Murray Talks Music: Albert Murray On Jazz And Blues

HHHH Edited By Paul Devlin UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA PRESS.

Different drumming with man of letters Albert Murray.

African-American musicologist, novelist and public intellectual Albert Murray didn’t publish until middle-age and lived to be almost 100 – prodigious to the end and giving older scribes hope that age doesn’t diminish quality! His taste was a uniquely personal combo of old-fashioned (he preferred earlier 20th century jazz to later experimental evolutions) and radical (recognising the subversive intent of bluesbased music created by black Americans). Highlights include a Dizzy Gillespie conversation and, tables turned, a chat conducted by Wynton Marsalis. This collection of interviews and essays is proof that one can grasp the structure that animates great music by – in a manner of speaking – swinging with verbal ideas. For example, Murray reveals he learned to write by listening to Duke Ellington: “It’s a matter of encompassing chaos and then bringing it under control… into aesthetic statement” – a perfect distillation of the artist’s mandate.