Stanley Crouch (born December 14, 1945, Los Angeles) is an American music and cultural critic, syndicated columnist, and novelist. Stanley Crouch has delighted and enraged readers with his two-fisted observations of American culture. In books like The All-American Skin Game” and Notes of a Hanging Judge,” as well as in commentaries and columns in the New York Daily News and the New Republic, he has attacked the excesses of black nationalism, feminism and the gay rights movement and bemoaned the sentimentality that guides so much of American social policy. In the process, Crouch has carved out a niche as one of the country’s most controversial, outspoken and independent-minded critics.
Crouch is an unabashed admirer of old-style civil rights, jazz, Jewish intellectuals, authors Ralph Ellison and Albert Murray and black success stories like Johnnie Cochran and the late Commerce Secretary Ron Brown. And he’s not afraid to do battle with the current trend of separatism that defines black politics today.
Crouch is a self-taught drummer who started playing in 1966 to accompany poet Jayne Cortez. In 1967, he formed a quartet with alto Arthur Blythe and trumpeter Bobby Bradford. In the early ‘70s he taught drama at Claremont College and led the Black Music Infinity Orchestra that included James Newton (flute), David Murray (tenor saxophone) and Mark Dresser (bass). In 1975, he moved to New York, contributing to Alan Douglas’s celebrated WILDFLOWERS anthologies. Gradually his career as a critic eclipsed his work on the drums.
Jazz, however, remains Stanley Crouch’s passion and his metaphor of an ideal America, where solo expression lifts the whole band, where innovation acknowledges tradition, where democracy drives excellence. The melody under his riffs and rants over the years about black nationalism is the theme that black and white America –no matter the tensions – are unimaginable without each other; Negroes made the nation, and they made an identity that is more American deeper down than it is any one color.
In Defense of Taboos
Click to order via AmazonHardcover: 208 pages
Publisher: Basic Civitas Books
Publication Date: November 30, 2011
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0465015379
ISBN-13: 978-0465015375Why do we revere rule-breakers? Why does bucking the system seem to be the fastest way to success? Why are iconoclasts like Madonna and Howard Stern our heroes? And when rebels break the rules, who pays the price? Stanley Crouch, cultural critic and firebrand, summons his formidable powers of logic and persuasion in this astonishing condemnation of our society's obsession with shattering taboos. It's an urge that comes, he argues, from a greater interest in recognizing the individual than in maintaining the well-being of the community. And whenever the assertion of individuality takes top priority, there will always be consequences--usually for the most vulnerable members of a community. One by one, Crouch destroys some of the most celebrated revolts of our day: defiant promiscuity and flagrant drug use, the obsession with the private lives of politicians, and the misguided allowances made by overly permissive parents. All were once taboo; all are now commonplace, and all have hurt the weakest among us. In this remarkable book, Stanley Crouch reveals the true nature and history of the taboo--as well as what we can again from it, and all that we stand to lose.
Flying Home: Lionel Hampton
Click to order via Amazonby Wynton Marsalis (Foreword) Stanley Crouch (Author)
Hardcover: 94 pages
Publisher: State Street Press (January 1, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0681817542
ISBN-13: 978-0681817548
Product Dimensions: 10.2 x 10.2 x 0.7 inchesBold, precise, fun-loving and with a preternatural talent... Lionel Hampton will forever be held up as a giant among jazz greats. From his early days at Prohibition-era jazz parties in Chicago, into history as a member of Benny Goodman's integrated quartet and onto legend status as a world-renowned band leader, Lionel Hampton's story is the story of jazz. Some of the greatest musicians in history are wound into the tapestry that makes up Hampton's legacy... Quincy Jones, Dinah Washington, Oscar Peterson, Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Benny Goodman, Gene Krupa. Their music and the lives of these and countless others are forever intertwined with the history and legend that is Lionel Hampton.
Flying Home is a celebration of the music and life of Lionel "Gates" Hampton. Former band mates, fellow jazz legends and those closest to Hampton share their stories and thoughts with journalist and music critic, Stanley Crouch. This is a powerful collection of never before published photos and stories from those who knew him best, as well as some of Lionel's most beloved recordings on an exclusive CD. These pages of rare photos from Lionel's life, concerts, rehearsals and travels, highlight his work as a musician, philanthropist, and driving force behind the International Jazz Festival that now bears his name.
Don't the Moon Look Lonesome: A Novel in Blues and Swing
Click to order via AmazonPaperback: 576 pages
Publisher: Vintage (August 10, 2004)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0375724478
ISBN-13: 978-0375724473
Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.2 x 1.1 inchesStanley Crouch's gloriously bold first novel provides an intimate and epic portrait of America that breaks all the rules in crossing the boundaries of race, sex, and class. Blonde Carla from South Dakota is a jazz singer who has been around the block. Almost suddenly, she finds herself fighting to hold on to Maxwell, a black tenor saxophonist from Texas. Their red-hot and sublimely tender five-year union is under siege. Those black people who oppose such relatonships in the interest of romantic entitlement or group solidarity are pressuring Maxwell, and he is wavering. As Carla battles to save the deepest love of her life, her past plays out against the present, vividly bringing forth a startlingly fresh range of characters in scenes that are as accurately drawn as they are unpredictable and innovatively conceived.
Considering Genius: Writings on Jazz
Click to order via AmazonPaperback: 368 pages
Publisher: Basic Civitas Books (April 10, 2007)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0465015123
ISBN-13: 978-0465015122
Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.1 inchesStanley Crouch--MacArthur "Genius" Award recipient, co-founder of Jazz at Lincoln Center, National Book Award nominee, and perennial bull in the china shop of black intelligentsia--has been writing about jazz and jazz artists for more than thirty years. His reputation for controversy is exceeded only by a universal respect for his intellect and passion. As Gary Giddons notes: "Stanley may be the only jazz writer out there with the kind of rhinoceros hide necessary to provoke and outrage and then withstand the fulminations that come back."
In Considering Genius, Crouch collects some of his best loved, most influential, and most controversial pieces (published in Jazz Times, The New Yorker, the Village Voice, and elsewhere), together with two new essays. The pieces range from the introspective "Jazz Criticism and Its Effect on the Art Form" to a rollicking debate with Amiri Baraka, to vivid, intimate portraits of the legendary performers Crouch has known.
The Artificial White Man: Essays on Authenticity
Click to order via AmazonPaperback: 256 pages
Publisher: Basic Civitas Books (November 8, 2005)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0465015166
ISBN-13: 978-0465015160
Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.3 x 0.7 inches"[Crouch's] personality, his persona, manifests itself with such force that one is compelled to enter into a kind of active dialogue.... Animated and stimulating." -Washington Post
Another dance of the bull through the china shop of cliches, The Artificial White Man proves the correctness of Tom Wolfe's observation that Stanley Crouch is "the jazz virtuoso of the American essay." This time out, Crouch focuses his attention on issues surrounding the often misdirected American hunger for "authenticity." Though the essays range in topic from segregation in contemporary fiction to the racial politics of filmmaker Quentin Tarantino, they are informed by a singular concern: our increasing difficulty in discerning the real from the counterfeit, the posture from the pose, in contemporary life.
Crouch moves across literature, music, sports, film, race, sex, class, and religion with insights withering in one instance, celebratory and challenging in another. Long known as an independent thinker, Crouch takes further intellectual chances in this collection challenging us to live up to the potential of our social contract and our democratic arts. Pointed and provocative, The Artificial White Man is as witty and eye-opening as cultural criticism gets.
Reconsidering the Souls of Black Folk: Thoughts on the Groundbreaking Classic Work of W.E.B. DuBois
Click to order via Amazonby Stanley Crouch and Playthell Benjamin
ISBN: 0762413492
Format: Hardcover, 160pp
Pub. Date: September 2002
Publisher: Running Press Book PublishersStanley Crouch teams up with noted journalist Playthell Benjamin for this thought-provoking look back at The Souls of Black Folk, the epochal, prophetic work by the great African-American intellectual W. E. B. DuBois. Crouch -- and internationally recognized jazz critic, syndicated columnist, and author -- and Behnjamin appraise the contributions of DuBois's work, noting its uncanny relevance to today's society and its profound impact on the field of African-American studies. Reconsidering the Souls of Black Folk is a fitting tribute to a literary and sociological triumph.
Always in Pursuit: Fresh American Perspectives
Click to order via AmazonPaperback: 355 pages
Publisher: Vintage; 1st Vintage Books ed edition (March 16, 1999)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0375701680
ISBN-13: 978-0375701689
Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.2 x 0.8 inchesAmazon.com Review:
In Always in Pursuit iconoclastic essayist and columnist Stanley Crouch collects some of his best work from 1995 through 1997. His interests are far-reaching, but Crouch's central concern is how U.S. residents work to further American democracy. He takes heart that so few believed Susan Smith, the white South Carolina woman who murdered her children and then said a black man had done it; chides Jesse Jackson for failing to live up to his potential as a leader; and speaks out in support of affirmative action simply because no one has proposed a better solution. Sometimes outrageous, sometimes abstruse, Crouch is never anything less than interesting.Product Description:
Here is a brilliant new collection of essays on the sublime and the ridiculous in contemporary American culture and society, by one of the most important and compelling social commentators at work today.
The All-American Skin Game, or, The Decoy of Race: The Long and the Short of It, 1990-1994
Click to order via AmazonPaperback: 288 pages
Publisher: Vintage (January 14, 1997)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0679776605
ISBN-13: 978-0679776604
Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.1 x 0.6 inchesIn this brilliantly acerbic collection of essays--a New York Times Notable Book in 1995--Stanley Crouch confirms that he is one of the most eloquent and unpredictable commentators on race and culture in American society--something already known to anyone who's seen him on 60 Minutes or read his columns in The Village Voice and The New Republic.
Notes of a Hanging Judge: Essays and Reviews, 1979-1989
Click to order via AmazonPaperback: 304 pages
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (March 28, 1991)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0195069986
ISBN-13: 978-0195069983
Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 0.7 inchesStanley Crouch identifies the civil rights movement of the last four decades as the defining feature of contemporary American society. In Notes of a Hanging Judge, he explores it from all sides--from its epochal triumphs and the forces that have nearly destroyed it, through its great artistic and political success stories, to the crime culture it has been powerless to prevent or control--and traces its complex and ambivalent interactions with the feminist and gay dissent that followed its example.
Balancing the passionate involvement of an insider with a reporter's open-minded rigor, and using his virtuosic prose style, Crouch offers uniquely insightful accounts of familiar public issues--black middle-class life, the Bernhard Goetz case, black homosexuals, the career of Louis Farrakhan--that throw fresh light on the position of Afro-Americans in the contemporary world. Even more revealing are Crouch's accounts of his travels, focusing on his perceptions as a black man, that put places as diverse as Atlanta and Africa, or Mississippi and Italy, in unique new perspectives. Perhaps most powerful of all are Crouch's profiles of black leaders ranging from Maynard, to Michael, to Jesse Jackson. Crouch's stern evaluations have been controversial, especially his vision of the Civil Rights Movement as a noble cause "gone loco," mired in self-defeating ethnic nationalism and condescending self-regard, and conspicuously lacking in the spiritual majesty that ensured its great political victories. His discussions of artistic figures, including extended critiques of Toni Morrison and Spike Lee, have also incited much debate.
Taken together, these essays represent a major reinterpretation of black, and therefore American, culture in our time.
One Shot Harris: The Photographs of Charles "Teenie" Harris
Click to order via AmazonHardcover: 168 pages
Publisher: Harry N. Abrams (October 1, 2002)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0810932725From the 1930s through the 1970s, Charles "Teenie" Harris (1908-1998) traversed the alleyways, workplaces, and nightclubs of his native city, camera in hand, to capture the essence of community life for the Pittsburgh Courier. Backstage with Dizzy Gillespie, in the dugout with Jackie Robinson, or on the streets with children of the Hill district, Harris documented every aspect of African-American daily life during and after the Civil Rights movement. Although nicknamed "One Shot" for his habit of snapping just a single frame at any given event, Harris's output-privately held until recently-totals more than 80,000 images.
Published here in book form for the first time, a select 135 duotones from this astonishing archive offer an in-depth look at the black urban experience in mid-20th century America. Accompanying the illustrations is an energetic essay by cultural critic Stanley Crouch, who ties together issues such as baseball, jazz, and black history. Deborah Willis provides a biographical outline of the rediscovered artist, now poised on the threshold of prominence in modern American photography.
Kansas City Lightning: The Life and Times of Charlie Parker
Click to order via AmazonAudio Cassette
Publisher: Blackstone Audiobooks; Unabridged edition (January 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 143320195X
ISBN-13: 978-1433201950
Related links
Stanley on the Million Man March (Ocober 17th 1995)
http://aalbc.com/reviews/million_man_march.htmlStanley on The Daily Beast
http://www.thedailybeast.com/tag/stanley+crouch/
