In April 1994 Wynton Marsalis interviewed Albert Murray on tape at Murray’s apartment. Marsalis was and is one of Murray’s most careful and serious students. They first met circa 1981. Since 1987 they had been working closely together, along with Stanley Crouch and others, to establish Jazz at Lincoln Center and plan its programming. Marsalis’s deep knowledge of Murray’s thought leads him to frame questions that allow for Murray to answer their critics and critics of Jazz at Lincoln Center. Marsalis is acting as a sort of home-run derby pitcher here, serving up questions to which he already knows the answers in general outline, while encouraging Murray to swing for the fences with his answers. There is a certain polemical angle to the interview but, ultimately, more than two decades later, it has transcended many of the controversies of its moment (some of which take on perennial incarnations anyway), and rises to become perhaps Murray’s most comprehensive interview.

Keep reading.