Background
Murray, Albert Lee was born on May 12, 1916 in Nokomis, Alabama, United States. Son of John Lee and Sudie (Graham) Young.
(In Conjugations and Reiterations Albert Murray, one of th...)
In Conjugations and Reiterations Albert Murray, one of the premier literary men of our time, gives us his first collection of poetry. Wide ranging and informed by his singular intelligence and sensibility, these poems are extraordinary for their keen folk wisdom and striking lyricism, partaking of the idioms of blues and jazz. The vicissitudes of American life, the improvisatory nature of American art, the profundities of the Gospel and of gospel music—these are but a few of the concerns in Murray’s poetic achievement. Conjugations and Reiterations stands in ringing confirmation of The New Yorker’s celebration of Albert Murray as a writer “possessed of the poet’s language, the novelist’s sensibility, the essayist’s clarity, the jazzman’s imagination, and the gospel singer’s depth of feeling.”
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0375421416/?tag=2022091-20
(A deeply affecting, stylishly elegant novel of remembranc...)
A deeply affecting, stylishly elegant novel of remembrance about a young African-American man's advent into the world of academia, an imaginary Alabama college, in the 1930s. "A classic . . . one of the great works of African-American writing . . . Murray plays more notes than Faulkner ever dreamed of or in."--Raleigh News & Observer.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0394588878/?tag=2022091-20
( This study of the blues by one of America’s premier ess...)
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 musica blues that dances, shakes, shimmies, and exchanges bad news for stomping, rollicking, pulse-quickening good times.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0306803623/?tag=2022091-20
(First published in 1975, this is a coming of age novel. S...)
First published in 1975, this is a coming of age novel. Scooter, growing up in Alabama in the 1920's, learns everything he needs to know from the classroom, the barbershop, and a train-hopping musician who brings a musical touch to the tale.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0375703365/?tag=2022091-20
(THE OMNI-AMERICANS is a book that takes its stand in dire...)
THE OMNI-AMERICANS is a book that takes its stand in direct opposition to much of the biographical, autobiographical, sociological, and fictional representations of U.S. Negro life that have emerged in the past decade - including such acclaimed works as Kenneth Clark's "Dark Ghetto", "The Negro Family: A Case for National Action (the Moynihan Report)", and William Styron's "The Confessions of Nat Turner". With verve, wit, and keen intelligence Murray argues that U.S. negroes are neither creatures of a deficient and debilitating culture (hapless victims of "cultural deprivation") nor uprooted Africans cruelly denied their rightful heritage on the shores of "white America", but are in fact Americans - as American as the frontiersman - who not only are an essential part of the American cultural "Mainstream" but one of its foremost creators. It is as Americans of long standing and full stature, he maintains, that Negroes must claim and be accorded the social and economic rights they have been denied. From this perspective, he examines, in the last section of THE OMNI-AMERICANS, the current demand for courses and departments of black studies. Although in part a discussion of one of America's most disastrous social problems, this interrelated collection of essays is more than anything else a contribution to the understanding of American life and culture, and a document in the history of the country's national self-awareness.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0876900015/?tag=2022091-20
( This study of the blues by one of America’s premier ess...)
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 musica blues that dances, shakes, shimmies, and exchanges bad news for stomping, rollicking, pulse-quickening good times.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0070440794/?tag=2022091-20
(In From the Briarpatch File—a gathering of erudite, provo...)
In From the Briarpatch File—a gathering of erudite, provocative, and iconoclastic essays, reviews, and interviews—Albert Murray approaches contemporary America through its artistic expressions of itself and through the inventiveness of his own thinking and experience. He writes about New York in the 1920s and about the beginnings of his career as a writer. He gives us profound assessments of the achievements of Duke Ellington and William Faulkner. He outlines the responsibilities of the black educated elite and discusses the near-tragic, near-comic essence of the blues. His subject is no less than the life of America today; the clarity and the singularity of his vision, thought, and language are no less than stunning.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0375421424/?tag=2022091-20
( Count Basie (1904–1984) was one of America's pre-eminen...)
Count Basie (1904–1984) was one of America's pre-eminent jazz pianists, bandleaders, and composers. With the charm, dry humor, and inexorable logic of phrasing that were his alone, Good Morning Blues stands as both testimony and tribute to a remarkably rich life.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0394548647/?tag=2022091-20
(Murray gives readers the redefined essence of his lifetim...)
Murray gives readers the redefined essence of his lifetime meditation on the blues as this musical style informs American life. Here are incisive essays on writing, music, and art that go beyond the social-science fiction of Negrohood to describe in no uncertain terms what it means to be American.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0679442138/?tag=2022091-20
Murray, Albert Lee was born on May 12, 1916 in Nokomis, Alabama, United States. Son of John Lee and Sudie (Graham) Young.
Bachelor of Science in Education, Tuskegee Institute, 1939. Master of Arts in English, New York University, 1948. Postgraduate, University Michigan, 1940.
Postgraduate, Northwestern University, 1941. Postgraduate, University Paris, 1950. Doctor of Letters (honorary), Colgate University, 1975.
Doctor of Letters (honorary), Tuskegee University, 1999. Doctor of Letters (honorary), State University of New York, Stony Brook, 2000.
He later earned a master"s degree from New York University in 1948. In 1943 he entered the United States. Air Force, from which he retired as a major in 1962. Murray began his writing career in earnest in 1962, after he retired from the military.
His first book The Omni-Americans (1970) received critical acclaim.
Their mutually influential relationship — reflected in the book Trading Twelves: The Selected Letters of Ralph Ellison and Albert Murray — informed the thinking and writing of both men from the time of the writing of Ellison"s Invisible Manitoba (1952), through Murray"s social-aesthetic works and novels, up until Ellison"s death in 1994. Bearden"s 1971 six-panel, 18-foot collage The Block was inspired by the view from Murray"s Harlem apartment.
As detailed in Henry Louis Gates, Junior."s New Yorker profile "King of Cats" (April 8, 1996) and in Sanford Pinsker"s article in the Virginia Quarterly Review (linked below), Murray received greater attention in the 1980s and 1990s due to his influence on critic Stanley Crouch and jazz musician Wynton Marsalis. After detailing Murray"s insightful engagement—in non-fiction and fiction—of history, politics, aesthetics, painting, music, and literature, Gates concluded his profile by noting: "This is Albert Murray"s century, we just live in lieutenant" Murray was co-author of Count Basie"s autobiography Good Morning Blues (1985).
He died in Harlem in 2013, aged 97.
( This study of the blues by one of America’s premier ess...)
( This study of the blues by one of America’s premier ess...)
( This study of the blues by one of America's premier ess...)
(In From the Briarpatch File—a gathering of erudite, provo...)
(A deeply affecting, stylishly elegant novel of remembranc...)
(In his 1970 classic The Omni-Americans, Albert Murray (19...)
(THE OMNI-AMERICANS is a book that takes its stand in dire...)
(In this visionary book, Murray takes an audacious new loo...)
(In Conjugations and Reiterations Albert Murray, one of th...)
(Murray gives readers the redefined essence of his lifetim...)
(Murray gives readers the redefined essence of his lifetim...)
( Count Basie (1904–1984) was one of America's pre-eminen...)
(First published in 1975, this is a coming of age novel. S...)
(By “our premier writer about jazz and the blues . . . and...)
(Will be shipped from US. Brand new copy.)
(Will be shipped from US. Used books may not include compa...)
(Book by Murray, Albert)
(Author's second novel)
(1973 Hardcover. No dust jacket. Minimal wear, no markings...)
(First Edition)
(Revised)
Served to major United States Army Air Force, World World War II. Retired United States Army Air Force. Member American Academy Arts and Letters, American Academy Arts ans Sciences M C.
Married Mozelle Menefee, May 31, 1941. 1 child, Michele.