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Stanley Crouch (1945–2020): The Master of “Blues-Collar Clarity”
Stanley Crouch, jazzman, cultural critic, literary artist, and public intellectual died last week. He was 74-years-old. Crouch wrote essay collections, fiction, a biography of saxophonist Charlie “Bird” Parker, and a photo book called, One Shot Harris: The Photographs of Charles “Teenie” Harris. Crouch was mentored by literary giants Ralph Ellison and Albert Murray.
In the early 1990’s the New Yorker anointed Crouch as America’s most outspoken and controversial critic. The Magazine boasted Crouch was “unconstrained by affiliation with any camp, creed, or organization.” That blurb caught my attention. It was on the cover of Crouch’s 1995 collection of essays: The All-American Skin Game, or, The Decoy of Race. These essays were my introduction to Crouch and a writing style he described as — blues-collar. I was in my early twenties when I read them. Within the first few essays, Crouch lived up to his reputation by striking down two ideas I thought were infallible.
W.E.B. Dubois
Dubois’s essay collection The Souls of Black Folks is considered a masterpiece by literary scholars, but Crouch called the book poorly thought-out. Crouch questioned Dubois’s “double consciousness” theory. Dubois claimed black people in America were black and American, but a racist society wouldn’t allow them to…