Albert Murray (1916–2013), author of thirteen books including Stomping the Blues, was a renowned jazz historian, novelist, and social and cultural theorist. He cofounded Jazz at Lincoln Center in 1987.

Paul Devlin teaches at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy and at St. John’s University. He earned his PhD in English at Stony Brook University in 2014. He is the editor of Rifftide: The Life and Opinions of Papa Jo Jones, as told to Albert Murray (Minnesota), a finalist for the Jazz Journalists Association’s book award in 2012.

Gary Giddins is one of the world’s foremost jazz critics. His books include Visions of Jazz, Bing Crosby: A Pocketful of Dreams, Celebrating Bird: The Triumph of Charlie Parker (Minnesota), Satchmo, Weather Bird, Natural Selection, Jazz, and Warning Shadows.

Greg Thomas is an award-winning jazz writer, editor, educator, and broadcast journalist. His work on jazz has been published in the Village Voice, The Root, All About Jazz, Salon, The Guardian, American Legacy, and the New York Daily News, for which he was the jazz columnist.

Contents

Foreword: St. George and the Blues
Gary Giddins
Acknowledgments
Introduction. Albert Murray: Talking the Blues and So Much More
Paul Devlin
1. Interview with Wynton Marsalis
2. Interview with Dizzy Gillespie
3. Interview with Dan Minor
4. Interview with Greg Thomas
5. A Talk at St. John’s University (with Paul Devlin)
6. Interview with Russell Neff
7. Liner Notes to Revelations and Blues Suite
8. Murray’s Note on The Second Line and The Third Line
9. Foreword to The World Don’t Owe Me Nothing: The Life and Times of Delta Bluesman Honeyboy Edwards
10. Foreword to Mitchell & Ruff: An American Profile in Jazz
11. Interview with Paul Devlin
12. Murray’s 1958 Morocco Lecture Notes (translated by Lauren Walsh)
13. Biographical Sketch of Count Basie
14. Interview with Susan Page
15. Interview with Robert G. O’Meally
16. A Discussion of Duke Ellington with Loren Schoenberg and Stanley Crouch
17. Jazz: Notes Toward a Definition
Afterword: The Blues and Jazz as Aesthetic Statement
Greg Thomas
Appendix 1: Albert Murray’s Canon of Jazz Arrangements
Appendix 2: American Patterns and Variations on Rhythm and Tune: An Ellington-Strayhorn List
Notes
Index