Author

The United States is not a nation of black and white people. Any fool can see that white people are not really white, and that black people are not black.

From Albert Murray

The blues is not the creation of a crushed-spirited people. It is the product of a forward-looking, upward-striving people.

From Albert Murray

I am not an African. I am an American.

From Albert Murray

When the Negro musician or dancer swings the blues, he is fulfilling the same fundamental existential requirement that determines the mission of the poet, the priest and the medicine man.

From Albert Murray

As any competent student of literary composition knows, the more natural and casual a voice sounds in print, the more likely it is to have been edited time and again.

From Albert Murray

Effective stream-of-consciousness narration is the product of verbal precision, not just of literal documentation. It is decidedly not a matter of unedited free-association.

From Albert Murray

If it is properly done, the 'as told to' autobiography represents how the subject wants his story told.

From Albert Murray

Now, one can often get away with playing music by ear when it is not being recorded, but writing is another matter; its mistakes are not forgotten because they are still there to confuse us.

From Albert Murray

Jazz music, as is also the case with the old down-home spirituals, gospel and jubilee songs, jumps, shouts and moans, is essentially an American vernacular or idiomatic modification of musical conventions imported from Europe, beginning back during the time of the early settlers of the original colonies.

From Albert Murray

A jazz tune, melody, or composition is usually based on either a traditional twelve-bar, eight-bar, or four-bar blues chorus or on the thirty-two-bar chorus of the American popular song.

From Albert Murray

Albert Murray

Notable Quotes

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