The Hero And the Blues
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The Hero And the Blues by Albert Murray
In this visionary book, Murray takes an audacious new look at black music and, in the process, succeeds in changing the way one reads literature. Murray's subject is the previously unacknowledged kinship between fiction and the blues. Both, he argues, are virtuoso performances that impart information, wisdom, and moral guidance to their audiences; both place a high value on improvisation; and both fiction and the blues create a delicate balance between the holy and the obscene, essential human values and cosmic absurdity.Encompassing artists from Ernest Hemingway to Duke Ellington, and from Thomas Mann to Richard Wright, The Hero and the Blues pays homage to a new black aesthetic.
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has published Murray Talks Music: Albert Murray and Jazz and Blues, a collection of his previously uncollected/unpublished music writings and interviews, Rifftide, an autobiography of drummer Jo Jones as told to Murray, and republished Murray's and Count Basie's Good Morning Blues: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.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780679762201 |
| ISBN 10 | 0679762205 |
| Title | The Hero And the Blues |
| Author | Albert Murray |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Random House USA Inc |
| Year published | 1996-01-16 |
| Number of pages | 112 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |