Albert Murray
Author
Series
Library of America volume 284
Description
In his 1970 classic The Omni-Americans, Albert Murray (1916-2013) took aim at protest writers and social scientists who accentuated the "pathology" of race in American life. Against narratives of marginalization and victimhood, Murray argued that black art and culture, particularly jazz and blues, stand at the very headwaters of the American mainstream, and that much of what is best in American art embodies the "blues-hero tradition"--A heritage of...
Author
Description
"Murray Talks Music brings together, for the first time, many of Albert Murray's finest interviews and essays on music-most never before published-as well as rare liner notes and prefaces. A celebrated educator and raconteur, and cofounder of Jazz at Lincoln Center, Murray engages with a variety of scholars and journalists while making insightful connections among music, literature, and other art forms-all with ample humor and from unforeseen angles."--Publisher's...
Author
Description
Rediscover the "most important book on black-white relationships" in America in this special fiftieth anniversary edition.
The United States is in actuality not a nation of black people and white people. It is a nation of multicolored people.... Any fool can see that the white people are not really white, and that black people are not black. They are all interrelated one way or another." These words, written by Albert Murray at the height of the...
Author
Description
This absorbing collection of letters spans a decade in the lifelong friendship of two remarkable writers who engaged the subjects of literature, race, and identity with deep clarity and passion. The correspondence begins in 1950 when Ellison is living in New York City, hard at work on his enduring masterpiece, Invisible Man, and Murray is a professor at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. Mirroring a jam session in which two jazz musicians "trade twelves"--each...
Series
Description
"A leading musician of the swing era and an outstanding representative of the big band style, Count Basie was an eminent bandleader and jazz pianist. He led one of the most enduring swing bands of all time; no other musician was ever more committed to stomping, shouting, swinging, jumping and dragging away the blues than Count Basie. In Swingin' the blues, a distinguished group of Basie alumni, including early band stars Harry "Sweets" Edison, Earle...
Description
Jazz is born in New Orleans at the turn of the century emerging from several forms of music including ragtime, marching bands, work songs, spirituals, creole music, funeral parade music and above all, the blues. Musicians profiled here who advanced early jazz are Buddy Bolden, Jelly Roll Morton, Sidney Bechet, Freddie Keppard, and musicians of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band.
Series
Description
Features rare and memorable film performances of the greatest performers like Bessie Smith, Son House, Jimmy Rushing, Big Bill Broonzy, Sonny Boy Williamson, Muddy Waters, Big Joe Turner, T-Bone Walker, and B.B. King. Follows the music's many tributaries as blues flows into the sophisticated jazz of Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Count Basie, the rhythm and blues of Louis Jordan and Dinah Washington, and the rock 'n' roll of Chuck Berry and...
Description
When America enters WWII in 1941, swing becomes a symbol of democracy and entertainers like Dave Brubeck, Glenn Miller and Artie Shaw take their music to the armed forces overseas. In Nazi-occupied Europe, gypsy guitarist Django Reinhardt blends jazz with his own musical traditions. In New York, Billie Holiday is unofficial queen despite a growing addiction to narcotics. Duke Ellington, assisted by the gifted young arranger, Billy Strayhorn, brings...
Description
In the mid 1930s, as the Great Depression refuses to lift, Benny Goodman finds himself hailed as the "King of Swing" and becomes the first white bandleader to hire black musicians. He has a host of rivals among them, Chick Webb, Tommy Dorsey, Jimmie Lunceford, Glen Miller and Artie Shaw. Louis Armstrong heads a big band of his own, while Duke Ellington continues his independent course, but great black artists still can't eat or sleep in many of the...
Description
Amid the hard times of the Depression, new dances, the Lindy Hop and Swing, caught on at the dance halls of New York even as the jobless lined the streets and drought ruined Midwest farms. Jazz, during 1929 through 1935, lifted the nation's spirit. Record sales boomed while Armstrong became a major entertainer as singer, trumpeter, band leader, radio and film performer. Ellington's elegance, compositions, brilliant band films and recordings created...
Description
In the late 1930s, as the Great Depression deepens, jazz thrives. The saxophone emerges as an iconic instrument of the music; this segment introduces two of its masters, Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young. Young migrates to Kansas City, where a vibrant music scene is prospering with musicians such as trumpeter Harry "Sweets" Edison and drummers Jo Jones and Chick Webb. Out of this ferment emerges pianist Count Basie, who forms a band that epitomizes...