"The unsquarest person I know", was how Duke Ellington described writer Albert Murray, one of the intellectual figureheads of Jazz @ Lincoln Center in New York and an emeritus director, who died yesterday at the age of 97. No more details are available at present. Pianist Ethan Iverson broke the news online www.dothemath.typepad.com/dtm/2013/08/the-blues-as-such-are-synonymous-with-low-spirits-blues-music-is-not.html

Murray, known for his books The Omni-Americans and Stomping the Blues was born in Alabama in 1916 and attended Tuskegee Institute where he would later teach among other institutions. His novels include Train Whistle Guitar and The Spyglass Tree while South to a Very Old Place was nominated for a National Book Award, and his honours include the Du Bois Medal awarded by Harvard University’s W.E.B. Du Bois Institute. A mentor of Wynton Marsalis and a major contributor, along with Wynton, to Ken Burns television documentary series Jazz, the Jazz Journalists Association in New York has described Murray as “one of America’s most significant writers on the blues, jazz and their influence on American culture.”