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Overview
In the triumphant concluding volume of the trilogy that began with Whistle Guitar and The Spyglass Tree, Albert Murray gives us what is at once an African American coming-of-age novel and a pitch-perfect evocation of a touring jazz band at the height of the Swing era. Murray's hero, Scooter, graduates from an Alabama college and becomes a bass player in an ensemble headed by the legendary Bossman. As Scooter criss-crosses the United States, he and his bandmates find themselves retracing Sherman's march to the sea, the Underground Railroad, and the conquest of the West. The Seven League Boots is nothing less than a jazz epic, so vivid, high-spirited, and infectious that readers will tap their feet to the music of its prose."A work of joy, of celebration...a great work of art, a rich and moving song of the human spirit."--Los Angeles Times
"A fictional tale spinner in the grand Southern tradition."--Washington Post Book World
The break-out novel by an unrecognized master--"a fictional tale spinner in the grand Southern tradition" (Washington Post Book World). Told from the point of view of a young Alabama college graduate in the 1920s, this brilliant novel recounts the exploits of a legendary jazz composer and his band on a tour that becomes a heroic journey "equivalent to the seven league strides of heroes in rocking chair story times."
Synopsis
In the triumphant concluding volume of the trilogy that began with Whistle Guitar and The Spyglass Tree, Albert Murray gives us what is at once an African American coming-of-age novel and a pitch-perfect evocation of a touring jazz band at the height of the Swing era. Murray's hero, Scooter, graduates from an Alabama college and becomes a bass player in an ensemble headed by the legendary Bossman. As Scooter criss-crosses the United States, he and his bandmates find themselves retracing Sherman's march to the sea, the Underground Railroad, and the conquest of the West. The Seven League Boots is nothing less than a jazz epic, so vivid, high-spirited, and infectious that readers will tap their feet to the music of its prose.
"A work of joy, of celebration...a great work of art, a rich and moving song of the human spirit."—Los Angeles Times
"A fictional tale spinner in the grand Southern tradition."—Washington Post Book World
Publishers Weekly
The young black hero of Murray's Train Whistle Guitar and The Spyglass Tree comes of age in this ambitious and vibrant conclusion to the trilogy, set in the 1920s. Here, Scooter has been nicknamed Schoolboy, for his new college degree. A talented bass player, Schoolboy is called to join the ensemble led by the legendary and innovative Bossman. A series of one-night stands eventually takes the band to L.A. for an extended stay. Although promised to a girl back home, Schoolboy acquires two lovers there. The first, Gayneele Whitlow, an ``old down home broad,'' is a familiar fixture to the band; but it is for movie star Jewel Templeton that he takes a leave from the band. Though new to the jazz scene, Jewel becomes Schoolboy's patron, offering her home, her staff and herself in exchange for a foothold in the jazz world that fascinates her. Studio sessions and club dates keep Schoolboy busy, but the itch to be on the road returns. Even so, Jewel takes him abroad to experience Europe; it is only by leaving that continent, and her, that he learns what to come home to. Murray faithfully evokes the world of early black jazz here-as much through his prose, which soars, glides and hops in an energetic rush, as through his richly detailed evocations of various cities and landmark sites. Keenly observant and intensely curious, Schoolboy makes an engaging narrator, completing a story that, after three volumes, is as vital as the period in black American history that it evokes so well. (Feb.)