Considering Genius: Writings on Jazz

by Stanley Crouch

Overview

Stanley 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780786733750
Publisher:	Basic Books
Publication date:	04/27/2009
Sold by:	Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format:	eBook
Pages:	368
File size:	760 KB

About the Author

Stanley Crouch is a columnist, novelist, essayist, and television commentator. He has served since 1987 as an artistic consultant at Lincoln Center and is a co-founder of the department known as Jazz at Lincoln Center. He is the author of Notes of a Hanging Judge and The Artificial White Man, among other titles. He lives in New York City.

Table of Contents

Prologue: Jazz Me Blues     1
The Makers
Miles Davis in the Fever of Spring, 1961 1998     40
Bird Land: Charlie Parker, Clint Eastwood, and America 1989     66
Papa Dip: Crescent City Conquistador and Sacrificial Hero Louis Armstrong 1985     77
Not So Dizzy 1989     83
At the Five Spot Thelonious Monk 1977     86
Ahmad Jamal 1989     95
Himself When He Was Real: The Art of Charles Mingus 1994     100
Blues for the Space Age Ornette Coleman 2002     108
Titan of the Blues John Coltrane 1987     111
Andrew Hill's Alternative Avant-Garde 1984     116
Rooster Ben: King of Romance Ben Webster 1986     120
The Last of the Great Bandleaders Sun Ra 1982     125
Don't Ask the Critics: Ask Wallace Roney's Peers 2000     129
Duke Ellington: Transcontinental Swing 1998     133
Thoughts
Martin's Tempo 1992     154
The Late, Late Blues: Jazz Modernism 2004     157
Blues to Be Constitutional 1995     166
Body and Soul, 1983     180
Battle Royal
JazzTimes Columns: Introduction     206
Jazz Tradition Is Not Innovation January 2002     209
The Negro Aesthetic of Jazz October 2002     211
Coltrane Derailed September 2002     213
Jazz Criticism and Its Effect on the Art Form September 1986     216
Jazz's Own Sweet Time November 2002     230
Putting the White Man in Charge April 2003     232
Piano Prodigy May 2003     235
Detours Ahead
On the Corner: The Sellout of Miles Davis 1986     240
The Way It Was, The Way It Is
Come Sunday Duke Ellington, Mahalia Jackson 2004     258
The Presence Is Always the Point 2000     271
Live at the Village Vanguard Wynton Marsalis 1999     285
Epilogue     297
Index     341