This book won the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award.

"[Murray] is possessed of the poet's language, the nolvelist's sensibility, the essayist's clarity, the jazzman's imagination, the gospel singer's depth of feeling" - THE NEW YORKER

CONTENTS:
Introduction
The Blues As Such
The Blues Face To Face
The Blue Devils And The Holy Ghost
The Blues As Music
Blues Music As Such
Singing The Blues
Playting The Blues
Swinging The Blues
Kansas City Four / Four And The Velocity Of Celebration
The Blues As Dance Music
Folk Art And Fine Art
The Blues As Statement
Epilogue; Index

With a new preface by Rob Gibson, Director of Jazz At Lincoln Center

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. He was born in Nokomis, Alabama and grew up in Mobile. He was educated at Tuskegee, where he was later to teach literature; he has been professor of literature at Colgate University, the University of Massachusetts and the University of Missouri.

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