dictionary of Literary Biography contributor Elizabeth Schultz. "Like jam session musicians and blues singers, they have learned the skills of improvisation, not only translating white models of excellence into their own terms, but also transforming degrading conditions into culture." Schultz declares that the "abiding concern of [Murray's] writing is the triumph of Afro-American people, who, despite and, indeed, in Murray's view, because of centuries of difficulties, created a courageous, complex, life-sustaining, and life-enhancing culture—apparent in their language, religion, sports, fashions, food, dance, and above all in their music."

Murray has infuriated some people with his unqualified rejection of black nationalism and his preference for terms such as "colored" and "Negro." The writer has repeatedly noted that his skin is brown, not black, and that he knows few people whose skin is truly "white" or "black." Focusing on skin tone only exacerbates prejudice because of it, he believes. In a Nation essay, Gene Seymour reports that The Omni-Americans "challenged readers to do the hard, honest, necessary work of accepting this complexity. In doing so, the book scolded and ridiculed an assortment of sociologist, ideologues and pundits of all political persuasions who let Marx or Freud frame their views of racial matters."

Murray expresses an interest in blues and jazz in other works, especially in The Hero and the Blues and Stomping the Blues, which is an attempt to redefine "the music and its connotations for American culture," according to Jason Berry of the Nation. S.M. Fry, writing in the Library Journal, points out that Murray "views the music not as a primitive musical expression of black suffering but as an antidote to the bad times." Murray, the reviewer says, also emphasizes the importance of the performance, "the performing style and the music itself over the lyrics and social or political connotations." These books have made Murray "one of the foremost literary interpreters of blues, jazz and improvisation," states Brent Staples in the New York Times Book Review.

Murray's trilogy of novels—Train Whistle Guitar, The Spyglass Tree, and The Seven League Boots—are autobiographical in tone. Like the author, their protagonist Scooter grows up in the deep South—fishing and hunting in the bayous, listening to spirituals and blues and folktales. Yet according to Richard M. Ready in South Atlantic Quarterly, Train Whistle Guitar is more than a coming-of-age tale; it also reveals the ideas behind Murray's nonfiction work, because it "works out through a series of improvisatory episodes Murray's commitment to the aesthetic, stylizing dimension of life as a key to the complicated business of making a life for oneself."

Reviewing The Spyglass Tree, Charles Monaghan asks in Washington Post Book World, "Is Albert Murray America's best black writer? There is certainly a case to be made for it, and his second novel, The Spyglass Tree only makes the case stronger." The book followed Scooter from his Alabama home town to college at an unnamed university obviously based on the Tuskegee Institute. Monaghan praises the "nitty-gritty of the book, the marvelous set pieces,… Murray's swooping, swerving prose" that add up to "amazing word music."

Murray provided more "invigorating interpretations of music, visual art, and literature dearest to his heart" in the essay collection The Blue Devils of Nada, Seaman writes in Booklist. A Publishers Weekly reviewer calls the contents a set of "elegantly learned essays" that illuminate the theme of "the effort of the engaged artist to document and give shape to the rootlessness and chaos underlying contemporary life in general…. Murray writes with passion for, and deep knowledge of, his blues masters."

Murray continued the story of Scooter with The Seven League Boots, in which his alter ego becomes a top jazz bassist. It is "Murray's most ambitious novel," in Seaman's opinion, that "affirms Scooter's status as a classical hero…. Scooter's story is infused with the elegant energy of jazz, the sonority of history, and the spirituality of art." Newsweek critic Malcolm Jones, Jr. calls The Seven League Boots "Murray's most singular achievement." Jones notes that Murray gives his protagonist "a splendid career, a movie-star girlfriend and success at every turn. Scooter's problem is that things come to him too easily. Being talented, Murray teaches us, isn't hard. The tough part is living up to what people expect of you and figuring out what to expect of yourself."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Bruck, Peter, and Wolfgang Karrer, editors, The Afro-American Novel since 1960, B.R. Gruner Publishing (Amsterdam), 1982.

Contemporary Literary Criticism, Volume 73, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 1993.

Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 38: Afro-American Writers after 1955: Dramatists and Prose Writers, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 1985.

PERIODICALS

American Heritage, September, 1996, p. 68.

American Poetry Review, July-August, 1978, pp. 42-45.

Atlantic Monthly, December, 1974, pp. 118, 120-123.

Black American Literature Forum, fall, 1991, pp. 449-523.

Booklist, February 15, 1996, p. 980; November 1, 1997, p. 448.

Bulletin of Research in the Humanities, summer, 1983, pp. 140-161.

Down Beat, October 20, 1977, pp. 51-52.

Entertainment Weekly, March 8, 1996, p. 60.

Library Journal, February 1, 1977.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, March 26, 1986.

Nation, January 15, 1977; pp. 55-57; March 25, 1996, p. 25.

Newsweek, March 23, 1970, p. 106; January 31, 1972; December 20, 1976; December 9, 1991, p. 71; February 5, 1996, p. 60.

New Yorker, October 17, 1970, pp. 185-186, 189; January 8, 1972; July 22, 1974; April 8, 1996, p. 70.

New York Review of Books, February 24, 1972; June 13, 1974, pp. 37-39; January 16, 1986.

New York Times, April 4, 1972; December 11, 1976; November 22, 1991, p. C29.

New York Times Book Review, May 3, 1970, pp. 6, 34; January 2, 1972; June 4, 1972; December 3, 1972; May 12, 1974, p. 7; December 1, 1974; December 26, 1976; December 26, 1982; February 2, 1986; March 10, 1996, p. 4.

Publishers Weekly, December 18, 1995, pp. 35, 39; February 26, 1996, p. 78.

Rolling Stone, January 13, 1977.

Saturday Review, January 22, 1972, p. 72; May 4, 1974, p. 51.

South Atlantic Quarterly, summer, 1986, pp. 270-282.

Time, January 10, 1972; March 10, 1986.

Times Literary Supplement, July 28, 1978; July 11, 1986.

Tribune Books (Chicago, IL), January 19, 1986.

Voice Literary Supplement, February, 1982.

Washington Post Book World, March 22, 1970; December 26, 1971, p. 11; December 8, 1974; January 8, 1986; November 3, 1991, pp. 7, 11.

Murray, Albert L

views updated May 23 2018

MURRAY, Albert L.

Nationality: American. Born: Nokomis, Alabama, 12 June 1916. Education: Tuskegee Institute, B.S. 1939; New York University, M.A. 1948; postgraduate work at University of Michigan, 1940, Northwestern University, 1941, and University of Paris, 1950. Military Service: U.S. Air Force, 1943-62, including service during World War II; retired as major. Family: Married Mozelle Menefee in 1941; one daughter. Career: Instructor, Tuskegee Institute, 1940-43, 1946-51, director of College Little Theatre; lecturer, Graduate School of Journalism, Columbia University, 1968; O'Connor Professor of Literature, Colgate University, 1970, O'Connor Lecturer, 1973, professor of humanities, 1982; visiting professor of literature, University of Massachusetts, Boston, 1971; Paul Anthony Brick lecturer, University of Missouri, 1972; writer in residence, Emory University, Atlanta, 1978; adjunct associate professor of creative writing, Barnard College, 1981-83; Woodrow Wilson fellow, Drew University, 1983; Dupont visiting professor, Washington and Lee University, 1993; lecturer and participant in symposia. Awards: Lillian Smith award for fiction, 1974; Deems Taylor award for music criticism (ASCAP), 1976; Lincoln Center Directors Emeriti award, 1991; Literature Achievement award (National Book Critics Circle), 1997; Harper Lee award for Literary Excellence (Alabama Writer's Forum), 1998. Litt.D., Colgate University, 1975; Doctor of humane letters, Spring Hill College, 1996. Address: 45 West 132nd Street, New York, New York 10037, U.S.A.

Publications

Novels

Train Whistle Guitar. New York, McGraw, 1974.

The Spyglass Tree. New York, Pantheon, 1991.

The Seven League Boots. New York, Pantheon, 1996.

Plays

Television Programs: Newport Jazz '90 (cowriter, with others). WETA-TV, 1990.

Other

The Omni-Americans: New Perspectives on Black Experience and American Culture (essays). Outerbridge & Dientsfrey, 1970; published as The Omni-Americans: Some Alternatives to the Folklore of White Supremacy. St. Paul, Minnesota, Vintage Book, 1983.

South to a Very Old Place (memoir). New York, McGraw, 1972.

The Hero and the Blues (lectures). Columbia, University of MissouriPress, 1973.

Stomping the Blues. New York, McGraw, 1976.

Good Morning Blues: The Autobiography of Count Basie (with CountBasie). New York, Random House, 1985.

Reflections on Logic, Politics, and Reality: A Challenge to the Sacred Consensus of Contemporary American Thinking. Riverdale, New York, Braimanna Publishers, 1989.

Contributor, Alabama Bound: Contemporary Stories of a State, edited by James E. Colquitt. Livingston, Alabama, Livingston Press, 1995.

The Blue Devils of Nada: A Contemporary American Approach to Aesthetic Statement. New York, Pantheon, 1996.

Romare Bearden in Black-and-White: Photomontage Projections, 1964. New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, 1997

* * *

Albert Murray has had a profound influence on American art since World War II. A brilliant cultural critic, novelist, essayist, and biographer, Murray's artistry is found in his description of the forms and meanings of the blues and jazz. Robert O'Meally explains that "more than any other writer, he has taken on the complex task of naming the aspects of performances by blues-idiom musicians, and then of saying with precision what it is that makes such performances so irresistible to audiences and dancers, so definitive of their time and culture." Murray's works include The Omni-Americans: New Perspectives on Black Experience and American Culture, South to a Very Old Place, Train Whistle Guitar, Stomping the Blues, The Spyglass Tree, The Seven League Boots, and The Blue Devils of Nada.

Murray's first work, The Omni-Americans, is a clear defense of African-American culture found in a collection of essays, commentaries, and reviews dealing with politics, literature, and music. His next work, South to a Very Old Place, is an autobiographical memoir of his youth and a celebration of black culture. The Hero and the Blues is a collection of Murray's Paul Anthony Brick lectures at the University of Missouri on ethical implications of literary esthetics. Train Whistle Guitar, The Spyglass Tree, and The Seven League Boots constitute "the Scooter trilogy." Train Whistle Guitar begins the saga of Scooter by telling the story of his childhood in the deep South of the 1920s. The Spyglass Tree then follows Murray's resilient, intelligent, vibrant, and universal protagonist to an imaginary Alabama college in the 1930s. The last novel in the trilogy, The Seven League Boots, recounts Scooter's experiences as a bass player in a touring jazz band following his graduation from college. During the Scooter trilogy, Murray also wrote Stomping the Blues, an examination of the redefinition of blues music and its connection to American culture, and Good Morning Blues, a biography of Count Basie. The Blue Devils of Nada, a more recent work, focuses on the creative process, what he calls "the vernacular imperative for American aesthetics."

In all of Murray's works, one encounters the people and places of the blues, and the author's theories on jazz and the blues seek to define a modern consciousness and create a new archetype of the American hero known as the "blues hero." An opposition of the unhappy reality presented in the blues music with improvisation by the dancers, musicians, and even the music itself implies the role of the hero, who may not always win but who will most assuredly always go down swinging. According to Murray, "the blues is not the creation of a crushed-spirited people. It's the product of a forward-looking, upward-striving people. Jazz is only possible in a climate of freedom." It is this elemental differentiation between the blues as a feeling of despondency and blues music, which brings people happiness by gathering them together to dance and sing and flirt and "stomp" the blues away, that is a reoccurring theme in Murray's work.

Murray not only writes about the blues and uses the music as a basis for his philosophy, he also imitates the art form in his prose, which Larry Neal calls the "acoustical iconography" of language. This musical emulation provides a unique framework for Murray's novels that are, according to O'Meally, "arrangements of verbal vamps, breaks, riffs, choruses, and out chorusesrhythmically repeated figures analogous to Basie's 'One O'Clock Jump' or Leadbelly's 'Good Morning Blues."' In his long passages of dialogue and monologue, and in his lyric description, Murray's language dances across the page, intruding on the reader's awareness and impressing rhythmic order in the story. Through a unique creative process, Murray has found a way to actually write the blues.

Murray is regarded as one of the nation's best black Southern writers, yet he doesn't regard himself as such. Rather, he chooses to be known as an "all American writer." Working to establish a foundation for a national identity, Murray describes the American culture as "mulatto," a race of interrelated, multicolored people, and focuses on the irony of intolerance existing in a sophisticated society such as the United States. Whether he regards himself as a black writer or not, Murray has been a very real inspiration for several generations of African-American writers ever since he burst onto the scene with The Omni Americans, which challenged its readers to undertake the hard, honest work of accepting his vision of the mulatto culture. Accused in the past of fostering racism when he was, above all, attempting to transcend racial peripheries, Murray today offers his elegant "blues aesthetic," steeped in black cultural tradition, for engaging in the turmoil of subsistence.

Murray is indisputably America's great literary practitioner of the blues idiom, the creator of a bold, new, elegant, lyrical style comprised of the black folk tradition, the Southern tradition of storytelling, the rumination of Faulkner, the wordplay of Joyce along with the cadences and idioms of African-American speech. Duke Ellington said it best when he once explained: "Albert Murray is a man whose learning did not interfere with understanding. An authority on soul from the days of old, he is right on right back to back and commands respect. He doesn't have to look it up. He already knows. If you want to know, look him up. He is the unsquarest person I know."

Cathy Kelly Power

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