Ethan Iverson interviews Stanley Crouch

[Tom Storer]

What I am uncertain about is what Iverson's goal was. Why adopt this mask with Crouch, for what purpose or end? It must have placed a strain on Iverson to remain in character for the entire interview. Why would he want to get Crouch to open up like this? It is not clear to me.

As I said a couple of posts ago, "I suspect the idea was not really to try to change Crouch's mind but to publish an interview that shows the debate in a different light." What is the audience of the Bad Plus's blog? Jazz fans in general: musician pals of the Bad Plus, Bad Plus fans, those of us who have learned that Iverson is a great blogger, and, via threads like this, a bunch of other hardcore fans. The idea, I believe, is to show, to people who are interested and may not have entirely made up their minds forever, an actual dialogue on these issues rather than a gunfight. In a gunfight people either duck or start shooting, while in a dialogue they listen and talk.

I doubt that Iverson strained to remain in character or was wearing a mask. I've been reading that blog regularly for a few months now and that's who he seems to be: someone who is truly open himself, more interested in trying to find what's good in something than in squashing what's bad in it. He's also an exceptional communicator. To the extent that buttering up Crouch was a conscious strategy I think it was no doubt very sincerely motivated. Unlike don clementine, I don't think Iverson is a knucklehead, quite the opposite. I'm full of admiration for him. Read the archived posts if you're not a regular reader of Do The Math: this is a guy who's smart enough to be a free-thinker to such an extent that he's not constrained by one side or another. We've all seen how far one gets when one puffs out one's chest and fights Crouch with his own weapons--exactly nowhere. Iverson figured out how to debate Crouch with the weapons down. More power to him.

Edited March 2, 2007 by Tom Storer

[Hot Ptah]

What I am uncertain about is what Iverson's goal was. Why adopt this mask with Crouch, for what purpose or end? It must have placed a strain on Iverson to remain in character for the entire interview. Why would he want to get Crouch to open up like this? It is not clear to me.

As I said a couple of posts ago, "I suspect the idea was not really to try to change Crouch's mind but to publish an interview that shows the debate in a different light." What is the audience of the Bad Plus's blog? Jazz fans in general: musician pals of the Bad Plus, Bad Plus fans, those of us who have learned that Iverson is a great blogger, and, via threads like this, a bunch of other hardcore fans. The idea, I believe, is to show, to people who are interested and may not have entirely made up their minds forever, an actual dialogue on these issues rather than a gunfight. In a gunfight people either duck or start shooting themselves, while in a dialogue they listen and talk.

I doubt that Iverson strained to remain in character or was wearing a mask. I've been reading that blog regularly for a few months now and that's who he seems to be: someone who is truly open himself, more interested in trying to find what's good in something than in squashing what's bad in it. He's also an exceptional communicator. To the extent that buttering up Crouch was a conscious strategy I think it was no doubt very sincerely motivated. Unlike don clementine, I don't think Iverson is a knucklehead, quite the opposite. I'm full of admiration for him. Read the archived posts if you're not a regular reader of Do The Math: this is a guy who's smart enough to be a free-thinker to such an extent that he's not constrained by one side or another. We've all seen how far one gets when one puffs out one's chest and fights Crouch with his own weapons--exactly nowhere. Iverson figured out how to debate Crouch with the weapons down. More power to him.

Hmmm....someone just being open and sincere....seems impossible......or is it?

[Dan Gould]

EI: Well, that must be in the second volume of your Charlie Parker biography, because you let me preview the first volume and there wasn't anything about golf.

SC: That's right, it will be in the second volume.

EI: Well, the first volume--which comes out in the fall, right?--is remarkable. The amount of oral history you preserve in there is wonderful. All that information from people like Rebecca Parker, Gene Ramey, and Jay McShann--no one but you could have gotten these people to open up like that, Stanley, I am sure of it. It reminds me of Notes and Tones by Art Taylor, which is one of the few other examples of a brother interviewing black jazz musicians. I think that the fact that you are a black writer really means something in the jazz environment--or at least for an older generation, it was really important.

This seems to have slipped past most people in the rush to discuss Iverson's approach to interviewing, etc., but hearing that there is so much oral history in his Parker bio makes me think it is going to be quite worthwhile, regardless of what assertions Stanley comes up with. Just publishing the recollections of these eyewitnesses is important in and of itself.

Edited March 1, 2007 by Dan Gould

[Hot Ptah]

I don't know about all of those witnesses, but any number of interviewers have been able to get Jay McShann to open up and talk about Charlie Parker. Jay was very generous that way, and it took no special magic to accomplish it.

To me, that was a suck-up statement by Iverson, that only Crouch could have obtained those oral histories. Again, he may have deliberately wanted to make such a statement for strategic value--but what was the strategy? I guess I find it hard to believe that someone could affirmatively WANT to spend time talking in a pleasant way with Crouch, and that this was the entire goal.

[AllenLowe]

a few irrelevant comments:

1) Larry, I do believe that the young woman assistant of Nixon's that you refer to was none other than Diane Sawyer

2) re- the Crouch - Bird bio - well, I will say that:

a) Crouch wrote one of the best articles I saw on the Eastwood/Bird movie (for the New Republic) and

b) has apparently done some very important research for his own Bird bio; a person who shall remain

nameless but whose judgement I trust has been impressed by portions of the book that he has

read - the delay in Crouch's completion of the book is likely related to the fact that any biographer has

to sublimate his own ego in substantial ways. This is something Crouch is not good at.

Edited March 2, 2007 by AllenLowe

[Randy Twizzle]

a few irrelevant comments:

1) Larry, I do believe that the young woman assistant of Nixon's that you refer to was none other than Diane Sawyer

I think he was referring to Monica Crowley.

[Larry Kart]

a few irrelevant comments:

1) Larry, I do believe that the young woman assistant of Nixon's that you refer to was none other than Diane Sawyer

I think he was referring to Monica Crowley.

Crowley was who I was thinking of.

[AllenLowe]

are you sure it wasn't Monica Lewinsky?

she was in charge of the oral history archive there, I think -

Edited March 2, 2007 by AllenLowe

[Lazaro Vega]

What of the notion that "free" musicians "should" have a pathway open for jazz musicians to sit in with?

That's no more practical than that "real jazz" musicians should have a path for "free" musicians to sit in. It can happen, sure, but it doesn't make sense to say it's a kind of obligation.

I think Crouch means to say that jazz "needs" a community in the specific sense of a widely shared repertoire and shared musical goals and practices, and to the extent that some music becomes more dependent on idiosyncratic systems or processes, ignoring traditional methods, and thereby excluding musicians who haven't made a specific study of the more idiosyncratic music, it is outside the "community" and no longer jazz. He wants "jazz" to be a genre in which everyone can be judged by the same criteria.

Having a single community with a single set of standards is a nice and cozy idea; everyone likes to be part of a group and share in what the group is all about. To an extent (but only to an extent) jazz had that up to the late 50's or so. But it's long gone.

On the other hand, there remains a very large and vibrant community within the larger jazz world that meets Crouch's criteria. It's not like swing and changes aren't still the focus of a majority of jazz players in the world. The more insecure members of that community, such as Crouch and that other guy, the trumpet player, resist any expansion of the definition of "jazz" as if it were a criticism of their own preferred style; but of course that isn't the case. Most aficionados of "free" or non-traditional jazz that I know are in love with the whole tradition, and the musicians involved, whether or not they could play convincing bebop themselves, are usually knowledgeable and appreciative of what Crouch calls "real jazz." Likewise, many straight-ahead players love a lot of "free jazz," whether or not they play it. Crouch would have it that jazz is made up of two rival camps, viewing one another with anger and suspicion, and in fact his writing tends to encourage such tendencies when they are latent. But Iverson is right: "it is high time to put this issue--which has fragmented the jazz world terribly--onto the table and look at it in a serious way."

Then again, has it ever been a harmonious community with agreed upon standards? From the Creole vs Uptown (that is trained vs ear musicians) of old New Orleans there's been a difference of opinion about approach. Though the uptown musicians would concur that their Creole brethren were better educated, more consistently good musicians, it was, in a political sense, a forced synergy. Then the emerging swing guys looked at Jelly Roll as corny because of his ties to ragtime. It about skipped a generation before Jelly was seen for the skill, creativity and depth of his musical contribution, and only now being regarded as one of the great "Johnny Appleseed" type figures of the music a decade before jazz was even recorded. That is he left New Orleans and turned on many, many musicians across the country to what jazz was.

So, in context, I'm not sure there ever was an agreed upon set of standards that remained in place very long, long enough to speak to the entire music. There are ideas that run through the tradition which are consistent, and would include jazz after 1959, but in terms of "measurable" musical standards those seemed to be in a constant state of change, which is what makes jazz so dynamic (purposefully written in the present tense as naiveté rules the day as long as Cecil, Ornette, Muhal, Braxton, Roscoe, Threadgill, many others, are alive and making music).

Edited March 6, 2007 by Lazaro Vega

[montg]

you seem like a nice guy Tom but you know-- why fuckin' bother? IGNORE Crouch. He's not interested in any "dialogue." I swear I'll bust on that fucking knucklehead Ethan Iverson too if I see him in the street. If Crouch got hit by a delivery truck today, I wouldn't pause a second except to laugh & wish one of the dudes he's shit on (or physically hit) had the karmic fortune to dig it too.

i'm not as huge a fan as some of ya'll but Vijay Iyer had a not-uninteresting, not-dumb piece in print version of AAJ. nobody's seen that yet?

ALSO: Crouch is now, as ever, bullshittin'. Where do you start, or stop to refute?

This ain't flamethrowa' action, Tom-- it's the troof, baby!

Meanwhile, I await Stanley's annotated, comparative Messiaen & Cecil discographies.

Q: Is Reggie Workman spreading enconmiums about Crouch?

elder don clementine

(force of evil)

The Iyer piece elder don speaks of is now up at aaj

vijay

[7/4]

From the beginning of this thread:

EDIT (by Jim Alfredson): In honor of Ethan regarding his posting here on his blog, I've deleted the quoted article instead urge people to use the link to read the article on the original blog, in it's original format.

http://thebadplus.typepad.com/dothemath/20...view_with_.html

Thank you,

----Jim

I just found the original myself.