Stanley Crouch v. white jazz critics and Jazz Times' firing of him

True, but with Crouch it is, and the implicit stuff about race is interesting to some of us. Crouch has had problems with his fellow African-American writers who like hiphop, so with him it's not just about race. He likes to be uh, provocative...

stanley crouch is a bigot, an idiot, an occasionally good writer, and should not have been fired, more than likely.

however, if he really wants to know why there are fewer young black jazz critics in 2003 than 1953 or even 73, he should probably ask less often about the presupposed cabal of white critics and more about when and why the music stopped speaking to young people of any color in large numbers.

Jess OTM. The Society of Creative Jazz Anachronism, anyone?

The central question I guess is: does the racial balance in jazz criticism mirror the racial balance in jazz performance? If not, what accounts for the discrepancy?

P.S. Ned, Jess et al: I think Crouch does address this, albeit not in a fashion that you or I might sympathize with. He has acknowledged the declining importance of jazz in the black community.* I think he identifies white critics as promoting "out" jazz which is less accessible, and to which he expects (imagines? wishes?) the black audience for jazz to be indifferent. He takes the term "accessible" at face value along with the idea that "inaccessibility" is somehow tied to white pretentions, white control, etc. There is some truth there but Crouch seems too intellectually lazy to interrogate these ideas and see where the truth lies. He'd rather toss invective around.

*I think this kind of talk is well past its sell-by date anyhow; jazz stopped being "popular" in the ILX sense in the 1940s.

Agreed that the firing was unwarranted and that there are issues of perception and interpretation (and who has the 'right' to interpret and who doesn't, thus that quoted passage of Baraka's) in this mess. Ralph Ellison to thread!

He's patently ridiculous, and his own best enemy really. In a recent Atlantic (I think it was The Atlantic) article on Wynton Marsalis, Crouch speculated that the reason M. didn't get respect from the critical establishment is that he was (paraphrasing) "a good-looking young man" who (not paraphrasing) "could obtain a higher class of female" than the critics.

I was astonished that the article let that quote pass without comment, let alone criticism. Perhaps the author simply felt that Crouch had done a good job of hanging himself without needing assistance, but then again the whole piece was very sympathetic to Marsalis and to the idea that the establishment has been doing him a disservice, so in that context you could almost imagine the author applauding Crouch's trenchant analysis.

There are so many reasons to fire Stanley Crouch. His famous fistfights, the ad hominem attacks, etc. It's the timing of this firing that's suspicious.

From most appearances that process was very gradual, beginning almost with jazz's inception, but by some accounts certain performers switched from playing almost all-black audiences to playing almost all-white audiences virtually overnight.

Crosspost. I haven't read Hajdu's book on Dylan & Baez (I think that's the same guy--right?). What was his Times comment exactly? I mean, "folk music" (as its construed now, by many) is kinda the sound of (a big segment of) the new lesbianism. Visit a Northhamption record store.

ahem.

anyway I think ned's point is best -- crouch & co. killed jazz killed it the moment they tried to make it "good for you" and hip-hop is still bad enough they're afraid of it.

Also who is "& co"?

I think I've heard more good jazz than electronic albums lately.

it was approx. the same time when, like, most of the avant-garde figured out stanley was a terrible drummer.

also, sam rivers once smacked crouch in the gob after some nyc loft gig, which might've pushed stanley closer to wynton

It's much less misguided than you think, and he'd know a lot better than you because he was in the front row for a lot more of jazz history than I imagine you were. Why do you think Miles Davis chose Jack Johnson as a figure to name an album after? Why the Afro-centric cover art on Bitches Brew?

I don't ultimately care that much for Crouch, but I can kind of see where he's coming from. For most of jazz history there was a dichotomy between most black musicians/writers/listeners for whom jazz was very much entangled with their racial struggle, and most white musicians/writers/listeners for whom jazz was just another kind of music to like and appreciate. It's not hard to see why this might have engendered resentment in the past.

-- Shakey Mo Collier (audiobo...), March 14th, 2006.

But this is just as much of the product of an "agenda" with regard to jazz as are Crouch's views -- it's the same agenda expressed by so many people who approach jazz from a punk/rock/noise perspective. It implies that jazz is about strangeness and being "out there" and freaky bewildering. Which is all fine, and people should listen to music from whatever perspective they want. But it also ignores most of jazz history and what jazz "meant" for most of that history.

But seriously I think my conversation with bugged out elucidites my position on Crouch clearly enough. You certainly don't need to tell me that there are many many racial subplots in the history of jazz, but can't it once in a while just be about the music? The portions of the Crouch piece that are actually about "My Funny Valentine" are quite nice, and I think his attempts to bring race into that discussion are forced.

haha - a record Crouch dismisses as his SELL-OUT TO WHITEY

I see where you're coming from, but that isn't really a fair assumption - to me jazz's central thread is improvisation, whereas Crouch/Marsalis are only willing to follow that thread as long as it fits within a proscribed framework (acoustic instruments, swing, etc.), which is a purist position I just can't get with. My introduction to jazz was mostly post-bop and modal stuff as a teenager - Miles' "Kind of Blue", Trane's "Blue Train", Thelonius Monk. It took me awhile to come around to the free-er end of things. Tho I confess I totally loved Miles' electric stuff from the first time I heard it...

haha - a record Crouch dismisses as his SELL-OUT TO WHITEY

-- Shakey Mo Collier (audiobo...), March 15th, 2006.

I heard an interview with him where he spoke at length about how much effort he put into trying to get into Bitches Brew before finally giving up. I think it was sincere.

I mean if you follow improvisation to its logical conclusion, free jazz is what you get. And I'm fine with that, I love it.

Improvisation is an essential component of jazz, but improvisation does not make jazz. There's been improvisation in non-jazz music all over the world for pretty much as long as music has existed -- even in classical music. Until free jazz, jazz was always about improvising within certain frameworks. The frameworks evolved over time but didn't disappear until the 60s (and its arguable that some free jazz uses "frameworks" of sorts).

Until then jazz also involved having to go through a long journeyman-like process of learning the craft so you could cut it on the bandstand. Free Jazz didn't require that, which created a some doubt among musicians about the genre's validity as jazz.

Ultimately I don't care, because I don't like musical ideologies. I don't care that much whether free jazz or fusion are "real" jazz. But I do think there's a case to be made that Bitches Brew and even moreso Jack Johnson and On The Corner have as much or more in common with rock and funk as with jazz.

Almost all of it does. Whether it's Pentecostal/black-church call-and-response (Frank Wright), or Indian/Middle Eastern drones with screaming solos on top (Pharoah Sanders), or primitive pre-jazz folk melodies (Albert Ayler), or ultra-happy melodies little kids would love (Ornette Coleman), there's almost always something there. Even the most volcanically "out" music I own, Cecil Taylor's solo piano discs, have an overarching structure, a through-line, and repeated motifs in the form of melodic cells.

I'd go further: they are not jazz. The only reason anyone would think they are jazz is because Miles Davis' name is on the cover.

It's hard to call them rock or funk either, mind. They exist in a weird interzone between genres. But I'd settle for rock, myself.

And that's fine. But while this is great music worthy of endless study, it's also no more than a tiny footnote in the history of jazz. So while I am no fan of Crouch or Marsalis, I don't really have a problem with their casting Miles' fusion outside the tradition. That's not really a diminishment (even if it might be in their eyes), it's just a recognition of the nature of the music.

It might have been nice to see a piece that argued that Miles' inclusion in the rock hall of fame was valid because of this. That would have been more interesting than the pieces that did run questioning it.

this is not true. almost any major free jazz figure that you can think of - except maybe archie shepp - paid some major journeyman dues.

I agree.

Shepp knew his stuff even back then. Listen to his BYG albums - there's bluesy stuff, standards...shit, Hank Mobley plays on at least two of his albums, though the only one I can think of right now is Yasmina, A Black Woman. Shepp is steeped in tradition.

I agree, but free jazz is still easier to 'fake' in a lot of ways, or perhaps more attractive to those who haven't put in the time.

that's true, but a lot of people looked down on him because he didn't start playing sax until 16 or something, and was interested in other non-music stuff like theater and whatnot.

He says this in the interviews on the Isle of Wight show DVD, and I'm sure he is sincere - but his reasons for not liking it strike me as largely political and idiotic. (I don't know why they bothered to include him on the DVD, slagging off the very music the viewer is about to watch - Herbie Hancock's 2-minute improv tribute to Miles is totally fucking amazing tho. I love Herbie.)

oh absolutely - but the set of skills you're referring to are only relevant to that particular form of music. Being able to improvise creatively on the spot is a totally different skill from being able to play a lot of notes really fast in a very tight arrangement... which is why, actually, the opposite is NOT true. We're discussing different skillsets. Its like the speed metal drummer saying oh, I dunno, Tony Allen is a shitty drummer because he can't do double-kickdrum fills at 145bpm.

I only harp on this point because in my experience finding musicians who can really improvise well is *incredibly* rare - most musicians are simply not experienced or trained to do it. Their minds don't work that way. Which is why when I hear free jazz guys who really CAN rip off a lot of ideas off the top of their heads, I'm totally blown away. It is not an easy thing to do.

sometimes even moreso than a lot of the jazz that preceeded it.

Examples pls? Not saying you're wrong, I just want to know what you mean.

xpost, that is definitely true about different skill sets, but then we might as well not talk about free stuff in relation to jazz

i don't really think that something like louis armstrong's hot fives and hot sevens' stuff, for example, is nearly as complex in structure and form as, say, alan silva's "seasons," just to make a really bad apples n' oranges comparison. most free jazz dispensed with traditional song forms entirely, and gave extended improvisation, larger/modified ensemble sizes and extended technique the major roles in structural terms. so i really don't think it's that bold to say that a large ensemble piece well over three minutes (which of course didn't/couldn't really exist before the lp) (and of course that doesn't describe every free jazz thing ever, but A LOT of free jazz could probably be described within those parameters) is by definition more structurally complex than, say, a lot of jazz before it.

Absolutely true. I have a friend (film professor at UCLA) whose daughter, who I believe is under age 4, loves Ornette. I've long thought his music would probably resonate best for little kids, who wouldn't hear it as tricky or challenging, but as fun. Same with Thelonious Monk, who frequently sounds like he could be the music to a skit on The Muppet Show.

For about the first 55-60 years of jazz, "structure" was something very specific, namely improvisation over set chord changes during a set number of bars in time. The forms shifted in complexity over time, getting more baroque during and after bop for example, but that very specific kind of structure was always there until free jazz.

Ornette Coleman's earlier albums had "structure" in a related sense, but they also weren't really free jazz albums. Ornette basically wrote compositions that relied on improvising around looser "tonal centers" instead of set chords, but still often worked in time around a set bar structure. In a way this was only slightly looser than what Miles Davis and John Coltrane were doing by 1960, working with "modal" forms that often stayed in the same mode/chord for 8 bars rather than requiring playing over complex chord changes. (btw, some claim Ornette couldn't really play over complex chord changes. I don't know to what extent that was true)

Jump to something like Spiritual Unity, however, and the only "structure" you have is basically starting and ending by playing a melody. After that it's basically a three-man free-for-all. There might be a lot of interesting spontaneous interplay between the musicians, but it's not really "structure." Again, it's ultimately more important to me whether the music is good, but it's not hard to see why some at the time would have called it "not jazz."

as to the qn of whether what Miles ws doing jazz or not i'd say that well, it ws a path taken by jazz as a music in general, one that surely can be appreciated for those who may not like much else of what jazz has to offer (as seen on many threads on ilm). anyhow there are much more important qns than this and it comes down to a border-patrolling game that Stanley and Wynton seem to spend so much of their efforts time-wasting us with.

isn't 'spontaneous interplay' a generation of, not only content, but possible structures? it maybe all-brief and fleetingly gone, but the fact that it has been recorded for future listening means that it can be replayed/recycled by in future plays, although that probably isn't an entirely progressive move (if it feeds into its 'fake'-ness) - i hear many composers almost unconciously transcribe so many of these moves right up to today, just like how AACM were listening to New York school etc. to modify their methodologies (?)

Not exactly on point, but anyone who hasn't seen Mtume school Crouch ought to set aside a little time:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OLqid9RABs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OLqid9RABs

Not only can Mtume play better than Crouch can, he can think better too.

Oops, that second one was supposed to be this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAtaxon9t5g

https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2020/09/24/the-stanley-crouch-i-knew/

"When the drumming chair in Cecil Taylor’s unit opened up, in the late 1970s, Stanley reportedly hoped that Taylor might hire him and give him a shot at glory. But Taylor declined to even audition him. Stanley, who reportedly never recovered from this slight, stopped playing drums, though he often insisted that if he’d only had proper training, he would have been one of the greats."

This is odd:

Don Pullen was a blazingly talented musician who admired Taylor and started out by emulating him, but Pullen’s mature style was all his own, and it had a much more traditional sense of swing and song form.

I swear I've read Pullen interviews where he said he developed his approach wholly independent of Taylor's, and that he hadn't actually heard Taylor until he'd solidified his own style.

I love Pullen's playing & I know he said that w/r/t Taylor but that is one of those things where, I suppose it could be true but it is a little hard to believe

Shatz's Crouch obit I think does a better job of addressing Crouch's issues than the Iverson one