Stanley Crouch Parker biography reviewed

[paul secor]

What did anyone expect?

[JSngry]

What did anyone expect?

Redemption of sorts, perhaps. Before Crouch turned stooge, I recall him having some interesting things to say...his notes to the Herbie Nichols BN LP two-fer talked about the overtones of a drum kit, and I was like whoa...NOBODY talks about how drummers tune, and yes, that is of critical importance, and hey, thanks for bringing that up, what else have you got to say? And he was cool about the early-ish "loft" music, he got it, he heard it, he was not stupid. Loud, perhaps, but not stupid.

Until he was, and then he got all kinds of stupid, and then I was like, really dude? REALLY? And it only got worse, right? The awfulness kept gaining momentum, and I'm not thinking, you know what you're doing, right? You know you're being a total ignowhormus, right? But you do have your redemption stashed away for play when you absolutely ultimately finally have no further down underneath you, right?

Well, you do, don't you?

Now, I've not started this book (still enjoying my quite leisurely stroll through Mojo Snake Minuet), but it sounds like, no, maybe not. Maybe it got lost at the cleaners. But still - who in the "jazz critical community" brings drum tunings to a conversation, not in a Max Roach "pitched" digression, but as a matter of timbre, resonance, and, yes, overtones that blend/compliment to the momentum of the music? Nobody I've known about. So...what a waste. What a self-imposed soul-suck.

And ain't no ambulances for no self-imposed soul-sucks tonight.

[Larry Kart]

What did anyone expect?

Redemption of sorts, perhaps. Before Crouch turned stooge, I recall him having some interesting things to say...his notes to the Herbie Nichols BN LP two-fer talked about the overtones of a drum kit, and I was like whoa...NOBODY talks about how drummers tune, and yes, that is of critical importance, and hey, thanks for bringing that up, what else have you got to say? And he was cool about the early-ish "loft" music, he got it, he heard it, he was not stupid. Loud, perhaps, but not stupid.

Until he was, and then he got all kinds of stupid, and then I was like, really dude? REALLY? And it only got worse, right? The awfulness kept gaining momentum, and I'm not thinking, you know what you're doing, right? You know you're being a total ignowhormus, right? But you do have your redemption stashed away for play when you absolutely ultimately finally have no further down underneath you, right?

Well, you do, don't you?

Now, I've not started this book (still enjoying my quite leisurely stroll through Mojo Snake Minuet), but it sounds like, no, maybe not. Maybe it got lost at the cleaners. But still - who in the "jazz critical community" brings drum tunings to a conversation, not in a Max Roach "pitched" digression, but as a matter of timbre, resonance, and, yes, overtones that blend/compliment to the momentum of the music? Nobody I've known about. So...what a waste. What a self-imposed soul-suck.

And ain't no ambulances for no self-imposed soul-sucks tonight.

Don't know Crouch's notes for the BN Nichols set, but that point about drum overtones was eloquently made at some length (four paragraphs worth) by Nichols himself in his notes to "The Herbie Nichols Trio" (BN 1519), reproduced in the Mosaic set booklet. I would guess that whatever Crouch wrote was a paraphrase of what Nichols said. If so, one hopes that he acknowledged that Nichols was the source.

[JSngry]

No longer have that album, maybe it was a direct quote, even, honestly don't recall. I just remember that when whatever mention was made of Herbie Nichols at that time (mid-1970s) it was always of the "overlooked genius", "tragically neglected", "victim of the business" A.B. Spellman slant (which was and is certainly legitimate), but now here comes this guy writing the notes to the first real "re-presentation" of Nichol's work, and he's talking about the music itself, at least part of the time, and I thought, well, yeah, let's do it like that. Because if all you want is a martyr and/or sad story, then ok, you can probably find that within walking distance of your own crib, no matter who you are and/or where you live. But, you want to talk about a certainly most-damn EXCELLENT composer and pianist, well then, let's talk about the music itself, build the case around THAT, then.

That's what I remember Crouch doing in those notes, perhaps not always with a lot of/any really specific technical acumen, but at least the reader was being directed that way, and to me, that seemed like the right thing to be doing with that opportunity. Until the Mosaic came along, that set was the Herbie Nichols "bible", unless you were old/lucky enough to have the original releases. And Stanley Crouch, yes, Stanley Crouch, was talking about the music over The Story.

But that was a loooooong time ago....much, as they say, has changed.

[Larry Kart]

Jim -- I'm pretty sure that the first real re-presentation of Nichols music was the Mosaic set of 1987, with Roswell Rudd's magnificent notes, plus lots of fascinating reminiscences from figures such as Patti Bown, Gil Melle, Steve Swallow, Sheila Jordan, Max Roach, etc. The BN set that Crouch wrote notes for came out ten years later, in 1997.

[marcello]

I just finished the book. Although the information, in interviews, from Bird's 1st wife Rebecca and the early Kanas City band leaders ( and Biddy Fleet in New York) are a important additions to the history, there is sooooo much fluff and barley related history, that the book could have been much shorter and concise.

I would guess that when the 2nd book comes out it will be more of the same, and depending on who he interviewed, will be a determining matter if I buy it or not. Major sections of the book were a bore/chore to read, and I'm left with the suspicion that maybe he even doctored/embellished the interviews a bit.

[JSngry]

Jim -- I'm pretty sure that the first real re-presentation of Nichols music was the Mosaic set of 1987, with Roswell Rudd's magnificent notes, plus lots of fascinating reminiscences from figures such as Patti Bown, Gil Melle, Steve Swallow, Sheila Jordan, Max Roach, etc. The BN set that Crouch wrote notes for came out ten years later, in 1997.

No, there was a 2 LP set called The Third World that came out in 1975.

Although...I see now that Roswell Rudd did those notes!

But...Crouch did the liners to some album in that series...and I remember them being pretty good.

[Larry Kart]

Jim -- I'm pretty sure that the first real re-presentation of Nichols music was the Mosaic set of 1987, with Roswell Rudd's magnificent notes, plus lots of fascinating reminiscences from figures such as Patti Bown, Gil Melle, Steve Swallow, Sheila Jordan, Max Roach, etc. The BN set that Crouch wrote notes for came out ten years later, in 1997.

No, there was a 2 LP set called The Third World that came out in 1975.

Although...I see now that Roswell Rudd did those notes!

But...Crouch did the liners to some album in that series...and I remember them being pretty good.

Right -- I had that set myself. I also had (bless me) the three original BN LPs, including the two 10-inchers -- bought them about when they came out after I listened to them in a booth in my local record store, Paul's Recorded Music, and thought they were terrific. IIRC, the first track that really caught my young attention was "Shuffle Montgomery." As Roswell Rudd later said: "One of the greatest riff tunes ever dreamed up by anybody!"

[JSngry]

Found the Crouch/BN notes. They were on Chick Corea's Circling In (also released in 1975...that seems so long ago now...).

Here, the notes are not particularly directed towards the material at hand nearly as much as they are as desalinating a continuum of the jazz "avant-garde", which interestingly (and enthusiastically) enough Crouch finds the material at hand to be firmly a part of, even with it's influence of "the European avant-garde", which at some point became a disqualifier for Crouch & Co.'s 's brand of circling-the-wagons-evolution-through-taxidermy.

So yes, redemption, it is still hoped, could be attained. But perhaps not.

Jim -- I'm pretty sure that the first real re-presentation of Nichols music was the Mosaic set of 1987, with Roswell Rudd's magnificent notes, plus lots of fascinating reminiscences from figures such as Patti Bown, Gil Melle, Steve Swallow, Sheila Jordan, Max Roach, etc. The BN set that Crouch wrote notes for came out ten years later, in 1997.

No, there was a 2 LP set called The Third World that came out in 1975.

Right -- I had that set myself. I also had (bless me) the three original BN LPs, including the two 10-inchers -- bought them about when they came out after I listened to them in a booth in my local record store, Paul's Recorded Music, and thought they were terrific. IIRC, the first track that really caught my young attention was "Shuffle Montgomery." As Roswell Rudd later said: "One of the greatest riff tunes ever dreamed up by anybody!"

It should also be remembered that, in the wake of that BN 2-fer, Bethlehem reissued their Nichols album, and Savoy put out what they had as well (as part of some compilation, IIRC). So, the Mosaic set was actually Wave 2 of The Reintroduction Of Herbie Nichols.

[gmonahan]

That Blue Note reissue series was one of the best ever by any label, IMHO. I had a bunch of those.

gregmo

[Fer Urbina]

I'm still on page 118, but I tend to agree with Larry Kart. There are quite a few passages that just drag along.

I'm also rather intrigued by the font size and line spacing. I have the impression that the whole business could have been fit into one volume. It'd be interesting to compare the word count with Kelley's Monk bio.

F

Edited October 11, 2013 by Fer Urbina

[Fer Urbina]

Too many adjectives for my taste. Personally, a no-no in any kind of literature.

F

[Teasing the Korean]

Completely agree. Using so many unnecessary, clumsy and often inappropriate adjectives presents a frequently insurmountable stumbling block for an otherwise careful, responsive and engaged reader.

[bluesoul]

NY Times review

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/11/books/stanley-crouchs-kansas-city-lightning-on-charlie-parker.html?_r=0

“Kansas City Lightning” is a book of detours, so many that Parker himself wanders like a ghost in his own biography. He disappears for pages and pages.

Mr. Crouch takes extended side adventures into topics including, but not limited to, the Buffalo Soldiers, the films of D. W. Griffith, minstrelsy, ragtime, Joe Louis, the importance of black music teachers, the history of Chicago, the drug use of Sherlock Holmes, trains, Al Capone, Harlem and the music of a wide, wide number of jazz musicians.

Some of these GPS-confounding tours are superb. Others appear to have been written in his sleep. If you stripped all this material out, the facts here about Parker’s life would just about fill a Kindle single.

[Mark Stryker]

I have yet to read the book so will reserve judgment, but I think it's worth noting that the quoted passage above doesn't quite capture the essence of Dwight Garner's largely positive NYT review, which makes some interesting points with regard to intent.

"The ideal way to ingest Stanley Crouch's new book is probably on audio, late at night, while driving between the major cities of the Midwest, your headlights pushing past truck stops and dying cornfields. You've got to be willing to submit to the spell Mr. Crouch is working to cast. ... ''Kansas City Lightning'' is all about polyrhythmic cadences and percussive thumps. It's a book about a jazz hero written in a heroic style; it's a tall tale, a bebop Beowulf. You've got to be in the mood. Mr. Crouch's sentences frequently trace a biblical arc. ... ''Kansas City Lightning'' is ostensibly a life of Charlie Parker, the great alto-saxophone player, but it's not even close to a real biography. Mr. Crouch doesn't have the temperament of a biographer. He's worked on this book, off and on, for more than 30 years. He's done his share of interviews. But Mr. Crouch is not about getting his knees dirty, rooting around in old tax bills and manila folders and yellowing box-office receipts. He's about aesthetics and ideas. His book is a 365-page riff on Charlie Parker, on America in the first half of the 20th century and on black intellect and feeling. It worked for me, mostly."

Crouch's book is what it is. The key questions to me are the same as always for evaluating art, music, literature, whatever: What is the artist trying to do? How well is he doing it? Was it worth doing in the first place?

[gmonahan]

Sounds to me like Crouch is simply using Bird as a vehicle to ruminate on the culture, much like Leroi Jones used to do, or even Mingus in his sort-of-autobiography. In that sense, it's a pretty well established trope. Provided one doesn't approach it as a straight bio of Bird, then Mark's point is *the* point. I think what people have objected to is the sense of a bait and switch, the sense that this was going to be a definitive biography of Bird (a la Kelley with Monk) rather than a literary foray, and that it really isn't a biography at all.

gregmo

[Face of the Bass]

Yeah, the problem is that those ruminations on culture are not that special or insightful. Seriously, I know a lot about American cultural history and the sections on, say, D.W. Griffith and Birth of a Nation were pretty par for the course.

[Larry Kart]

I have yet to read the book so will reserve judgment, but I think it's worth noting that the quoted passage above doesn't quite capture the essence of Dwight Garner's largely positive NYT review, which makes some interesting points with regard to intent.

"The ideal way to ingest Stanley Crouch's new book is probably on audio, late at night, while driving between the major cities of the Midwest, your headlights pushing past truck stops and dying cornfields. You've got to be willing to submit to the spell Mr. Crouch is working to cast. ... ''Kansas City Lightning'' is all about polyrhythmic cadences and percussive thumps. It's a book about a jazz hero written in a heroic style; it's a tall tale, a bebop Beowulf. You've got to be in the mood. Mr. Crouch's sentences frequently trace a biblical arc. ... ''Kansas City Lightning'' is ostensibly a life of Charlie Parker, the great alto-saxophone player, but it's not even close to a real biography. Mr. Crouch doesn't have the temperament of a biographer. He's worked on this book, off and on, for more than 30 years. He's done his share of interviews. But Mr. Crouch is not about getting his knees dirty, rooting around in old tax bills and manila folders and yellowing box-office receipts. He's about aesthetics and ideas. His book is a 365-page riff on Charlie Parker, on America in the first half of the 20th century and on black intellect and feeling. It worked for me, mostly."

Crouch's book is what it is. The key questions to me are the same as always for evaluating art, music, literature, whatever: What is the artist trying to do? How well is he doing it? Was it worth doing in the first place?

Crouch's intent is one thing, and Garner's "The ideal way to ingest Stanley Crouch's new book is probably on audio, late at night, while driving between the major cities of the Midwest, your headlights pushing past truck stops and dying cornfields" nicely (and perhaps a bit mockingly?) captures it. But Crouch's actual writing, which Garner's passage may be attempting to mirror, is often full of would-be poetic "dying cornfields" b.s., examples of which I quoted in a longish post somewhere above on this thread. In any case, given the other things that Garner's review said, his final largely positive response struck me as a discreet dive.

[AllenLowe]

New York is a small city.

[ValerieB]

given that Walter Bishop, Jr. was Bird's pianist for the last four years of Bird's life and was full of great Bird stories and experiences, I would hope that he was interviewed for the book!!

[robertoart]

Wow. Someone identifies qualities in the book, and they're either making backhanded compliments or they're too sheepish to say what they really think!

Edited October 13, 2013 by freelancer

[Chuck Nessa]

Welcome to the "jazz industry".

[Larry Kart]

Wow. Someone identifies qualities in the book, and they're either making backhanded compliments or they're too sheepish to say what they really think!

Not "too sheepish" but somewhere, or so it seemed to me, between taking a pass and log-rolling. As Allen said, "New York is a small city."

[Fer Urbina]

Wow. Someone identifies qualities in the book, and they're either making backhanded compliments or they're too sheepish to say what they really think!

I know what you mean, but having read 2/3 of the book I gotta say that the criticism rings more true than the compliments, which seem a bit forced. FWIW, I was really looking forward to this book, in spite of having more than a passing knowledge of Crouch's writings about jazz.

Let me give you just one example of what I think it's wrong with the book. I love this one, because it's at the end of an odd page. The paragraph begins :

[Lester] Young's attitude toward the tenor saxophone was an example of

End of page.

I love Lester Young and I could easily fill a page off the cuff with reasons why I love Lester Young and why I think he's important. And so could many people I know anyway. So, you turn the page to

the democratic freedom artists took while on aesthetic frontier of the 1920s, when everything American touched everything else, sticking or seeping in and inflecting the personal style of any musician who was talented and willing.

I don't know what others make of this, but IMHO it's vague, unnecessary and uninformative. The direct witnesses' accounts are great, but the rest...

F

Edited October 14, 2013 by Fer Urbina

[Big Beat Steve]

I have yet to read the book so will reserve judgment, but I think it's worth noting that the quoted passage above doesn't quite capture the essence of Dwight Garner's largely positive NYT review, which makes some interesting points with regard to intent.

"The ideal way to ingest Stanley Crouch's new book is probably on audio, late at night, while driving between the major cities of the Midwest, your headlights pushing past truck stops and dying cornfields. You've got to be willing to submit to the spell Mr. Crouch is working to cast. ... ''Kansas City Lightning'' is all about polyrhythmic cadences and percussive thumps. It's a book about a jazz hero written in a heroic style; it's a tall tale, a bebop Beowulf. You've got to be in the mood. Mr. Crouch's sentences frequently trace a biblical arc. ... ''Kansas City Lightning'' is ostensibly a life of Charlie Parker, the great alto-saxophone player, but it's not even close to a real biography. Mr. Crouch doesn't have the temperament of a biographer. He's worked on this book, off and on, for more than 30 years. He's done his share of interviews. But Mr. Crouch is not about getting his knees dirty, rooting around in old tax bills and manila folders and yellowing box-office receipts. He's about aesthetics and ideas. His book is a 365-page riff on Charlie Parker, on America in the first half of the 20th century and on black intellect and feeling. It worked for me, mostly."

Crouch's book is what it is. The key questions to me are the same as always for evaluating art, music, literature, whatever: What is the artist trying to do? How well is he doing it? Was it worth doing in the first place?

I had the same feeling upon reading the full review, i.e. Garner's review appeared a bit more positive than the quote linked by Bluesoul made it appear. BUT - my impression of the above "It worked for me, mostly" sentence was that he meant to say "It worked for me, mostly, but I fully realize this very probably will not work for many of you readers out there, so be warned ..."

Backhanded by not stating it outright? Possibly ...

Maybe you have to read between the lines indeed ...