Albert Murray may be 80 years old, but his last novel featured a character fresh out of college with dreams of becoming a professional jazz musician.

The dual searches for individual identity and for the essence of jazz and blues music have been dominant themes in the life and work of this renowned cultural critic and writer. On Monday, Oct. 7, Murray will share his revelations in a lecture at Cornell University titled "Some Literary Implications of the Blues" at 8 p.m. in Room 165 of McGraw Hall. The lecture is free and open to the public and will be accentuated by recorded passages from classic blues compositions.

Born and raised in Alabama, Murray studied English at the Tuskegee Institute, where he befriended the writer Ralph Ellison in a relationship that was pivotal for both writers. Murray went on to teach at Tuskegee and direct its theater; join the U.S. Air Force (he retired as a major in 1962); and study at New York University, the University of Michigan, Colgate and other universities.

While honing his craft, he taught it to others at such institutions as Columbia University, the University of Missouri and the Music Writer's Institute at the Smithsonian Institution.

Murray's first book was The Omni-Americans: New Perspectives on Black Experience and American Culture, a collection of essays on politics, literature and music published in 1970. National acclaim followed with such works as the semi-autobiographical South to a Very Old Place (1971), Stomping the Blues (1976), Good Morning Blues: The Autobiography of Count Basie as told to Albert Murray (1985), The Blue Devils of Nada (1996) and the fictional trilogy Train Whistle Guitar (1974), The Spyglass Tree (1991) and The Seven League Boots (1996).

"What makes Albert Murray essential to the American canon is that he is the best interpreter of what is quintessentially true about the African-American literary tradition -- and that is its relationship to music, primarily the blues," said Kenneth A. McClane, the W.E.B. DuBois Professor of Literature at Cornell.

"Mr. Murray is a first-rate novelist; I remember reading Train Whistle Guitar as a kid, and that book was very instrumental in getting me interested in language and literature," McClane added. "But he also understands that high culture and low culture are one and the same. What he's saying is that the blues and jazz are major artistic achievements and have to be thought of in that way."

Murray played a major role in establishing the "Jazz at Lincoln Center" series and became a friend and mentor to award-winning trumpeter Wynton Marsalis.

But Murray's artistic appreciation has never been limited to a single tradition. His books contain frequent references to writers such as Shakespeare, Proust, Melville and Faulkner, and his analyses of the great literary traditions have been eclectic, according to Michael Kammen, the Newton C. Farr Professor of American History and Culture at Cornell.

Murray's visit to Cornell is being jointly sponsored by the Africana Studies and Research Center, the Department of History, the Department of English's Creative Writing Program and the Cornell Jazz Ensembles.