Customer Reviews

Considering Genius: Writings on Jazz

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I come to Mr. Crouch's book not from the rarified precincts of jazz criticism but as a fan of his regular contributions to the New York Daily News. There, his pragmatic, humorous and always challenging responses and constructive criticisms to the world situation have always made him a "must read" upon receipt of the paper. He call 'em as he sees 'em without the ideological smokescreen that makes so much of the editorial page repugnant. So when I discovered that he is frequently regarded as "controversial" in the jazz press I was puzzled. It would seem to me that an intellectual provacateur of his magnitude would be welcomed. And upon reading this eminently enjoyable and at the same time profound series of meditations on the state of jazz in the world, I can only say that the same generosity of spirit that informs his Op-Ed pieces is manifest in his placing of the music and the people who make it in a context that centers them in our American Experience. This book really does straddle many of the idealogical hurdles that have been placed in our way, and that still keep the majority of Americans from truly embracing what it is that jazz, in Mr. Crouch's eloquent purview, truly represents. In his prose and in his ideas, Mr. Crouch is a true American original. I have already ordered several copies for friends who were wondering what they would read this summer. The search is over.

Having not read much of Mr. Crouch's work besides liner notes to some of my favorite CDs I admit I picked up `Considering Genius' with the hope of reading what amounted to an extended version of the same: a detailed explanation and celebration of the music, in this case extended to all of jazz rather than a single artist. I wasn't disappointed -- but I also got a little more of Mr. Crouch than I really wanted. Simple put, I found him difficult to read -- at least in extended essay form -- but more often than not worth the effort.

But even with the paragraph-long sentences and occasional jargon, what a refreshing blast! When reporting on, say, Miles Davis' 1961 Carnegie Hall concert -- a masterpiece of behind-the-scenes journalism -- Crouch takes no prisoners, hailing the masters, mocking the posers and drawing out the enigmatic Davis in all his glory and contradictions. (For good measure he later eviscerates Davis for his drift to fusion and rock.) This piece alone is worth the price of the book. Many others are nearly as worthy and my refreshment in general comes from Mr. Crouch speaking as a black man (he prefers the old-school "Negro") in the spirit of an Ellington (rather than, say, a Sharpton): not sugar-coating racial issues, but challenging adversity with brains and style rather than victimization and whining. A brilliant slam of Clint Eastwood's film `Bird' reflects this perspective, showing how the director evinced no interest in Charlie Parker's vast imagination and intelligence and preferred to portray the alto saxophone genius as a tragic, grinning addict.

Still, after three hundred odd pages with similar adversaries the author's bromides start to wear a little thin. Every musician who doesn't fit his jazz mold is a "slave to minstrelsy" (even Davis, after a turn -- though his characterizations of Lionel Richie as "a horse-faced Negro ... [who] pulls down millions for songs that contain so little character" and Michael Jackson as "rail-tailed" are pretty hilarious). A healthy selection of white jazz icons - from Chet Baker to Stan Getz - are strawmen for being "played into the ground" by their black counterparts. While Crouch pulls no punches about where he stands, he often doesn't seem to have done much homework on the objects of his sneers. To be fair, he admits he's "not interested" in many other types of music (and musicians); but this is hardly an excuse for such superficial dismissals.

Still, for all the highs and lows, this is jazz criticism pulverized into about the finest grain one can imagine. *Any* musician or other artist who attracts the author's attention on the subject is deconstructed here to the point where it's almost redundant to hear or read their work. For example, I was only vaguely aware of Albert Murray's `Stomping the Blues' (referred to in Ralph Ellison's jazz writings, which are also excellent) but I now know enough about it to almost not have to bother. I'm afraid a similar sense of overkill pervades much of this collection; Crouch's enthusiasm for his icons is admirable but occasionally suffocating. I'd like to think I love jazz as much as he does and after the liner notes experience was hopeful that maybe we loved it in a similar way. After reading `Considering Genius' I'm convinced we don't; but I respect his opinion and usually enjoy the way he gives it.

Although I am aware of Mr. Crouch writings through the years certain things he says troubles me. I thought long and hard about commenting on this book due to Mr. Crouch's stature as a knowledgeable writer and me being no one important. Nevertheless I feel compelled to make this observation. I found much of what Mr. Crouch had to say in this book very informative. Where he lost me time and time again was in his insistence on puting contemporary jazz down. This especially got to me when he started talking about Wynton Marsalis. This guy rubs me the wrong way. He is a fabulous musician, a good composer (not great)and a good educator. What bugs me the most about both Marsalis and Crouch is their continuous references to other forms of Black music, i.e. contemporary jazz and the musicians who perform this music as "modern day minstrels". I find this very distasteful, illogical and disrespectful. As it appears to me, jazz is dead unless you consider contemporary jazz. There's no one out there showing any other way forward so guys like Wynton just go recreating music based on past styles, past instrumentation, past scores and past attitudes. Let me say that I love jazz of the past. I love learning about my jazz heroes like Miles, Monk, Trane, Horace Silver and scores of others. I appreciate everything Ellington did but my personal taste in jazz pretty much begins with the beboppers. I also love the fusion era and I like much of what is termed "smooth jazz". Now, is contemporary jazz on the same level as what we've heard in the past? In most cases no. However, it doesn't matter if no one is listening. When I say no one I am primarily speaking of Black people. In case you haven't noticed Stanley and Wynton, Black people have moved on musically. If we have learned anything about Black musical history it is that we don't stay in the same place. The music moves forward and that is true in jazz, blues, gospel, R & B, etc. etc. Do I wish that more people today were familiar with Monk, Mingus, Bird? You bet but it's not going to happen. The times are different and there is a different groove in the air. Neither Stanley or Marsalis seem to have any appreciation for funk which just blows me away. Instead, they choose to lump all other entertainment oriented music as "minstrel music". That attitude needs to be checked. Yes Wynton, you can play extremely well and Stanley you can write extremely well but keep this in mind: neither of you have much of a black audience. You have been left behind and basically deemed as irrelevant to today's black music enthusiasts.

Let me say this: I can say that I have learned something important from every one of Stanley Crouch's books. Mr. Crouch is an iconoclast. His books are always full of surprises and ideas whether you agree with him or not. I thought his classic jazz novel Don't The Moon Look Lonesome was insightful and, in fact, was going to shock the world because it had so much untold truth going on between its covers. Mr. Crouch's book, The Artificial White Man, keep it going.

In his new book, Considering Genius, Mr. Crouch continues to prove that he is one of the few public intellectuals you can always count on to make you think, laugh, and just set your brain on fire. He is a fine writer and really demonstrates his gifts in he essay form, making him one of the supreme poets of the English language. He proves that in this book just like he did in all the others. I recommend Considering Genius highly. Once you start reading it, you will not be able to put I down. I loved the book.

Some terrific writing here -- Crouch is a master. This book is a compendium of his colorful short portraits of jazz artists (many of which were, I believe, composed for the Village Voice). What I was expecting however, was an actual "through-composed" book of new writing so I was a bit disappointed. Definitely some worthwhile reading, especially for more learned jazz afficionados. In my opinion, skip the foreward and go straight to portraits.

Stanley Crouch's fascinating collection of essays on jazz and jazz musicians is welcome and overdue. It is great to have all these pieces in one place. Crouch presents a passionate defense of blues and swing, African-American invented elements of the music that are essential to its definition. (Anything else is some sort of improvised European music.) To claim that Crouch's point of view is race-based or racialized is actually the rascist position since it once again would deprive African-Americans of yet another art form they created. If somebody wouldn't think of putting on something other than a Japanese No play and yet insist on calling it a No play, why would someone do that to jazz? This stems from a deeply ingrained reluctance to take African-Americans seriously - and Crouch will have none of it. Crouch's stylistic approach, in the tradition of belle lettres, that of the informative, discursive, and humanistic essay, is far superior to many "critical" academic treatments of such a hip and swinging subject which always resists them. This book is not burdened with musicological analysis or faux-critical theory. It is rather the hard-won and well considered insights of a writer who's been on the scene he's covering for four decades. Some of these pieces are available elsewhere (for example, 'Body and Soul', his brilliant and stylistically unique account of his visit to the 1982 Umbria Jazz Festival, was included in his first book 'Notes of a Hanging Judge' [1990]). But his remarkable essay on Ben Webster is not, to my knowledge, found anywhere else. His take-down of Miles Davis may be somewhere else, but good thing its here too. It can't be reprinted enough. His intellectual nuclear devastation of Amiri Baraka/Leroi Jones is in here too. Not all the pieces are iconoclastic of course. His celebrations of Duke Ellington and Mahalia Jackson are uplifting. His pieces for the Jazz Times, which ultimately got him fired from that erroneously titled publication, are included as well. They are inspiring in their own way, if you are inclined to the point of view that jazz means something definite and has a tradition (like any other art form!), that it came from an African-American cultural context, and that it should swing. (That does not, of course, mean that whites cannot play the music how it is supposed to sound. Crouch celebrates those who can and do.) The book is not all recycled pieces. It contains a long autobiographical forward, which reads well and is entertaining, chronicling Crouch's history with the music, from his first encounters with it in a burger joint in LA in the 1950s to Rudy Giuliani's office in the 1990s, where Crouch convinced him to have the city support the creation of building that houses Jazz@Lincoln Center. The long epilogue considers the young Sicilian saxophonist Cafiso, among other things. In any case, it is an essential book that helps explain 'the soul part' of the body and soul of jazz.

The author is a columnist,former musician,promoter,commentator and writer. I enjoy his work which is regularly published in the New York Daily News. I have somewhat mixed feelings about his jazz writings. For my personal taste, though he is indeed extremely knowledgeable and has lived the life, I could do without his heavy interspersing of politics with jazz. Which is not to say I don't often agree with his message. This book has lot's of excellent material about such artists as Miles,Bird,Thelonious,Duke,Ahmad Jamal,Coltrane,Ben Webster,Coleman Hawkins,Billy Eckstine,Billy Higgins, Benny Carter,McCoy Tyner and Charles McPherson as well as LeRoi Jones, to name a few. Still, I find much of his writing to be rather ponderous. But, all in all, a quite worthwhile read.

When Amazon sees fit to provide citizen-reviewers with any incentive to critique, I'll consider posting one here.
That's what I learned from this collection of pivotal essays.

I dont advocate book burning often but in this case well .... Crouch is not Whitney Balliet, Martin Williams, Norman Mailer or Saul Bellow, not a great jazz scholar, great essayist or prose stylist that he thinks himself to be but a musty, dishonest, reactionary windbag who's pompous drivel on jazz should be ignored. Crouch was a mediocre jazz drummer in the 70s, who in the 80s got rich through neo conservatism and pure careerist fakery. Read once and then shred or bin it.

The man who described Bill Evans as a 'punk' who can hardly play, or who said that Europeans have never made any significant contribution to jazz (where does that leave John Tchicai?), or who had the colossal chutzpah to imply to Anthony Braxton that he shouldn't be playing with Derek Bailey, is clearly willing to abandon his ear and adopt purely racial criteria for inclusion in the jazz canon. Even if you think that this statement is extreme, if you were to follow Crouch's recommendations then huge areas of jazz would be closed off to you. (Presumably you have to find some way of digitally removing Bill Evans' contribution from 'Kind of Blue').

A lot of the things that Crouch has to say about jazz are both interesting and insightful. But his chronic intellectual pugnacity has, I think, more to do with a sort of Maileresque need to prove what a bruiser he is (he has been known to get into fistfights with people who've criticised him) than it has to do with the force of truth in his arguments. I suspect that if he were more sure he were right, he wouldn't be so aggressive. In any case, it makes me less likely to think he's right and more likely to think that he's just looking for a fight. Shoulda stuck with being a drummer, Stanley - jazz criticism isn't nearly as rewarding. (Also, he likes Saul Bellow's fiction, which to me is always a sign of being kind of a reactionary idiot.)