Stanley Crouch (14/12/1945 – 16/9/2020)

A victim of the coronavirus pandemic, after some years of health problems, Stanley Crouch was a controversialist. Born in Los Angeles, he was a published poet, a lecturer and self-taught drummer, radicalised by the Watts Riots of 1965. His spoken-word LP Ain’t No Ambulances For No Nigguhs Tonight (Flying Dutchman) has a revealing 15-minute introduction before the poetry reading. In the co-operative group Black Music Infinity, he played with David Murray, James Newton and Arthur Blythe and, after moving to New York in 1975, he recorded with Murray on the live compilation Wildflowers (Knit Classics) and a couple of other rare albums.

From the late 70s he became a busy freelance journalist, writing for the Village Voice and New York Daily News and covering film and literature as well as music. The first book collection of his cultural commentary, Notes Of A Hanging Judge, was preceded by his participation in founding the long-running institution that became Jazz At Lincoln Centre. He was influential in appointing Wynton Marsalis as its artistic director, having become an outspoken enthusiast for Marsalis’s music in the early 80s. His personal development showed a highly visible shift to supporting the new mainstream and rejecting his former avant-garde colleagues. Crouch was also vocal in damning Miles Davis’s music from Bitches Brew onwards, and pouring scorn on jazz-funk, jazz-fusion, smooth-jazz and anything that didn’t embrace swing or a blues feeling. He excoriated icons like Toni Morrison and Spike Lee for exploiting black history and politics, but was sensitive to such influences on the early life of Charlie Parker in his biography Kansas City Lightning.

Naturally, he became a valued commentator on television and in documentaries, such as the controversial series Ken Burns Jazz, having a powerful physical presence with a speaking voice suited to his edicts. Unexpectedly introduced to him in 1988, I found him immediately enthusing about Mingus and drummer Dannie Richmond (who had just died). The second time I met him, he was giving an equally enthusiastic public lecture on Ellington, who in 1999 he was to describe as “Artist Of The Century”. Even Crouch’s fans were unlikely to read everything he wrote, but were liable to agree with him sometimes and disagree at others. Those who didn’t accept his views on music still admired his energetic role of go-to commentator on cultural matters, and his collected writings on jazz in Considering Genius contain multiple truths.