Considering Genius

From the pre-eminent - and always controversial - jazz critic and intellectual firebrand Stanley Crouch, this is the long-awaited collection of essential essays on the great music and performers of the jazz world. Stanley Crouch has been writing about jazz and jazz artists for over thirty years. His reputation for controversy is exceeded only by a universal respect for his intellect and passion: even Amiri Baraka, a long-time Crouch combatant and target of his wrath, has said, "As much as I disagree with Stanley, about everything, music is the one thing he knows something about." And 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." Now, in a long-awaited collection, Crouch collects fifteen of his best loved, most influential, and most controversial pieces (published in "Jazz Times", "The New Yorker", "The Village Voice", and elsewhere), and throws in two new essays as well. The pieces range from the introspective "Jazz Criticism and its Effect on the Art Form" to a rollicking debate with Baraka, to vivid, intimate portraits of the legendary performers Crouch has known. The first, an autobiographical essay reflecting on his life in jazz as a drummer, a promoter, a critic, and most of all a lover of this quintessentially American art form, offers the perfect introduction to the jazz world, for a novice or an old hand. And the closing essay, about a young Italian saxophonist, expresses undaunted optimism for the worldwide vibrancy of jazz. Throughout, Crouch's work reminds us not only of why he is one of the world's most important living jazz critics - always sought out for commentary by the likes of Ken Burns and Tavis Smiley - but of why jazz itself remains, against all odds, an elemental component of our cultural identity.

ISBN 0465015174   Pages 368 ISBN13 9780465015177 (What's this?)   Volumes 1 Publisher The Perseus Books Group   Weight (grammes) 649 Imprint Basic Civitas Books   Published in Washington Format Hardback   Height (mm) 236 Publication date 01 Jun 2006   Width (mm) 156 Library of Congress 2006002225   Spine width (mm) 29 DEWEY 809   Academic level Undergraduate, Postgraduate, Professional / Scholarly DEWEY edition DC22

		Prologue : jazz me blues		1
1		Miles Davis in the fever of spring, 1961		40
2		Bird land : Charlie Parker, Clint Eastwood, and America		66
3		Papa dip : Crescent City conquistador and sacrificial hero Louis Armstrong		77
4		Not so dizzy		83
5		At the five spot Thelonious Monk		86
6		Ahmad Jamal		95
7		Himself when he was real : the art of Charles Mingus		100
8		Blues for the space age Ornette Coleman		108
9		Titan of the blues John Coltrane		111
10		Andrew Hill's alternative avant-garde		116
11		Rooster Ben : king of romance Ben Webster		120
12		The last of the great bandleaders Sun Ra		125
13		Don't ask the critics : ask Wallace Roney's peers		129
14		Duke Ellington : transcontinental swing		133
15		Martin's tempo		154
16		The late, late blues : jazz modernism		157
17		Blues to be constitutional		166
18		Body and soul		180
19		JazzTimes columns : introduction		206
20		Jazz tradition is not innovation		209
21		The Negro aesthetic of jazz		211
22		Coltrane derailed		213
23		Jazz criticism and its effect on the art form		216
24		Jazz's own sweet time		230
25		Putting the white man in charge		232
		More...

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