Informed on every page by its author's ardor, intelligence and verbal fire, The Blue Devils of Nada inquires into the blues aesthetic, in arenas that range from music to painting, dismantling many a stereotype along the way.

To Murray, the blues are neither a protest nor a lament, but a vibrant, complex and playful expression of transcendence through sheer style. And style is what he illuminates in the work and lives of such artists as Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Romare Bearden and Ernest Hemingway. The Blues Devils of Nada is an elegant and iconoclastic look at American culture.

CONTENTS:
PART ONE: The Intent of the Artist
PART TWO: Two All-American Artists First Person Singular [Duke Ellington Vamping Till Ready; Comping For Count Basie]
PART THREE: The Armstrong Continuum
PART FOUR: The Ellington Synthesis [The Vernacular Imperative; Storiella Americana as She Is Swyung, or The Blues as Representative Anecdote; Armstrong and Ellington Stomping the Blues in Paris]
PART FIVE: The Visual Equivalent top Blues Composition [Bearden Plays Bearden]
PART SIX: The Storyteller As Blues Singer [Ernest Hemingway Swinging the Blues and Taking Nothing]

ALBERT MURRAY is a winner of the Ivan Sandrof Award from the National Book Critics Circle for a lifetime contribution to American arts and letters.

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