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Considering Genius: Writings on Jazz
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.
368 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 2006
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344 people want to read
About the author
Stanley Crouch
33 books55 followersStanley Lawrence Crouch was an American poet, music journalist & jazz critic, biographer, novelist, educator and cultural commentator. He was also both a civil rights activist and a musician as a young man.
Born and raised in Los Angeles, California, Stanley Crouch attended Thomas Jefferson High School, graduating in 1963. He continued his education at area junior colleges and became active in the civil rights movement, working with the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). He gained a reputation as a talented young poet, and in 1968 became poet-in-residence at Pitzer College (Claremont, California); he then taught theatre and literature at Pomona College (Claremont, California). In 1969, a recording of him reading several of his poems was released as an LP by Flying Dutchman Records. This was followed by his first book, a collection of his poems published in 1972 by the Richard W. Baron Publishing Co.
During the early 1970s, Mr. Crouch also pursued a parallel career as a musician, playing the drums in a progressive jazz group called Black Music Infinity, which he had formed with saxophonist & clarinetist David Murray, and which also featured saxophonist Arthur Blythe. In 1975, Mr. Crouch & Mr. Murray moved from California to New York City, where they lived above an East Village jazz club called the Tin Palace. Mr. Crouch functioned as the club's booking agent for a while, and he both chronicled and participated in the thriving avant-garde jazz scene in New York at that time, along with musicians such as Henry Threadgill, James Blood Ulmer and Olu Dara, among many others. There were also a number of other poets, as well as photographers, painters and other visual artists actively involved in that milieu. By the end of the 1970s, however, Mr. Crouch had for the most part given up the drums, and his role as a musician, to concentrate on writing.
In 1980 Mr. Crouch joined the staff of the Village Voice, where for the next several years he further honed his craft as a writer. He was honored with a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1982. In 1987 he became an artistic consultant for the Jazz at Lincoln Center program, along with Wynton Marsalis, for whom he had become a friend and intellectual mentor. After leaving the Village Voice in 1988, Crouch published 'Notes of a Hanging Judge: Essays and Reviews, 1979-1989', which was selected by The Encyclopædia Britannica Yearbook as the best book of essays published in 1990. He received a Whiting Award in 1991, which was followed in 1993 by a MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant and the Jean Stein Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Mr. Crouch continued to write for newspapers and magazines in addition to writing books. He wrote a column for the New York Daily News, and eventually became a syndicated columnist. He also appeared in several documentary films and was a frequent guest on television programs. His first novel, 'Don't the Moon Look Lonesome' was published in 2000, and 'Kansas City Lightning: The Rise and Times of Charlie Parker', his biography of the revered jazz musician, in 2013.
In addition to his writing on music and the arts generally, Mr. Crouch was one of the most incisive writers and socio-cultural commentators on race relations in the U.S., which was a frequent topic of his articles and books. In 2003 he was fired from the magazine 'JazzTimes' after an article he had written on racism in the music business had caused a somewhat overblown and ridiculous controversy. Probably not coincidentally, he was selected in 2005 as one of the inaugural fellows by the Fletcher Foundation, which awards annual fellowships to people working on issues of race and civil rights. Mr. Crouch was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2009. In 2016, he was awarded the Windham–Campbell Literature Prize for non-fiction, and he was named an NEA Jazz Master in 2019.
Born and raised in Los Angeles, California, Stanley Crouch attended Thomas Jefferson High School, graduating in 1963. He continued his education at area junior colleges and became active in the civil rights movement, working with the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). He gained a reputation as a talented young poet, and in 1968 became poet-in-residence at Pitzer College (Claremont, California); he then taught theatre and literature at Pomona College (Claremont, California). In 1969, a recording of him reading several of his poems was released as an LP by Flying Dutchman Records. This was followed by his first book, a collection of his poems published in 1972 by the Richard W. Baron Publishing Co.
During the early 1970s, Mr. Crouch also pursued a parallel career as a musician, playing the drums in a progressive jazz group called Black Music Infinity, which he had formed with saxophonist & clarinetist David Murray, and which also featured saxophonist Arthur Blythe. In 1975, Mr. Crouch & Mr. Murray moved from California to New York City, where they lived above an East Village jazz club called the Tin Palace. Mr. Crouch functioned as the club's booking agent for a while, and he both chronicled and participated in the thriving avant-garde jazz scene in New York at that time, along with musicians such as Henry Threadgill, James Blood Ulmer and Olu Dara, among many others. There were also a number of other poets, as well as photographers, painters and other visual artists actively involved in that milieu. By the end of the 1970s, however, Mr. Crouch had for the most part given up the drums, and his role as a musician, to concentrate on writing.
In 1980 Mr. Crouch joined the staff of the Village Voice, where for the next several years he further honed his craft as a writer. He was honored with a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1982. In 1987 he became an artistic consultant for the Jazz at Lincoln Center program, along with Wynton Marsalis, for whom he had become a friend and intellectual mentor. After leaving the Village Voice in 1988, Crouch published 'Notes of a Hanging Judge: Essays and Reviews, 1979-1989', which was selected by The Encyclopædia Britannica Yearbook as the best book of essays published in 1990. He received a Whiting Award in 1991, which was followed in 1993 by a MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant and the Jean Stein Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Mr. Crouch continued to write for newspapers and magazines in addition to writing books. He wrote a column for the New York Daily News, and eventually became a syndicated columnist. He also appeared in several documentary films and was a frequent guest on television programs. His first novel, 'Don't the Moon Look Lonesome' was published in 2000, and 'Kansas City Lightning: The Rise and Times of Charlie Parker', his biography of the revered jazz musician, in 2013.
In addition to his writing on music and the arts generally, Mr. Crouch was one of the most incisive writers and socio-cultural commentators on race relations in the U.S., which was a frequent topic of his articles and books. In 2003 he was fired from the magazine 'JazzTimes' after an article he had written on racism in the music business had caused a somewhat overblown and ridiculous controversy. Probably not coincidentally, he was selected in 2005 as one of the inaugural fellows by the Fletcher Foundation, which awards annual fellowships to people working on issues of race and civil rights. Mr. Crouch was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2009. In 2016, he was awarded the Windham–Campbell Literature Prize for non-fiction, and he was named an NEA Jazz Master in 2019.
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
December 8, 2016
Despite being a bit of a cranky old codger, Stanley Crouch does write some good criticism of jazz. However, I only gave him three stars because he always seems to think that jazz ended after Miles broke up his first quartet and John Coltrane moved on. While I appreciate swing and early bee-bop, I don't consider hard-bop, electric jazz or free jazz any less important in the history of "jass" music. I think his opinions were too much of an influence on the editorial choices of the Jazz television show by Ken Burns. I won't say don't read Crouch, but I will say that he has a certain point of view that you may not share. I found his writing far better in the biography of Bird than in this collection of essays.
August 24, 2014
In anticipation of reading Crouch's book on Charlie Parker, and having seen him speak in such an erudite and informative manner on the Burns "Jazz" documentary, I thought it would be a good move to read this collection of his jazz writing and criticism. I liken reading this book to taking a master seminar with an incredible storyteller. Crouch has the incredible ability to evoke music, history, personal narratives, and the true swing and power of jazz music with his words. I found myself transported by the words, critical rigor, courage, and love of art in this book. It's a true testament to the importance and arc of jazz music.
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May 4, 2025Collected works by the apparent paglia of jazz criticism ... that should tell u if this is ur thing
June 2, 2019
I wish that I had been aware of and alive for Stanley Crouch's more active periods. His criticism is loaded with an open treasury of knowledge to unpack and reproduce; his wit is grown organically out of the material and simmers without boiling over the text and spoiling it; his topics integrate both the titans of jazz who wrestled with and thwarted a timeline that would have brought about a worse future and the demigods that did equally extraordinary things on smaller stages. Being able to read his essays while immersed in the culture alongside him would have been an artistic treat equal to seeing his musical muses. Reading him in 2019 however calls large doubts into his foresight as a bearer of cultural insights. Not only do his topical interests skew heavily into more sober fields of jazz that today's artists would view as basis to innovate on (today's artists being a class of musicians Crouch denies both jazz status and artistic merit), but they also reiterate on each other endlessly. As much as there is to be written about Mingus, his uniqueness is made mundane when he is compared only to himself with essay after essay about his ouvre. Little is made mention of what he allowed future artists to do, as if he was the last in his lineage. While Crouch is likely right in assuming that the artistic highs of the people Mingus influenced do not soar like his did, that in itself makes for fascinating writing in comparison.
Crouch is a relic of a beautiful moment in criticism, and perhaps I am being harsh about his desires to remain a part of history. But to entirely ignore that flow and progression of jazz into the 21st century makes him seem like less of a jazz aficionado and more of a collector of fashionable records.
Crouch is a relic of a beautiful moment in criticism, and perhaps I am being harsh about his desires to remain a part of history. But to entirely ignore that flow and progression of jazz into the 21st century makes him seem like less of a jazz aficionado and more of a collector of fashionable records.
January 5, 2010
The birth of jazz was the birth of America. In the field hollers of Mississippi the call and resposne became the shout of the blues and ultimately the blast of Buddy Bolden's trumpet. Jazz is the only indigelous art form born in America and its rhythms, cadences and flow stem driectly from a prototypical American experience. Stanley Crouch is a black jazz critic whose acadmeic, analytic and urbane look at the what is essentially the music of his people and in these sharp, keen-eyed essays, he dissects the muse and the music into wonderful panoramas, so that Monk, Ellington, Miles Davis, Ahmand Jamal and others emerge fully fleshed and breathing.
He's acutely observant and a natural storyteller. When he examines a musican and music you come away with a more intimate understanding of both. Seldom has jazz writing been this fine.
Read it and then sit back and listen to The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady or The Birth of the Cool and hear them like you did the first time, only this time threaded together lovingly under STanley Crouch's urbane understanding of allt hat is in the jazz world.
He's acutely observant and a natural storyteller. When he examines a musican and music you come away with a more intimate understanding of both. Seldom has jazz writing been this fine.
Read it and then sit back and listen to The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady or The Birth of the Cool and hear them like you did the first time, only this time threaded together lovingly under STanley Crouch's urbane understanding of allt hat is in the jazz world.
February 9, 2024
Crouch could really write - the prologue, his long review of Miles Davis Live at Carnegie Hall, and his searing rebuttal to Clint Eastwood's Charlie Parker movie are truly fantastic essays and I would recommend them to anyone, whether they like jazz or not. But on too many of the other essays Crouch seems to get drunk on flights of rhetoric that do little for the reader and quickly become exhausting. And his use of the term "Negro" instead of "Black"--in the late '90s!--seems like an odd affectation, but I guess that's not for me to say.
September 12, 2008
This book is an intriguing, articulate, erudite commentary on jazz by a very knowledgeable, somewhat racist, somewhat myopic disciple of Wynton Marsalis. Depending on your perspective on jazz, you will either confront Crouch's opinions with a "yeah! right on!", or...a "what? where does he come off saying that? Who gives him the right to say what is jazz and what is not?" In either case, if you take his opinions for what they are - his opinions, you will learn from this book, and Crouch has a strong command of the language.
December 12, 2020
I think Stanley Crouch would have preferred to have titled this book "Genius Considering Genius", he clearly has such a high self-conception. I gave it a "3" and I rarely finish "3" books.
The first section, The Makers (p 40-154) is excellent. I enjoyed reading about specific jazz artists while listening to the music he was describing. After decades, I finally came to appreciate Louis Armstrong, listening to his latest, mature work rather than trying to get into his early New Orleans days with the Hot Five. I was introduced to the talents of Ben Webster, Wallace Roney and Andrew Hill. I came to better appreciate those I already knew and appreciated, Miles, Bird, Dizzy, Monk, Ahmad Jamal, Mingus, Ornette Coleman, Coltrane Sun Ra, and perhaps, most of all, Duke Ellington. For this section, I am very glad this book was written and that I read it.
Then there is the rest of this 339 page book, of which I read about 1/2. Why only 1/2? Because so much of it is rambling, eloquent, self-stroking babble. If the writing in these sections represents his drum playing, it is clear why he never made it as a jazz drummer. I guess you can get away with meandering, lifeless verbiage full of pointless and useless knowledge because there just are not that many jazz critics. He would have been thrown out of the top clubs if he tried to pass off that kind of stuff as actual jazz playing as opposed to jazz writing.
That having been said, Crouch's "Kansas City Lightning" about Charlie Parker is an absolutely wonderful book that showcases his very best writing. Who knows!?
The first section, The Makers (p 40-154) is excellent. I enjoyed reading about specific jazz artists while listening to the music he was describing. After decades, I finally came to appreciate Louis Armstrong, listening to his latest, mature work rather than trying to get into his early New Orleans days with the Hot Five. I was introduced to the talents of Ben Webster, Wallace Roney and Andrew Hill. I came to better appreciate those I already knew and appreciated, Miles, Bird, Dizzy, Monk, Ahmad Jamal, Mingus, Ornette Coleman, Coltrane Sun Ra, and perhaps, most of all, Duke Ellington. For this section, I am very glad this book was written and that I read it.
Then there is the rest of this 339 page book, of which I read about 1/2. Why only 1/2? Because so much of it is rambling, eloquent, self-stroking babble. If the writing in these sections represents his drum playing, it is clear why he never made it as a jazz drummer. I guess you can get away with meandering, lifeless verbiage full of pointless and useless knowledge because there just are not that many jazz critics. He would have been thrown out of the top clubs if he tried to pass off that kind of stuff as actual jazz playing as opposed to jazz writing.
That having been said, Crouch's "Kansas City Lightning" about Charlie Parker is an absolutely wonderful book that showcases his very best writing. Who knows!?
February 11, 2024
a very fine collection that runs the gamut of portraits, profiles, essays, reviews, insights, criticisms, tete a tetes, personal narrative et cetera by the dogmatic, jazz partisan and American public intellectual, Stanley Crouch.
one may not agree with all of his opinions and theories, but at least you know where he stands.
to be honest, I would love to read more jazz collections like this, and less jazz biographies.
one may not agree with all of his opinions and theories, but at least you know where he stands.
to be honest, I would love to read more jazz collections like this, and less jazz biographies.
May 3, 2018
Best book I've read in a long time.
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August 17, 2021Abandoned
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 21, 2024
Rambling and opinionated but also insightful
April 26, 2025
Excellent Jazz criticism by the iconic Stanley Crouch. Stanley know his stuff when it came it came to Jazz and he was willing to take on some sacred cows (like Dave Douglas) and criticize them. He's also pretty critical of Miles Davis, maybe too much so, but it nice to read someone who has strong opinions and can back them up.
What a breathe of fresh air.
What a breathe of fresh air.
October 31, 2012
If nothing else, Crouch is a great writer. His style and craft are unmatched in the world of music criticism. He's a strong enough writer that when I disagree with him (his criticism of Dave Douglas is misplaced) I have a hard time justifying why, and when I agree with him (his brutal takedown of Amiri Baraka, whom insists on calling LeRoi Jones) I feel the position is completely unassailable.
I've read it cover to cover a few times and it is an absolutely crucial reference for anyone interested in jazz or music criticism in general.
I've read it cover to cover a few times and it is an absolutely crucial reference for anyone interested in jazz or music criticism in general.
December 23, 2007
Interesting writing on jazz from intellectual fire-brand, Crouch. At least some of his writing on race that is so cringe-worthy bleeds into this work, but the insights on the music and the masters makes it worth the hardship.
September 10, 2009
crammed history of jazz even though there is a somewhat of a narrative going on here ...and personal accounts from the author and his experiences of civil rights of the time
October 26, 2016
You need to deeply know jazz to appreciate the content - and I don't - but anyone can appreciate that Crouch has to be one of America's finest writers
April 13, 2017
It's been over a decade since I gave up on a book. One, I just don't like to do that and, two, it's rare that I find a book that angers or bores me enough to give up. This one is the former, for sure. Crouch is clearly a very smart guy and a deep thinker, but his crazy opinions drove me crazy. A small list of things he seems to strongly hate - avant garde jazz, Miles Davis after 1968, Coltrane's outer space expressions, rap music, Spike Lee, Amiri Baraka (so much that he refuses to call him by his preferred name, only LeRoi Jones!) and much, much more. I don't mind crankiness and contrarian opinions, but when I got to the part where he dismissed Public Enemy as a "racist rap group", I threw this book down in disgust. Your mileage may vary, but I found any of his insights completely negated by his posturing and personal vendettas.
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews