Crouch's March 03 column

[Pharaohrock]

Read it. If you're a Dave Douglas, Don Byron or Mark Turner fan, I'm warning you upfront and it will have you steamed. Crouch comes with this obvious "Roney and Payton could blow Douglas off the stage" argument (therefore Douglas is invalid??) and says that Balkan music has no place being merged with jazz since it predates Jazz.....huh? I guess John Coltrane had no business experimenting with Indian music then since it too was ancient.

The larger thrust though is Crouch declaring a conspiracy of white jazz writers like Francis Davis to impose their middle class values on the music and see that non-blues/swing cats like Douglas and "toms" (not said but very much implied) like Don Byron and Mark Turner are who gets props.

So...more obvious reactionaryism from Stanley, and I look forward to Don Byron's take-no-bullshit response.

[saintvitus]

So Crouch twists the facts around to fit his selfish agenda ... what else is new?

[notgreennotblue]

Originally posted by Pharaohrock:
"I guess John Coltrane had no business experimenting with Indian music then since it too was ancient."


If memory serves Crouch has taken exception to Trane as well.
What incredible insight (irony). But we all read him don't we?
It's not so much a guilty pleasure as it is that canker sore we just keep pushing our tongue into.

[clifton]

I could see this thread coming. I subscribe to Jazz Times and I read the column yesterday. I have deep disagreements with Stanley Crotch because I think he's an ideologue, but this column is so bitter, so vitriolic, it enters the realm of bigotry. And I never thought Crotch was a bigot. His thesis, as I understand it, is that white jazz critics so deeply resent African-American hegemony in jazz that they promote and overhype white musicians who can't swing or play the blues. Like Dave Douglas. Crouch does indeed single out Douglas for one one of the most vicious smear jobs I've ever read in a jazz publication. Having seen Douglas live, I can attest that he can, and does, play the blues and swing with absolute mastery. Crouch so resents Douglas' high profile that he uses his ideology of "jazz-is-blues-and-swing" to concoct a far-flung conspiracy among white critics to control jazz by eliminating swing through the likes of Dave, Mark Turner, and Don Byron, who, yes, PRock, he flat-out accuses of "Tomming". My worst instincts say that Crouch's specific purpose in writing for JT is to be provocative on purpose, at the behest of JT's white publishers. Then is he Tomming? More likely, Stanley Crotch is just an aging, bitter writer who's been angry about Douglas' success for years. But racism in America is very much alive and well, and Crouch's most recent flapdoodle makes a convenient target that distracts us from far more urgent battles.

[3pointdeli]

i was flipping through jazz times yesterday while i was at the bookstore. read the crouch headline, turned the page. not worth reading the article. i thought it was funny that there was such a big feature on the bad plus...GASP!!...WHITE GUYS!!...in the same issue.

[Pharaohrock]

if there really is a conspiracy does anyone know where the monthly meetings are being held? and when/where is the annual retreat??? i want to go. i want to be a part of somethin dammit...

[bubber]

OK, SC promotes some funny theories. I find him often interesting, however, though I seldom share his opinions.
What is interesting in his March column is the question whether afro-american jazz and the music of Dave Douglas, Mark Turner a.o. are different musical expressions. I tend to mean they are.

[3pointdeli]

what do you mean by "musical expression"?

[bubber]

I mean a different kind of music, just like in pop music C&W and rock are different kinds. If afro-american jazz tradition has a certain puls and a spesific kind of swing,(which I believe it has) like Basie, Shepp, Parker etc, I can understand it can be argued that Douglas is not a part of that tradition. It has nothing to do with race, I think - Stan Getz , Scott Hamilton and lots of others definitely are a part of the afro-american tradition. But is Anthony Braxton? Or Bix Beiderbecke playing Candlelights or In a Mist on the piano?

And then, of course, people will discuss if it's jazz or not. That discussion, however, has been going on for ages. In the thirties some people had the opinion that it was'nt jazz if the band had a guitar instead of a banjo.

[3pointdeli]

that's what i thought you meant, but i wasn't sure.

let me ask you this: if afro-american jazz has to conform to a "specific kind of swing" and "a certain pulse", do you not think that it would have become just as montonous as disco a long time ago?

i don't think most musicians are concerned with being part of a tradition. they just want to live their life doing what they want to do...which is playing music. tradition is important, but it's highly overrated. sounds to me like crouch has very little faith in african americans if all he can do is hold onto past achievements.

(i hope i don't sound like i'm being nasty towards you. that's not how i mean for this to be taken, but i realize that it could be read that way.)

[Muskrat Ramble]

says that Balkan music has no place being merged with jazz since it predates Jazz.....huh? I guess John Coltrane had no business experimenting with Indian music then since it too was ancient.


I haven't read Crouch's article, but if what you state is correct, he's an ignoramus.

From the beginning, Jazz has been a hybrid music, casually borrowing, adopting, and co-opting all sorts of musical styles and ideas from the world's varied musical traditions: from European classical and folk music, Western pop and show tunes, various Latin musical traditions, music of India and Japan--the list could go on and on.

Jazz has never been "pure," and it's never just been the province of African-Americans. Iirc, the first recorded jazz sides featured an all-white band, for instance, and any jazz fan knows how jazz has been multi-ethnic and international almost from the start, both in terms of performers and fans. They know that it's embraced an ever-expanding variety of styles and influences.

And if Crouch is so into the blues, why doesn't he leave jazz alone and go listen to BB King, Leadbelly, John Lee Hooker, and actual blues artists instead of jazz players who sometimes incorporate some blues forms or scales into their playing?

[Chris A.]

How can Stanley Crouch be an "ignoramus," he received the MacArthur Award, didn't he? They only give that to very creative people, as far as I understand it.

[3pointdeli]

awards mean nothing.

[Hardbop]

Boy, agent provocateur Stanley Crouch continues to raise the hackles of jazz fans. Kind of makes me sorry that I didn't re-up with Jazz Times when my subscription ran out.

In any event, for what it is worth, I've gotta thrown in with the Stan-ster on this one. Roney and Payton, especially Payton, would blow a clown like Douglas into the East River if they ever went mano-a-mano on the bandstand. It would be a little like feeding the Christians to lions if you put Douglas, or any trumpet player classed as "avant-garde," on the same bandstand as A list trumpeters like Nicholas or Wallace.

[3pointdeli]

good thing music isn't sports, huh? who cares who blows who? do you like the music or not? that's all that matters.

[Muskrat Ramble]

It would be a little like feeding the Christians to lions

I'm reminded of the Beavis and Butthead-style metalhead types:

Dude, Iron Maiden could kick Judas Priest's ass!
Yeah, well Metallica would destroy them both! James would make Tipton and Downing sorry they ever picked up guitars.
So what? Metallica became a bunch of girly sellouts after the Black Album. Dimmu Borgir would make Lars cry for mercy!

(No offense to metal lovers. I'm one myself :D )

[J Larsen]

To me Crouch is like the Peter Gammons of jazz criticism. You're told that he's highly respected in his field, yet if you assume that the opposite of whatever he says is true you're going to do okay.

Other recepiets of the MacArthur Award are Richard Foreman (avante-garde playwright - to my mind he substitutes shock value for creativity) and Steve Wolfram (notoriously plageristic mathematician) - I'm not impressed by the award at all.

(Yes I know "plageristic" isn't a word.)

[Jazzmoose]

I must admit, I don't miss my monthly JazzTimes fix at all, and I certainly don't need the Grouch's column to raise my blood pressure. The column he wrote about Max Roach et.al. wasn't bad, but most of his stuff just leaves me with the feeling that he doesn't care what he says, as long as he can get a rise out of people...

[Pharaohrock]

3pt's right, jazz shouldn't be reduced to some kind of "skills competition" or a contest of sheer force. Sure Roney or Payton could blow Douglas off the stage on uptempo shit, but then I have no doubt either that Douglas could"blow away" either of them in terms of conceptual thinking.

In jazz you have improvisers and conceptualists. Most musicians tend to be one or the other, or at least more heavily weighted to the one side. Sonny Rollins for example, is a fantastic improviser but he's done little to change the conceptual framework of jazz....while Wayne Shorter, while not the giant Sonny is on his horn, has changed the way people think about jazz composition and new meters to play over.

[saintvitus]

Originally posted by J Larsen
To me Crouch is like the Peter Gammons of jazz criticism. You're told that he's highly respected in his field, yet if you assume that the opposite of whatever he says is true you're going to do okay.
Hey, get off the Commissioner's back. ;) He may tend to stutter and ramble like Crouch does, but at least his aim is true.

[J Larsen]

His aim may be true, but his rumors and predictions never are!

[saintvitus]

His predictions did not come true because the conditions he laid out so carefully when he made those predictions did not get met.

(For instance, if there is no major injury in the pitching staff, and the middle relief does not get extended for more than 3 innings per game, the Red Sox can win 90 games this year, provided they get the expected 40 HR 120 RBI season from Manny Ramirez, .380 OBP from Johnny Damon, and follow the leadership from esteemed players such as Varitek, Garciaparra and Merloni :rolleyes: )

[J Larsen]

That's not exactly what I was referring to - Gammons is the big "trade rumor" guy. None of his trade rumors ever come to pass, and many of them are just outright ridiculous.

[Dr. J.]

Originally posted by Gary King
How can Stanley Crouch be an "ignoramus," he received the MacArthur Award, didn't he? They only give that to very creative people, as far as I understand it.

No, the criteria for the MacArthur "genius" grant are as mysterious (and political) as the "committee" that awards it.
Like the Grammy, the Oscar, and even the Pulitzer and Nobel,
there is no necessary connection between deserving talent and the award.

[saintvitus]

Just read the column.

Yes, the critics' preferences very often reflect their cultural/racial background and agenda. But isn't the game of determining music's worth by its intent and background rather than its content what Crouch himself has always been engaged in? Wynton became Wynton because of what he played, not because of how he played it, and Crouch was instrumental in WM's march to the top.

So why is it OK to Crouch when the tactic is used to advance Wynton Marsalis's career but not when Dave Douglas is the beneficiary? It sure sounds like the Crouch/Marsalis camp is losing the battle of rhetorics on which side is the state of the art. The battle, of course, doesn't mean a thing in terms of history. It only is important to the wallets; that is, as to who gets the pubs, props, gigs, grants, etc.

As for Crouch's outright dismissal of the intent/artistic direction of Don Byron's and Mark Turner's as "Tom"-ing, isn't this what he did when he accused Miles of selling out? He really should learn a new trick.

[Pharaohrock]

The thing is though, why do people perceive someone like Dave Douglas to be this big threat??? He's not standing in anybody's way who wants to play blues and swing, and as for the listenership, what Stanley Crouch says or any other "jazz police" types say is not going to sway people from listening to Douglas, Mark Turner, or anybody else for that matter. In Stanley's dream world, people would read his column and then in a fit of guilt over having been listening to that impostor Douglas (what's he trying to pose as??) instead of the real blues-and-swing thing, toss out his discs and go like Pavlov to the Marsalis section of the record store. Not gonna happen. Jazz listeners are by and large pretty independent-minded so this kind of crusade is largely pointless.

The thing Crouch fails to understand is that there's many people who listen to a Dave Douglas or a Don Byron and don't care whether it's jazz proper or not. They just like the music! What a concept- listening to music for its own merit and not because it's been preordained as "great jazz." If only more folks could approach music this way.

[clifton]

Pharoahrock: Wisely chosen words. I wonder if Crouch's resentments might owe something to the fact that attention paid to Douglas is attention not paid to Crouch or Wynton. Going further, I remain at serious odds with Crouch regarding his insistence on walking bass as a necessary component of jazz. When you start analyzing his rhetoric, this particular conclusion is inescapable. Crouch's many barbed attacks on Scott LaFaro reinforce the point, I think. I have to wonder why Stanley never gave a serious listen to Mr. Coleman's mighty "Ornette!" album, which feature much fine walking from LaFaro. As I've stated before, Crouch is a prisoner of his own ideology, which, apparently deprives him of the ability to apply critical thinking skills to jazz idioms that developed after 1961 or so. He has written thoughtfully about pre-Ornette music, and even about Ornette himself, but the widening of jazz into many idioms with parallel rather than linear development simply cannot be tailored to fit Crouch's views or agenda.

[bubber]

3pointdeli,

I don't find you being nasty, and I'm not sure our opinions differ that much. What I say is that it can be argued that some (jazz) music comes out of a certain tradition, and some does not.

This does'nt mean that Douglas' or Mark Turner's (or Lennie Tristano's) music is inferior to the music of Lester Bowie or Nicholas Payton, nor does it mean that Douglas, Turner and Tristano's music is'nt jazz.

[3pointdeli]

yeah, that's pretty much what i was getting at with the tradition comment. thanks for saying it in a more straightforward way.

[bubber]

It might seem a paradox, but it's not always the easiest to express oneself in a straightforward way English not being ones first language.

[3pointdeli]

well, that's interesting to think about. those of us who speak english as a first language use lots of slang words and phrases and tend to take things for granted when it comes to communication. it's pretty common for americans to say something that would be really confusing if taken literally. maybe it's like that in other languages, too.

[JamesJazz]

Ref. Wallace Roney, I've heard him three times in person and I wasn't impressed.
He plays Miles very well, so well that I want to hear Miles and not Wallace play Miles.
Kind of like Pres and Paul Quinichette maybe?

[montg]

Why aren't there more African-American jazz critics in the first place? Isn't this the elephant standing in the room that Crouch is overlooking? Or some such metaphor.

[Leeway]

I'mnot one of those who automatically disagreeswith Stanley; sometimes I agree with him, and even when I don't, I can appreciate his polemics. But this latest column is simply a mess.The thinking is so tortured, the feelings are so bitter, that I wonder if SC was in his right mind when he wrote it. What an unfortunate mess he produced this month. I think he's become a victim of his own ideological narrowness,

[Dmitry]

I don't see how any thinking jazz fan could take Crouch seriously.

[Dmitry]

Originally posted by Leeway
I'mnot one of those who automatically disagreeswith Stanley; sometimes I agree with him, and even when I don't, I can appreciate his polemics.

Even a broken clock shows the right time 2x day.;)

[maren]

I haven't read the Jazz Times column yet, but -- ugh. When I hear the term "Uncle Tom" it tends to bring to mind some kind of political sell-out, oh, someone like politically conservative NY Daily News columnist Stanley Crouch, who applauded the change of trial venue (from the Bronx to Albany) of the police officers who shot Amadou Diallo...

Not Don Byron, whose every album (at great cost to his commercial viability I believe, unlike, say Wynton Marsalis, who I heard playing "My Old Kentucky Home" at this year's Kentucky Derby, for heaven's sakes!!!) explicitly addresses the state of race relations in America... while he embraces his love of many kinds of music...

Makes no sense to me, except to conclude that Crouch is a bully and an opportunist and a law unto himself ("Notes of a Hanging Judge" -- hmm...)

[Pharaohrock]

Where is the credibility in someone who was just as full-fledged of an ideologue of avant-garde jazz becoming the unapologetic voice of the jazz tradition???

Anybody familiar with that cat David Horowitz, the neoconservative writer? Same thing, exactly. It's a certain kind of human psychology that thrives on being contrarian. I guarantee you the moment Crouch's ideas became popular/accepted, he would no longer be arguing those but the other side. He revels in thinking himself to be the only beacon of light for the unenlightened.

[Leeway]

Dmitry, I was going to use that old joke myself in response to your post ;) . But I didn't because I think Stanley has a bit better batting average. Pharaohrock, I kind of like contrarians. Christopher Hitchens is one of my favorite ones- check out his "Letters to a Young Contrarian." Right now, there's not enough contrarian thinking. Isn't that the problem with the people who run the BNBB? - they HATE contrarian thinking, enough to trash their own Board and its community. By all means, let's argue against contrarians (counter-contrarians?) but let's value the contrarian spirit. It often leads to insight and truth.

[clandy44]

Just finished the piece. Disturbing. Crouch commits the cardinal sin that no referee or critic should: he invariably makes the controversial move and thus calls attention to himself. When it comes to racial matters and jazz, maybe I'm just a kid at heart and prefer the uplifting stories not the ones where mischievous people do bad things to others. But, I'm taking the Crouch bait to choose up hateful teams; I will do what little I can to make this a better place for as many as I can.

[clandy44]

Bad proofreading-insert not before taking!!

[Pharaohrock]

I value the contrarian spirit as much as anyone, but there's a difference in being contrarian because you feel there's a dimension to a debate that's being underrepresented, and being contrarian because you just want attention. Crouch swings more on the latter side IMO.

[sheldonm]

Typical Crouch! The article is ridiculous, he is trying to discredit one of the greatest living trumpet players.

[WestCoast Ghost]

Hard to believe that Stanley once wrote the liner notes for WEST COAST HOT... but then maybe it isn't. He rode the free wave in the late 60's just as he's ridden the Lincoln Center wave for the last few years.

[clifton]

Pharoahrock: Why is it that every time I come back to this particular thread, you've already said what I had planned to say? However, I disagree with you when you say Rollins didn't alter the conceptual framework of jazz. Yes he has usually operated in a straight ahead rhythmic framework (with detours into funk and Ornette's ideas), but his use of space, silence, and thematic improvising has influenced every improviser. His exploration of overtones and semitones has been important and quite detailed, and he has explored calypso rhythms quite thoroughly. I think these ideas qualify as conceptual developments. As for contrarians, I think a true contrarian is somebody who uses critical thinking to stand firm against popular trends, to stop, or slow down the stampede of ideological lemmings in any arena, be it music or politics. H.L. Mencken was a contrarian. I think Bill Maher is a contrarian. Stanley Crouch is an opportunist. David Horowitz is even worse. He's an opportunist and an a**hole. Christopher Hitchens, on the other hand, is a drunk.

[Chris A.]

Originally posted by Pharaohrock
... there's a difference in being contrarian because you feel there's a dimension to a debate that's being underrepresented, and being contrarian because you just want attention. Crouch swings more on the latter side IMO.

I agree with you on that--while Crouch may genuinely believe some of the viewpoints he espouses, he is basically an opportunist who plays Devil's Advocate to make us pay notice. Unfortunately, his game is so transparent and his intellect so wanting that he fails to generate respect.

[jazzypaul]

what page is this damn thing on? I almost bought it, but couldn't find a page number, and I put it back in disgust!