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Stomping The Blues (Da Capo Paperback) Paperback – August, 1989

by
Albert Murray (Author)
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Albert Murray (Author)
3.9 out of 5 stars 11 customer reviews
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Product Details

  • Series: Da Capo Paperback
  • Paperback: 272 pages
  • Publisher: Da Capo Press; Revised edition (August 1989)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0306803623
  • ISBN-13: 978-0306803628
  • Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.6 x 9 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
  • Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #521,560 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Top Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsDriving the Blues away
By nadav haber on December 12, 2001
Format: Paperback Verified Purchase
What is "Blues" ? Albert Murray says the Blues are those evil entities that attack our spirit, threatening to depress it. Blues music is the reaction - the means of which the blues is driven away. Actually it is the means African Americans have used to drive away the blues. There is no essential difference between Robert Johnson, Charly Patton, Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton, Count Basie or Charlie Parker - the all play the blues. Only their stylistic approach differs.
This book talks about the different ways the blues were being stomped - driven away. Murray objects to the "purists" who limit their definition of blues to those played by rural - unsophisticated musicians (such as Blind lemon Jefferson or Leadbelly). While Murray acknowledges their value, his personal taste leans much more to the Louis Armstrong - Charlie Parker lineage. He concentrates on Armstrong, Bessie Smith, Morton, Young, Ellington, Basie and Parker.
Murray seldom uses the word "Jazz" when relating to the music or the musicians. For him they are all "blues drivers", who provide their public with a stomping ritual that is totally functional. Their innovations are a result of the attempt to fulfill their role, to swing harder, and not necessarily a result of a personal desire, detached from their public role.
Murray differs from most writers who have written on the subject. He comments on the mainstream critics - criticizing their glorification and condescending tendencies. He does not emphasize the inner divisions among the African Americans, as does Amiri Baraka in "Blues People".
This is a remarkable book, recommended to all "Blues and Jazz" lovers.
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5.0 out of 5 starsmost essential work of jazz aesthetics
By Paul Devlin on August 13, 2004
Format: Paperback
"Stomping the Blues" is a sound and profound appreciation, history, aesthetics and anthropology of the music. Written by an accomplished novelist and essayist, it might also be the funniest and most well-written book on the music, if not the most original book to boot. To label Murray a racist simply because he is less than impressed with certain white jazz musicians is preposterous. What Murray implies, on p. 196 and elsewhere, is that because these white musicians have not been raised in black communities (in the black church, etc.) they have a less rich idiomatic musical vocabulary than the black musician. Murray does not claim that they cannot play the music so that a cultural insider will appreciate it, but that they tend not to. In any case, this didn't stop Murray and Benny Goodman from becoming good friends after "Stomping the Blues" was published. To call it a vision of "racial purity" is give it an absolutely base and scatterbrained reading. People who get so upset about the book because they feel it denies the historical place of the white musician tend, I believe, to condescend to and dismiss the tastes of the people (black people) who created the music in the first place.

Indeed, "Stomping the Blues" was the initial aesthetic cornerstone of "Jazz at Lincoln Center", but J@LC has strayed from the book quite a bit in recent seasons. I do not think it's quite accurate to label the project "conservative" unless we're talking about it in the musical sense of a "conservatory" - to conserve the great classics, etc.. I would argue that Murray gives scant attention to Ornette Coleman and John Coltrane (and whoever else), not because their works became so "avant-garde", but because their works from another angle became "conservative", i.e., tended to sound too European; too much like young European/Eurocentric American composers of the time.
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3.0 out of 5 starsThis is a very challenging book
By New England Yankee VINE VOICE on May 19, 2009
Format: Paperback
I loved it, I hated it.

The first thing to know, if your interest is the blues, is that this book isn't about the blues as currently understood. Rather, it reflects the consensus of an earlier generation of musicologists that jazz is rooted in the blues (primarily, anyway). Stomping the Blues is mostly concerned with jazz and jazz musicians. Blues musicians, with the notable exceptions of Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, Joe Turner, and a few others, barely get mentioned. Nor is there any treatment of the development of blues genres. While folk blues is oft-mentioned in connection with discussions of naive and primitive music vs more "sophisticated" forms, you'll find no mention of Delta, Texas, Piedmont, Chicago, Memphis, electric, or the other myriad blues forms. Intead, the book focuses on jazz and swing development - Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Fletcher Henderson, Jelly Roll Morton, Chick Webb, John Coltrane, Dizzy Gillespie, etc. All of them are described at one point or another as blues musicians! Even W.C. Handy's blues-titled pieces are uncritically accepted as such, which is a very long stretch. Make no mistake, any of these musicians would play genuine blues pieces along with jazz, swing, and pop in a given appearance, but then, even the songsters would play pop tunes, ballads, and European music, too. But few indeed would term these blues musicians.

Murray gets away with this by abstracting genuine blues into the "blues idiom" (a phrase used throughout the book) ... as if vamps, riffs, riff choruses, breaks, and call and response themselves - regardless of musical tone or content - defined the blues. They don't, any more than the use of the same forms in, say, rock make it the blues.Read more ›
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

2.0 out of 5 starsGreat photos, lots of text musing about the meaning of the blues

Murray has lots of text musing about the blues, as other reviewers say, but not that much analysis of the music. And lots of repetition. Read more

Published 4 months ago by John Karon
5.0 out of 5 starsDig Down to the Roots of Jazz and Blues

One of the first books I ever read about jazz and blues, this classic goes right to the heart of things--namely, swing. Read more

Published 18 months ago by wilfen
5.0 out of 5 starsMurray, a most fascinating perspecive.

Murray provides, in a single volume, not only an excellent historical review of the blues idiom, but a perspective that probably no stupid white boy like myself could ever attain,... Read more

Published on July 16, 2013 by Jack_Nitski
4.0 out of 5 starsBlues music as Ecstatic Pagan Affirmation and Incantation

Albert Murray's "Stomping the Blues" is not an organized book in some kind of European sonata-style way, but rather much like what it talks about--a Blues tune. Read more

Published on August 12, 2004 by Christopher W. Chase
3.0 out of 5 starsDeeply flawed, but also inspiring

Yes, Murray can be an idiot, and yes he can be offensive and yes he can seemingly just turn his ears (and mind) off sometimes. Read more

Published on December 2, 2003
1.0 out of 5 starsOutrageous vision of racial purity in the arts

Murray's ideas that White people cannot produce genuine jazz have done a great deal of harm in their influence. Read more

Published on September 29, 2003
5.0 out of 5 starsgreat vision of music and race

do you ever get the feeling, when reading about jazz, that the writer is missing the point, or defending the music on terms inappropriate to it? Read more

Published on October 23, 1998 by Alonzo
5.0 out of 5 starsBrilliant, thorough, insightful, but flawed

Albert Murray is the ultimate insider as far as jazz goes, and his knowledgeable observations here prove it. I sometimes wonder about his racial agenda, though.

Published on March 5, 1998

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