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 . . . an American original . . . an avuncular memoirist, a genial, fluent, jazzy raconteur whose idiomatic voice is as finely tuned and richly timbral as a concert-ready Steinway piano . . . Mr. Murray is clearly a man of words. He plays with them, rolls them around on the page, arranges them in unusual arpeggios of sound and meaning. -- The New York Times Book Review, Richard Bernstein The final installment in a trilogy that began with Train Whistle Guitar and The Spyglass Tree, The Seven League Boots is an old-fashioned fairy tale retold in the rhythms of jazz. Our Hero, Scooter, goes out into the world to win fame and fortune. First stop, the legendary jazz band of the Bossman Himself. Temptations befall Our Hero, in the persons of movie stars and heiresses, but nothing very bad happens. In fact, nothing much happens at all --it's language that matters here: In the stories the band members tell we hear not just the rhythm of the music they play, but the rhythm of the road trip, and the history of American music. The novel loses its giddy beauty after Scooter leaves the band, but we owe Murray a debt of gratitude for his evocative writing and for reminding us anew of the power and beauty of great jazz. Copyright © 1996, Boston Review. All rights reserved. -- From The Boston Review 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 Albert Murray is the author of  The Omni-Americans, Stomping the Blues, The Hero and the Blues, South to a Very Old Place, Conjugations and Reiterations , and  From the Briarpatch File . He is the coauthor of  Good Morning Blues: The Autobiography of Count Basie  and the coeditor of  Trading Twelves: The Selected Letters of Ralph Ellison and Albert Murray . He lives in New York City. Used Book in Good Condition