Stomping the Blues

Stomping the Blues

by Albert Murray

Paperback(REV)

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Overview

Stomping the Blues by Albert Murray

The legendary study of the blues by one of America's premier writers and critics.

This study of the blues by one of America’s premier essayists and novelists will change old attitudes about a tradition that continues to feed the very heart of popular music—a blues that dances,shakes,shimmies,and exchanges bad news for stomping,rollicking,pulse-quickening good times.

"[Murray] is possessed of the poet's language,the novelist's sensibility,the essayist's clarity,the jazzman's imagination,the gospel singer's depth of feeling. " -The New Yorker

"A Flamboyant,insightful examination and evocation of the sources,styles,and mythologies of blues music. " -Newsweek

"Murray writes of the blues from the inside. His observations and conclusions show his authoritative comprehension of a blues musician’s roots,the choices and adaptations he makes of existing material to form his own style,and the off-stage personal style he creates to go with it. . . Murray’s preaching is sound. " -Amy Lee,Christian Science Monitor

"An entire chapter is devoted to correcting misconceptions about the blues and to redefining the music and its connotations for American culture. " -Jason Berry,The Nation

"The most eloquent book ever written about African-American music. " -Stanley Crouch,Village Voice

"By far the most stimulating interpretation of the meaning of jazz in African-American life. " -Martin Williams,author,The Jazz Tradition

"It is a discussion of the basic aesthetic values of blues music,how those values embody ritual responses to life,and the manner in which they originated in American black communities and were stylized by individual geniusesinto an art of universalimport. " -Gary Giddins,New York Magazine

"As striking a book about music as I have ever seen. " -Greil Marcus,Rolling Stone

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780306803628
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Publication date: 08/28/1989
Series: Quality Paperbacks Series
Edition description: REV
Pages: 272
Product dimensions: 5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Albert Murray (1916-2013) wrote thirteen books, including influential works such as The Omni-Americans and South to a Very Old Place. Minnesota has published Murray Talks Music: Albert Murray and Jazz and Blues, a collection of his previously uncollected/unpublished music writings and interviews, Rifftide, an autobiography of drummer Jo Jones as told to Murray, and republished Murray's and Count Basie's Good Morning Blues: The Autobiography of Count Basie. Murray's non-fiction is available from the Library of America and his fiction and poetry will be as well in early 2018. He cofounded Jazz at Lincoln Center in 1987.

Paul Devlin is the editor of Murray Talks Music: Albert Murray and Jazz and Blues, and Rifftide: The Life and Opinions of Papa Jo Jones, as told to Albert Murray, a finalist for the Jazz Journalists Association's book award. He is the co-editor, with Henry Louis Gates, Jr., of the Library of America's volumes of Murray's work. He is Assistant Professor of English at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy and is the book review editor of African American Review
 

Table of Contents

Part One

The Blues as Such

The Blues Face to Face

The Blue Devils and the holy Ghost

Blues Music as Such

Singing the Blues

Part Two

Playing the Blues

Swinging the Blues

Kansas City Four/Four and the Velocity of Celebration

The Blues as Dance Music

Part Three

Folk Art and Fine Art

The Blues as Statement

Epilogue

Index

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