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Buckley 220 right along with literature, music, and painting. He gave personal seminars on Twain, Faulkner, and Louis Armstrong. He advised me to make my own writing less “uptight.” (I knew what he meant.) And he explained the real difference between BookerT. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois.Thank you, Al, for life and literature lessons learned, and for your lovable kindness and fabulous sense of fun. And thanks to your wonderful family, Mozelle and Michele, for letting us share you. 25 A Giant in Heart and Mind Elizabeth Mayer Fiedorek Albert Murray and I met in the early 1990s when I was Wynton Marsalis’s guest at a LincolnCenterJazz rehearsal. I had just helpedWynton put ­ Romare Bearden images on CD covers, since I was a representative for the artist’s estate at the time with ACA Gallery in NewYork. I knew that Albert Murray owned a number of Romare Bearden works and was his close friend and collaborator . Albert was presiding over the rehearsal, and we struck up a conversation . I asked him if I could see his art collection and possibly take some shots of the view from his apartment, where Romare Bearden’s famous work The Block (owned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art) was inspired.This led to many more visits over the last seventeen or so years. I have taken many photographs of the handsome, charismatic, erudite Albert Murray, and we have shared many in-depth conversations about fine art, both at his apartment and at museums. Albert is as well versed and knowledgeable about painting and sculpture as he is about literature and music. His insights and his enjoyment of fine art have made our time together truly unique and memorable. Yes, there is much to learn about art (and music and literature) fromAlbert Murray. But there is much more to learn about life and about being from him. Fiedorek 222 He is truly rare in his character and admirable qualities. His physical stature is small, but he is a giant in heart and mind. He is open, brilliant, dignified, tolerant , humorous, and possessed of total confidence: all elements worthy of great admiration and emulation. Albert is someone people go to, like a prophet or an oracle, to find the right meaning, to find the words to express an idea or thought. This has been his history with great artists and musicians as well as with students and friends. When my mother died,Albert was the first person I went to.We spent the day reading poetry, and I found the words to speak at her funeral. Albert has been unusually important to me as a friend and as a touchstone in my life. We have connected through our photo shoots at his apartment, our discussions about his art collection and the history therein, and our visits to museums to discuss art. As a photographer, I was able to shoot a close-up portrait of Albert in his library that was published in the NewYork Observer in 1996. As a conversationalist, he taught me much about the European masters , with whom he is particularly conversant. His years in Paris coincided with a very exciting and dynamic time in the art world. All of these were our ways of connecting, but it is Albert himself and his absolute joy of life and knowledge that make time with him most precious. He is magnanimous and one of my most precious blessings. Albert Murray is a gift to us all. 26 MyTravels through Cosmos Murray Eugene Holley Jr. I was introduced to the work of Mr.Albert Lee Murray through the music and liner notes of Wynton Marsalis and Stanley Crouch during my college years at Howard University in Washington, DC, in the early eighties. A year older than Marsalis, I’m a Philadelphia-born, Delaware-reared, solidly middle-class African American, raised with some degree of ­ nationalism. So I was initially put off when Crouch and Marsalis were describing jazz not only as black music, but also as American music! When they cited the influ­ ence of this mysterious Albert Murray, I went to the Martin Luther King Library in downtown DC to see why this black man was talking about being an American in an age where we were defining ourselves as black, Afro-­ American, and African American. I checked out the paperback edition of Murray’s TheOmni-Americans, and it hit me like a thunderbolt. What immediately grabbed me was his over­ riding...

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