The Seven League Boots

by Albert Murray

The Seven League Boots tells the story of Scooter, a recent graduate from an Alabama college during the Swing Era, who is hired as a temporary bass player in the traveling band of the legendary jazz musician and composer Bossman (the "Emperor of Syncopation"), and of Scooter's maturation in the decades that follow. As Bossman and the band (including Joe States, Old Pro, Big Bloop, and Osceola Menefee) chart new territory across the country, the tour becomes a heroic journey - "equivalent to the seven league stride of the heroes in rocking chair story times"retracing Sherman's march to the sea, the Underground Railroad, the Great Migration, the Gold Rush, and the conquest of the West. Lyrical and engaging, The Seven League Boots brilliantly dramatizes what it means for a contemporary American to survive and thrive through joy and sorrow by virtue of improvisation and style.