No doubt many have seen—or at least heard of—”Sinners,” the critically-acclaimed blockbuster movie set in early 20th-century Mississippi. The beautifully filmed motion picture directed by Ryan Coogler and starring Michael B. Jordan features juke joints, churches, Hoodoo, vampires, and the blues. In fact, this movie arguably is the most powerful celebration of that era and depiction of the blues, that uniquely American, Black-born artful form of music that gave birth to jazz, R&B, soul, and hip-hop.
There are a plethora of books on the blues. Most of them include a wide variety of cliches: the “intuitive” genius of the “Negro” bluesman, the refusal to recognize the profound truths in the often melancholy blues lyrics, and the overemphasis on a Black musician’s poverty or a police record to reinforce the racist stereotype of the ideal bluesman.
The book “Stomping the Blues” by late music critic and novelist Albert Murray is none of the above. Published in 1976, it is arguably the most eloquent and expansive book on the blues and its relationship to jazz.
But before you delve into “Stomping the Blues,” you should know about its extraordinary author. Murray was born in Nokomis, Alabama, just outside of Mobile, and wrote 13 books that highlighted the subjects of race, society, culture, the arts, and Black American identity. Among his books: “The Omni-Americans,” “South to a Very Old Place,” “The Blue Devils of Nada,” and a series of novels: “Train Whistle Guitar,” “The Spyglass Tree,” “The Seven League Boots,” and “The Magic Keys,” all of which chronicle the adventures of a Black Southerner and a Murray alter ego named Scooter.
Murray, a 1939 graduate of then-Tuskegee Institute (now university), attendees school with “Invisible Man” author Ralph Ellison, who shared many of Murray’s philosophical views. Predominant among those: that Black culture is an inseparable part of American culture, and the blues idiom, which includes jazz, is the quintessential Black-American aesthetic statement.
“Stomping the Blues” includes 12 chapters and is an extension of Murray’s treatise, “The Hero and the Blues,” which focused on the blues and its connection to heroism in literature. In the book, Murray marks a clear distinction between the sadness of the blues and the therapeutic function of blues music:
“The blues as such are synonymous with low spirits. Blues music is not,” Murray wrote. “With all its so-called blue notes and overtones of sadness, blues music of its very nature and function is nothing if not a form of diversion. With all its preoccupation with the most disturbing aspects of life, it is something contrived specifically to be performed as entertainment. Not only is its express purpose to make people feel good, which is to say in high spirits, but in the process of doing so it is actually expected to generate a disposition that is both elegantly playful and heroic…”
Murray also notes the symbiotic relationship between the Saturday night function and the Sunday morning church service, the former taking place in Black dance halls and juke joints, and the latter, in various pulpits in the Black diaspora. In both domains, the blues-influenced artist and the preacher lift spirits by earthly and heavenly means. Some of the best Black artists draw from both traditions, as Murray makes clear in his assessment of the Godfather of Soul James Brown who, he writes, “performs almost as if he were a spellbinding evangelist preacher delivering a shout-getting sermon; and the atmosphere he generates is that of a down home sanctified church during revival time.”
As far as jazz is concerned, Murray declares that Duke Ellington represents the “preeminent embodiment of the blues musician as artist… who, in the course of fulfilling the role of entertainer, not only came to address himself to the basic imperatives of music as a fine art but achieved the most comprehensive synthesis, extension, and refinement to date of all the elements of blues musicianship.”
Murray also highlights the immortal contributions of Billie Holiday, Lester Young, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, and Ornette Coleman.
“Stomping the Blues” contains the kind of standard information on the blues that you would find in any good book on the subject. That includes a summary of how Black musicians synthesized harmonic and rhythmic elements from Europe and Africa to create the dynamic diversity of the blues’ four major regional groups: The Mississippi/Delta, which includes John Lee Hooker, (“Boom Boom”), Son House (“John the Revelator”), and Robert Johnson (“Hellhound on My Trail”), the legendary bluesman who died in his twenties after, as rumors would have it, he sold his soul to the devil in Mississippi.
The Chicago style is largely the result of thousands of Black people moving from the South to the Windy City via The Great Migration, turning rural blues into an urban, electrified idiom, characterized by Muddy Waters (“I’m Your Hoochie Coochie Man”), Willie Dixon (“Spoonful”) and Elmore James (“Dust My Broom”). The Louisiana region is unique for the Latin/Caribbean rhythms heard in the music of Professor Longhair (“Big Chief”), Earl King (“Street Parade,”), and Champion Jack Dupree (“Nasty Boogie”). The Piedmont region, stretching from Virginia and the Carolinas to Florida, is characterized by a ragtime-influenced style of guitar playing as evidenced by Blind Blake (“Diddie Wa Diddie”), and Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee (“Bring it On Home To Me”).
But the most eloquent parts of “Stomping the Blues” are the beautiful vintage photographs of blues and jazz legends like Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Muddy Waters, Leadbelly, Louis Armstrong, Ornette Coleman, and John Coltrane. In its own way, “Stomping the Blues” is as visually stunning as Sinners.
