Stanley Lawrence Crouch was an American poet, music and cultural critic, syndicated columnist, novelist, and biographer.
21 Facts About Stanley Crouch
2.
Stanley Lawrence Crouch was born in Los Angeles, the son of James and Emma Bea Crouch.
3.
In Ken Burns' 2005 television documentary Unforgivable Blackness, Crouch said that his father was a "criminal" and that he once met the boxer Jack Johnson.
4.
Stanley Crouch's mother told him of the experiences of her youth in east Texas and the black culture of the southern midwest, including the Kansas City jazz scene.
5.
Stanley Crouch became an enthusiast for jazz in both the aesthetic and historical senses.
6.
Stanley Crouch graduated from Thomas Jefferson High School in Los Angeles in 1963.
7.
Stanley Crouch was involved in artistic and educational projects centered on the African-American community of Los Angeles, soon gaining recognition for his poetry.
8.
Stanley Crouch was a drummer for Murray and with other musicians of the underground New York loft jazz scene.
9.
Stanley Crouch befriended Ralph Ellison and Albert Murray, who influenced his thinking in a direction less centered on race.
10.
Stanley Crouch was emerging as a public critic of recent cultural and artistic trends that he saw as empty, phony, or corrupt.
11.
Stanley Crouch's targets included the fusion and avant-garde movements in jazz and literature that he saw as hiding their lack of merit behind racial posturing.
12.
Stanley Crouch continued to be an active author, producing works of fiction and nonfiction, articles for periodicals and newspaper columns.
13.
Stanley Crouch was a columnist for the New York Daily News and a syndicated columnist.
14.
Stanley Crouch participated as a source in documentaries and as a guest in televised discussions.
15.
Stanley Crouch became less of a public figure due to declining health during his last decade.
16.
Stanley Crouch died on September 16,2020, at Calvary Hospital in New York City.
17.
Stanley Crouch identified the embrace of racial essentialism among African-American leaders and intellectuals as a diversion from issues more central to the betterment of African Americans and society as a whole.
18.
Stanley Crouch explained, "I affirm whatever I think has the best chance of working, of being both inspirational and unsentimental, of reasoning across the categories of false division and beyond the decoy of race".
19.
Stanley Crouch was critical of, among others: Alex Haley, the author of The Autobiography of Malcolm X and Roots: The Saga of an American Family; community leader Al Sharpton; filmmaker Spike Lee; scholar Cornel West, and poet and playwright Amiri Baraka.
20.
In jazz critic Alex Henderson's assessment, Stanley Crouch was a "rigid jazz purist" and "a blistering critic of avant-garde jazz and fusion".
21.
When Marsalis served as "Senior Creative Consultant" for Ken Burns' 2001 documentary Jazz, Stanley Crouch served on the film's advisory board and appears extensively.