The Blue Devils of Nada: A Contemporary American Approach to Aesthetic Statement 252 The Blue Devils of Nada: A Contemporary American Approach to Aesthetic Statement. For those unlucky readers who've missed such singularly American books as The Omni-Americans (1970) and Stomping the Blues (1976), Murray has collected his most recent essays from largely obscure sources and assembled another world-beating prose obbligato—necessary for the times by virtue of its transcendent aesthetics. The Blue Devils of Nada: A Contemporary American Approach to Aesthetic Statement Kindle Edition by Murray gives readers the redefined essence of his lifetime meditation on the blues … Sometimes a scholarly, didactic tone comes through, making an emotional topic sound like a treatise. In the collection of essays The Blue Devils of Nada, Murray shows how the music of Duke Ellington and Count Basie has common ground with the writing of Ernest Hemingway and the paintings and collages of Romare Bearden. The Blue Devils of Nada: A Contemporary American Approach to Aesthetic Statement Paperback – June 24, 1997