News Blog Comments
Whaaat? Are you saying Miles was not a great artist?
Pryor was OK, but really a 60 watt lightbulb in comparison to Miles' sun.
No, but Crouch is full of shit to denigrate Pryor for his bad behavior while ignoring Miles's bad behavior.
I knew it was Stanley Crouch without having to check the byline or read past the 1st few sentences.
Stanley Crouch is the Black (sorry, Stanley: "Negro") Woody Allen: popular entertainment should have stopped when I was 17 years old in 1953 and everything after is hopelessly vulgar.
Just like Woody, who hates that awful Rock and Roll trash, Crouch lives on a planet where Jazz is still relevant rather than a niche market for the elderly.
Richard Pryor was a funny, funny man and a trailblazing comedian. And he wasn't half as dirty as Buddy Hackett or George Carlin. Hell, Sarah Silverman tells OPENLY RACIST jokes, but yeah, Pryor is the problem.
Oh, and how many secret illegitimate children did Pryor pay hush money to? Because we know of AT LEAST ONE for clean, middle class "Dr." Bill Cosby.
I guess I don't care much about epitaphs or epithets, when it comes down to it.
Pryor made me laugh, hard. And he made me think hard, too, growing up.
That's good, eh?
And that's the bottomw line.
Heheh.
D.
Eddie Murphy said it best in Raw when he talked about how Cosby called him up to ream him about his use of profanity, and he called Pryor for advice:
Richard said, "The next time the motherfucker call, tell him I said, "Suck MY dick." I don't give a fuck. Whatever the fuck make the people laugh, say that shit. Do the people laugh when you say what you say?" I said, "Yes." He said, "Do you get paid?" I said, "Yes." He said, "Well, tell Bill I said have a Coke and a smile and shut the fuck up. Jello pudding-eating motherfucker."
And that goes for Crouch, too.
DJ, Miles's "bad behavior" was undetectable in his art, in contrast to Pryor, where it was intrinsic to it. Which is OK, in my book, but you can't compare the two, and Miles will be remembered long after Pryor is forgotten. That is partly a reflection of the perishability of something like comedy. It depends on cultural knowledge that music does not.
Also, in fairness to Crouch (and Pryor, by implication), let's include the rest of what he wrote, which is hardly a hatchet job on Pryor:
"What is so unfortunate is that the heaviest of Pryor's gifts was largely ignored by so many of those who praised the man when he was alive and are now in the middle of deifying him.
The pathos and the frailty of the human soul alone in the world or insecure or looking for something of meaning in a chaotic environment was a bit too deep for all of the simpleminded clowns like Andrew Dice Clay or those who thought that mere ethnicity was enough to define one as funny, like the painfully square work of Paul Rodriguez.
Of course, Russell Simmons' Def Comedy Jam is the ultimate coon show update of human cesspools, where "cutting edge" has come to mean traveling ever more downward in the sewer.
In essence, Pryor stunned with his timing, his rhythm, his ability to stand alone and fill the stage with three-dimensional characters through his remarkably imaginative gift for an epic sweep of mimicry.
That nuanced mimicry crossed ethnic lines, stretched from young to old, and gave poignancy to the comedian's revelations about the hurts and the terrors of life.
The idea of "laughing to keep from crying" was central to his work and has been diligently avoided by those who claim to owe so much to him.
As he revealed in his last performance films, Pryor understood the prison he had built for himself and the shallow definitions that smothered his audience's understanding of the humanity behind his work.
But, as they say, once the barn door has been opened, you cannot get all of the animals to return by whistling. So we need to understand the terrible mistakes this man of comic genius made and never settle for a standard that is less than what he did at his very best, which was as good as it has ever gotten."
I've had my issues with Crouch before, but this takes the cake. Crouch's world is seeming stuck at 1964, maybe 1965. And his commentary on jazz, and Miles in particular isn't all that.
That being said, Crouch can (and often does) write eloquently. It's just he writes through the misty lens of nostalgia for a time that, truth be told, wasn't all that great to begin with.
I know exactly where Crouch is coming from. Because vulgarity is SO much worse than corruption, for example. Using bad words is anti-Christian and anti-American, while corruption by the white GOP is ... well, getting the most money you can in any way you can, even by selling out the American public, is profoundly American. Mom, apple pie, and money.
Yeah, great column Crouch, let's focus on irrelevancies. The US is disintegrating into a black hole of environmental destruction, greed, corruption, war for no reason, theocracy, hate, racism, mindlessly violent entertainment, drug cartels that no one even touches, war profiteering, legalized torture, arms smuggling, destruction of the middle class, impossibly huge deficits, the revocation of the Constitution and personal liberty, a chimpanzee for president, hatred of Americans around the world. But quite obviously it's time to focus on a guy whose crime was that he was vulgar.
Hey Crouchie, try this for vulgarity: FUCK YOU, YOU PURULENT BAG OF PUS. EAT SHIT WITH A LADEL AND DIE YOU COCKSUCKING MOTHERFUCKER.
All I know is that the first time I watched "Richard Pryor, Live in Concert" I laughed so hard that I cried. Anyone who can bring that kind of joy into this miserable world is a hero.
I loved it when Mr. Pryor did a spot-on impersonation of how a certain type of white guy got angry: bobbing his head and saying, "C'mon, Peckerhead!"
Too funny.
Notway, It wasn't my intent to make any derogatory comments on Miles Davis or his artistic genius (I think we both agree that he was a genius) -- merely stating that Crouch was a hypocrite for denigrating Pryor for his behavior while ignoring it in his own idols.
Word Association
Interviewer: Chevy Chase
Mr. Wilson: Richard Pryor
Interviewer: All right, Mr. Wilson, you’ve done just fine on the Rorshach, your papers are in good order, your file’s fine...no difficulties with your motor skills. And I think you’re probably ready for this job. We’ve got one more psychological test we always do here. It’s just a word association. I’ll throw you out a few words; anything that comes to your mind, just throw back at me, okay? It’s kind of an arbitrary thing. Like, if I say dog, you’d say...?
Wilson: Tree.
Interviewer: Tree. [begins test] Dog.
Wilson: Tree.
Interviewer: Fast.
Wilson: Slow.
Interviewer: Rain.
Wilson: Snow.
Interviewer: White.
Wilson: Black.
Interviewer: Bean.
Wilson: Pod.
Interviewer: [casually] Negro.
Wilson: Whitey.
Interviewer: Tar baby.
Wilson: What’d you say?
Interviewer: Tar baby.
Wilson: [getting angry] Ofay.
Interviewer: Colored.
Wilson: Redneck.
Interviewer: Jungle bunny.
Wilson: [pissed off] Peckerwood!
Interviewer: Burrhead.
Wilson: Cracker!
Interviewer: [becoming aggressive] Spearchucker.
Wilson: White trash!
Interviewer: Jungle bunny!
Wilson: Honky!
Interviewer: Spade!
Wilson: Honky honky!
Interviewer: [dropping the bomb] Nigger!
Wilson: [ready to fight] Dead honky.
Interviewer: [quickly, knowing he’s gone too far] Okay, Mr. Wilson, I think you’re qualified for this job. How about a starting salary of $5,000?
Wilson: Your mama!
Interviewer: Uh...$7,500 a year?
Wilson: Your grandmama!
Interviewer: [desperate] $15,000, Mr. Wilson. You’ll be the highest paid janitor in America. Just don’t...don’t hurt me, please.
Wilson: [mollified] Okay.
Interviewer: [relieved] Okay.
Wilson: You want me to start now?
Interviewer: Oh, no, no...that’s all right. Take a couple of weeks off, you look tired.
Hey, my softspoken Jewish uncle the dentist LOVES Richard Pryor. I remember him playing his early live work for my folks when they thought we had already gone upstairs to sleep/watch TV, and I remember hearing all the grownups LAUGH until they CRIED. This is a room full of urban-raised Jews (my Mom and her sibs grew up in a Dominican 'hood in the Bronx).
He also has a lot of older Flip Wilson and Gabriel Kaplan.
And, I LOVE Pryor's movie work. Part of what made him great was that he said what he said and it reached out to any of his listeners, not just the Black ones.
"...the comedian found it impossible to perform and ignore the lower-class shadow worlds he had known so well"
Are artists supposed to ignore their backround in their work? Was Billie Holiday ignoring the lower-class shadow world when she sang?
Crouch is all over the map on this topic and using Pryor as a convenient method of attacking rap and hip-hop culture, which he truly hates. I blame Bob Newhart.
Pryor could have remained in the same category as Rudy Ray Moore, but for the fact that Pryor was a genius and Rudy Ray is merely funny. In fairness, Cosby is a genius as compared to, say, Slappy White. And Dick Gregory was a genius compared to Godfrey Cambridge.
Pryor, Cosby and Gregory took different paths to the top, in a time when the road to the top was slippery and steep. But they had genius in common, and the rules are different for geniuses, such as Miles Davis, for example.
Crouch exemplifies the bad behavior of American opinionists - slapping someone who is unable to defend himself, or causing unnecessary pain to his survivors within days of the man's death. Obviously circumpection is lost on the pundit blowhard caste.
As a white guy who went to school with predominately black people, I can say that for me, watching Pryor was kind of like a window to the negativivism I received as a minority within a black population. It was't that I was harassed or taunted or anything like that, it was just a feeling of uneasiness that I didn't quite understand. As I grew older and began to understand what he was saying in the context of my own life, it helped me to face the reality of what my "context" really was.
I thank people like Pryor. I thank him for making people like my Grandfather face the ignorance of their bigotry. For making them laugh at themselves no matter how they wanted to feel. And for making them see the idiocy of their actions, through the prizm of someone who suffered the repercussions.
Pryor was real. That's why he was loved, and that's why he was hated.
I'm just glad he was around to help break the cycle in my family, and in turn, bring us just a little step closer to reconciliation with our past and present mistakes.
We need people like Pryor.
It sucks we're gonna have to settle with remembering him.
I don't get Crouch. I'm stuck in the 60s and I *loved* Pryor - except for SUPERMAN III, but hell, that's excusable.
Thank for the Dead Honky sketch, Lewis. Brought back memories.
Was Billie Holiday ignoring the lower-class shadow world when she sang?
"I won't call no copper / if I get beat up by my poppa / ain't nobody's business if I do".
Just what kind of message is THAT sending to young black women, I ask you?
The failure of Crouch to admit, understand, or assimilate the effects on jazz (as well as other forms of American music, poetry, humor, etc.) of American racism's political, psychological, and philosphical dynamic was extant as far back as 1986 (at a national conference on jazz and jazz criticism held at Wingspread, Racine WI) (documented in a publication entitled New Perspectives on Jazz, published by Smithsonian Institution Press and edited by David N. Baker) in a counter argument he gave (entitled Jazz Criticism and the Effect on the Art Form) to Amiri Baraka's piece (entitled Jazz Criticism and Its Effect on the Art Form). Baraka, whom Crouch disrepectfully refers to as LeRoi Jones, argues that:
Criticism, ideally, should be analysis, but also identification and use, based upon a work, its creator's intent and values, and their relationship to the real world. How exemplary the is of this intent and values is what we are analyzing, and what this means practically. What is key is that the critic actually understand what the work intends, that is, what it means to mean as well as how close it comes to meaning it.
Crouch claimed that Baraka "reduce[ed] the artistry of jazz to no more than political pulp."
With his hysterical dismissal of hip-hop/rap, his myopically conservative and historically inaccurate portrayal of jazz, both musically and in every social context, and now his contumacious assault on the liberating and brutal honesty of Richard Pryor's art, Mr. Crouch continues to contribute to a culture of obfuscation regarding the insidious and continuing racist attitudes toward American art, music, poetry, and literature. Perhaps he should get his fat ass down to New Orleans, a former slave port, and try and preach his Dr. Huxtable patois.
>Jello pudding-eating motherfucker."
OMFG brilliant, and right off the top of his head, too.
The young Cosby certainly was hilarious. He made you laugh, but didn't make you think.
And when he had real command of white-middle class attention, instead of speaking to them about race in America he just gobbled Jello on TV and put the money in his bank account.
Cosby had an opportunity to do what Pryor did, only on a broadcast-TV level. I don't know if he actually had the talent to do that, but if his best idea was to present a pair of black professionals on a 1/2 hour sitcom that ain't impressing me.
Because saying "see, Blacks can be educated, upper middle class professionals too" isn't real useful when AFAIK there was virtually no dealing with the reasons that so many of them weren't.
steve
what you didn't say and what I think of the critic of Richard Pryor is that he wasn't a "good little black boy". Richard Pryor peeled the onion and let us white people look inside and maybe not only learn something but laugh at our foolishness!
maybe you have to be my age to really "get" Richard Pryor he opened up the curtain for many of us at the right time in history.
The young Cosby certainly was hilarious. He made you laugh, but didn't make you think.
And when he had real command of white-middle class attention, instead of speaking to them about race in America he just gobbled Jello on TV and put the money in his bank account.
Just to make sure that we don't completely crush Cosby, there is something to be said for comedians who tell good stories about little slices of domestic life. His "Chocolate Cake" monologue is funny as hell, as he describes the happy children getting cake for breakfast, and his doom when his wife discovers what happened.
Yeah, it's Pryor who's to blame for "the N-word" gaining wide currency. OK, sure.
I'm unfamiliar with any of the rest of Crouch's work, but this is a bad introduction to it. He's full of shit. He reminds me of George Will in that they don't see why everyone doesn't reference the world the same way they do (Crouch through jazz, or rather, Jazz, and Will through baseball, or rather The Great American Game). Pryor had no more effect on Crouch's perceived coarsification of American society than a thousand other things before and since.
Pryor was a comedic genius. He made me laugh my ass off. The only other comedian who consistently made me laugh that hard was Sam Kinison, especially when he talked about Jesus' last words ("Ow. OW. Oh, no, not the other hand, too. Oh, you bastards.")
For a white kid in high school and college in the 70's, it always seemed to me that there were 3 people who did more to bridge the racial gap in American popular culture at that time than any others--Muhammad Ali, Richard Pryor, and Sly Stone. Through their sheer talent, they forced white suburbia to acknowledge that talent and the culture that created it. But to paraphrase Hunter Thompson, if you look with just the right kind of eye, you can almost see the high-water mark of those times.
Rest in peace, Richard. You've earned a break.
"those of us who are not willing to drink the Kool-Aid marked "all's well,..."
Totally OT, but who would have thought Jim Jones would have a permanent effect on our language all these years later?
Very sad to see Richard Pryor had died; he just got better as the years went by.
I had forgotten how great Proyr was, then over the weekend E ran some saterday night live special...the dead honky sketch had my rollign on the floor all over again.
The only other comedian who consistently made me laugh that hard was Sam Kinison, especially when he talked about Jesus' last words ("Ow. OW. Oh, no, not the other hand, too. Oh, you bastards.")
CapD, you'd love this one too: Once I heard Kinison on a radio show talking about his brother's funeral. How his mother approached the casket, tears running down her cheeks: "My son, my baby..." Then she turns to Sam and yells, "WHY COULDN'T IT HAVE BEEN YOU????"
Damn near wet my pants...
Who is Crouch writing about? The Pryor that actually lived, or some other Pryor that might have existed on an artificial higher plane had he not used the n-word or had such a billingsgate mouth?
I'm not black, but I am a human being, and I know of more than one performer whose personal demons forged pain into art. Richard Pryor was edgy before edgy was commercially viable. He also knew how to pull it off by making as much fun of himself as others. But as Crouch would have it, Pryor was a supreme bad example that should never have told a joke outside of a family reunion in Peoria.
Yes, Pryor had several wives and shot his car while drunk and set himself alight freebasing. By Crouch's moral yardstick (Cosby?), Pryor was a pied-piper-in-reverse who single-handedly brought the rats into the neighborhood.
Or was it that he had the nerve to show that the rats had never really left? Is that what gives Crouch the license to take a dump on Pryor? I can think of a couple of dozen comics that were perfect wretches off-stage -Jackie Gleason first comes to mind. But America thought they were Funny, and they didn't use naughty language, when they actually were living a lie, only at a higher, public level. (If you want to hear some really foul language, just pick up recordings of celebrity roasts, with Milton Berle and others taking turns at Gov Schwarzenegger or Rich Little.) All Pryor did was poke fun at himself, and at life in general.
At least Crouch could have written about how Pryor's complexities mirrored life, but instead, he takes a chickenshit potshot at someone who can't shoot back.
Crouch is being a stick in the mud and an old fogey, partcularly about blaming Pryor for the language used in rap and our culture. It's absurd.
However, let's be honest. Really honest.
Even though Crouch is wrong about Pryor, we all KNOW, I hope, that jazz is high art. And rap, country, and rock'n'roll are not. Really.
Jazz is the only one of those musical genres mentioned which transcended its popular roots to become something truly greater, a real high art form.
Rap and rock have had great moments. America wouldn't have any original music without country, folk and the blues. I'd rather listen to rock, to folk, to blues, to rap than jazz. But you have to respect jazz. It's real art. The other stuff is just popular music.
Crouch is, of course, still wrong about Pryor.
Another thing about Pryor. Yes, his politics were enlightening. But the man was funny as hell, too. May he rest in peace.
Richard Pryor was one of the few, if not perhaps the only, American popular culture figures, who was imbued with real genius. His first concert film, 'Live in Concert' (1979) is one of the great performances of all time. For a cultural critic not to realize and celebrate Pryor's genius is fucking ridiculous.
One thing missing from a lot of the mainstream Pryor tributes was the acknowledgement of how much he made people laugh. How long, how often, and how well.
And by what other standard can we judge comedians, anyway?
Pryor was funny all the time. But he had the ability to push the envelope, on language or on concepts, to the point where it was actually hilarious, and often, insightful. And that's not something just anyone can do.
The point of the article should be that even though Pryor worked with and through these taboos, he was also damn funny.
Know the rule before you break it, that's all...
So Cosby is Crouch's kind of comedian. Big surprise.
It's no accident that Cosby's absurd TV show was one of Ronald Reagan's favorites. A visitor from Mars whose only experience of black people was watching that show would conclude that the only problem they ever faced was having too many kindly, avuncular role models come over for dinner.
Crouch is missing how many people did not see a black man but just a man on that stage. He humanized all our races. Richard Pryor did more to introduce rural white America to black people as people than Martin Luther King Jr... his humor and perfect presentation of life as a flawed human being did much to humanize people in parts of the country where black people were not a part of the landscape.
Brian Bell: jaza is dead...or perhpas that is one of your requirements for high art?
Brian,
I have been surprised by the fogeys who have come out the woodworks to pronounce that Pryor wasn't funny. Katie Couric cast her wet blanket over the Today's show's cast this morning, saying she didn't get his comedy.
Everyone has, at least once, nearly lost control of their bladders listening to Pryors jokes or watching one of his movies, including Croutch and Couric, no matter what they say. You wouldn't be American if you hadn't.
What made Pryor brilliant, is the same thing that makes him dangerous to men like Crouch or other literal-minded utopians on both the right and left, and that was his totally seamless ability to pull back the veil on a seedy, dark, and weeded over corner in himself and by extension our collective consciousness on matters regarding race, sex, drugs, and the vagaries of life in general. He was able to take the worst elements of his own life experience and make them into some of the most truly hilarious material ever. He presented a vision of the world so raw that it should come as no suprise that many still resent him for doing so. It should not go unnoted in this discussion that towards the end of his career he renounced his frequent use of the word "nigger" for laughs, and made clear that he felt conflicted about his role in popularizing its use. At the end of the day, Pryor was a true giant not just of American comedy, but of American history, he is one of the few whose career defies all boundaries. What angered his critics so much was his willingness to openly discuss parts of life that normally go unspoken, he violently tore back the veil on himself and everyone who listened to him. He will be missed, but his legacy will continue. At the end of the day Richard Pryor was one funny motherfucker.
BILL COSBY IS AND ALLWAYS HAS BEEN A TOM!!!! Black folks like Cosby who work hard, take shit and keep making excuses for the racist culture in America made this country great for whites. People that speak out and question who we are and were we are going make it great for all Americans! Bill Cosby is not fit to was Richard's underwar dead or alive!
Stand-up comedy is art. Plain and simple. Richard Pryor, be him black, or white, or pink, or purple, or whatever, was a genius at that art. Truly one of the best that ever was or will be.
Brian:Actually, I would hope that we all DON'T agree with that. Jazz does not occupy some special cultural status. Of course, some jazz rises to the level of high-art. And a whole lot doesn't, just like anything else.
There IS rap that comes up to high art. Same with rock and roll. Mind you, everybodies tastes are different, of course. The only thing I'll say objectivly, is that we shouldn't get caught in the trap that because it's old it's good.
But back to comedy.
There are three thing, in my opinion, that make a stand-up comic great.
#1. Delivery. The timing of the jokes. The little pauses, ephasizes on certain words. The articulation of the voice. It turns the comedy into a sort of beat poet like event. Like drumbeats THUMP. THUMP THUMP. The laughs just keep on coming.
#2. Writing. Writing the jokes. Putting them together in the way that works the best.
#3. Soul. Choosing the subjects that will make the audience really think about what you're saying, and really touch them.
The funniest comics have the ability to touch us in that way.
Pryor was one of the best. Hands down.
>> she didn't 'get' his comedy ?
who the fuck cares
what are we supposed to do, anesthetize our souls and only listen to bereft of life whitebread culture because middle america is humanly dead ?
as richard pryor would say, fuck that
And Re: Cosby? He could write a good joke. And in fact, his pre-Network days, he was pretty interesting.
But my word. His delivery always has and always will just be awful.
Mumbles McGee indeed.
Pryor's uneasiness was existential. You could see it in his eyes. It's remarkable, actually, how unguarded he was about this, especially for a public figure. This was the wellspring of his genius, his pathos, his humanity.
I don't mean to take anything away from Pryor. He was funny, hysterical, and smart, and he had a lot to say that helped and helps to wake us up. Stanley Crouch is still wrong, too.
Really, I hope Pryor is someplace where a lot of the pain he went through in the last 20 years is gone.
Anyway, about jazz, Karmakin. I never said all jazz was high art. Just generalizing. Some is, some isn't. However, no -- no rap or rock'n'roll has ever come close to jazz. It just doesn't. And I don't even listen to it that much. I'm much more likely to listen to rock than jazz, but I know what's actually of value. Claiming rap or rock is as good as jazz is exactly like claiming rock'n'roll is as good as classical orchestral pieces. Well, I'm not a big fan of classical music, but I know enough to recognize that it's a better form, a better genre than the Rolling Stones or U2 or Green Day or the Beatles or whoever. It's absurd to claim otherwise. Same with jazz. Jazz is a more important and greater art form than rock and rap. I wouldn't say jazz or orchestral pieces are better than each other, though, not necessarily. They're both high art, while rap and rock is mere popular art. I'm sorry, but what rap or rock'n'roll or country or folk or blues even approaches something like Mile's Kind of Blue, or Coltrane's Love Supreme? It doesn't. Jazz is better. You can differ in opinion all you want on this, but every real musician and music educator knows it's true, and cultural critics as well. So, think whatever you want. I know I'm right about this.
Moonglum, you on the other hand, may in fact be right, although I think a lot of living jazz performers would disagree with you. Still, dead art forms usually are better regarded than living ones.
Anyway, back to Pryor, he was a funny man and he will be missed, as he has been missed for 20-odd years already.
Jen:
Did your uncle have a copy of Marty Brill and Larry Foster's "James Blonde -- Secret Agent Double-0 Six Ninety-five"? That was my first introduction to Yiddish humor, and still a very funny album.
As for Bill Cosby, some of his early stand-up comedy -- like his routine about being a medic in the Korean War -- was pretty dark. Too bad that whatever talent there was in the man got self-smothered with commercially acceptable blandness.
Richard Pryor was the real thing. As other here have said, not only did he make me think, but he made me laugh 'til it hurt. That's a rare gift and he deserves better than Crouch's old-maidenish vaporings over his language and subject matter.
I predict Crouch will take more heat for this opinion piece than for any he's written previously. And deservedly so. Others have addressed the whys of this better than I have.
I will suggest that calling jazz and classical music high art and rock, rap, blues et al "not high art" is just plain silly. If rock was so beneath jazz, why was Miles so impressed by Hendrix? Wherefore jazz-rock fusion? It's what the artist does with the instrument/medium that determines the quality of the art, not the instrument or medium itself.
Brian:No, I know that so-called "cultural critics", are more often than not stuck in the past, and are basically wrinkling their nose at anything new.
And I used to hang around with music grads. They learn to like whatever they're taught really.
There's no intrinsic reason why Jazz (or any other artform for that matter), is better than another. If you can name some reasons why it is, go right ahead. I'm more than willing to listen. I like jazz, I really do. It's not my favorite type of music, but it's good. But I'm not willing to put down the likes of other people just so I can feel better about myself.
One other thing. Your choice of words betrays your motives. "Classical" music. Wrong choice of words. You're talking about instrumental, or to be more precise, things such as chamber, or baroque. Yes, I know what I'm talking about regarding this stuff. Using "classical", means old=good, which only shows a closed mind.
And if you want, I'll give you a fairly lengthly list of rock songs that do strive to become high-art, and become truly great.
Brian Bell,
I for one agree with your unfashionable view. A significantly greater proportion of jazz (and so-called classical music) rises above the sphere of popular entertainment than is the case with other genres like rock, pop, country, folk, and hip-hop. That's just the way it is.
It's too bad Cosby is being dragged into this. He's done some good things, walked his own path. I don't think for one minute Cosby would claim he had Pryor's talent - who in their right mind would?
I find it ironic that the review brings in the notion of Davis, to me the analogy between Pryor and Cosby is the distinction between Davis's Jazz and the Manhattan Transfer. One may be a little easier to listen to, but the other is ultimatly more rewarding, even life changing. We'll miss you Richard.
Prof Fate--I'll ask him, thanks! 
Sounds like one I should hear.
I DO have a copy of "Loxfinger: Oy Oy Seven," written by Sol (forgot last name) in 1965 or so...a Jewish spin on the James Bond movies, and insaneley politically incorret.
Great rebuttal by Steve G . Pryor was great.
And Miles was a historic musician, but the women beating and heroin, I mean , well he's not a role model outside of his musicianship and business skills.
Jen:
I think you'd get a kick out of it. Just for starters, the good guys work for T.A.N.T.E. (To Annihilate No-good Troublemakers, Etc.) and the bad guys belong to T.R.A.F.E. (Terrible, Rotten, And Filthy Enemies).
If your uncle doesn't have it, I could send you a tape of my terribly Rice-Crispied copy. (Well, actually, it belongs to my eldest brother, who bought it when he was at Columbia University in the late 60's.)
And Miles was a historic musician, but the women beating and heroin, I mean , well he's not a role model outside of his musicianship and business skills.
Well, considering Crouch's own track record with women, he obviously thinks beating runaway girls and women, addicting them to drugs and then pimping their bodies in a cruel parody of the sharecropper scheme is A-OK, but cussing in public (unless HE does it) is bad, bad, bad!
as for high art, it's quite difficult to quantify I think. But many people believe it has to do with durability and how well something lasts and relates to people over time. again mozart versus salieri, both popular in their day, but who had the staying power ?
songwriting definitely can be an art, though
Brian Bell: Any music that has Kenny G as one of its "top preformers" is not entriniscly a high art. Some of the preformers may transend the art, but intrnsicly its no better off then rock or rap.
Its rather unfair to compare eitehr with classical music. After rock or jazz ahve had a thousand years of history to cherry pick the best music from we can make the comparison.
disgusting and shameful.
pryor is an american entertainment and cultural icon.
"Eddie Murphy said it best in Raw when he talked about how Cosby called him up to ream him about his use of profanity, and he called Pryor for advice:
Richard said, "The next time the motherfucker call, tell him I said, "Suck MY dick." I don't give a fuck. Whatever the fuck make the people laugh, say that shit. Do the people laugh when you say what you say?" I said, "Yes." He said, "Do you get paid?" I said, "Yes." He said, "Well, tell Bill I said have a Coke and a smile and shut the fuck up. Jello pudding-eating motherfucker.""
That was one of the funniest parts of Eddie's monologue on Pryor. Even funnier was the part where he imitates Pryor describing taking a shit....
Interestingly, Cosby and Pryor were very good friends, and even appeared together in "California Suite" as two klutzy physicians on vacation many years ago.
Any music that has Kenny G as one of its "top preformers" is not entriniscly (sic)a high art.
High Sales does not necessarily equal artistic merit.
http://www.counterpunch.com/
hutc...on12122005.html
Much better homage to Pryor than the crap from that chump, Crouch.
Note that Crouch is a self-described "Negro" and not a black, then check out this excerpt from a Pryor routine:
Here he is on his teenage years in Peoria, Illinois: "Oh, they'd arrest me you know; especially at night, they'd have to have a curfew, right. Niggers had to be home by eleven, Negroes twelve. And you'd be trying to get home. And always they'd catch you out in front of a store or something 'cause you'd be taking short cuts right. The cops: 'Put your hands up, Black boy!' You know you panic. 'All right don’t move. Put your hands against the wall.' There ain't no wall. 'Find one then. Put the hand scuffs on him, Fred.' And they'd put the handcuffs on me. Right. And I was really skinny, right? And they'd slip off and shit. And the dude get mad: 'All right, put them on his ankles or his ass or something.' They'd handcuff my thighs right, hop me to the car and call my father about four in the morning. 'Mr. Pryor. We have your son down here at headquarters, what about him?'
"'Fuck him.'
"My mother would have to beg him to come get to out. 'Please Buckie go get him.'
"'Fuck that nigger. Shit, I told him be home at eleven o'clock and I meant eleven. Goddamn, every time I turn around, that nigger's in jail. I’m tired of getting him out.'
"And I'd be praying he'd have a heart attack before he'd get there. Cause, he'd put some shit on me, right? 'Uhm hmm, I’m gonna get your ass out, cause you know I’m gonna tear your ass up. How much is it man? Twelve dollars. Yeah I'm going to pay it. You know I’m going to kick your ass. You can believe that shit.'
"And my mother would be crying, 'It hurts me more than it hurts you.'
"I’d say, 'Yeah, so let him beat your ass.'"
Crouch is just being a curmungeon, as usual here.
As far as a role model or inspiration, Pryor has been one to other stand up comedians---Chris Rock, Eddie Murphy, Robin Williams have all cited his genius.
Folks need to get past his use of salty language and dig deeper---in fact, just using vulgar language for it's own sake isn't funny in itself.
Rock as Art: Anything by Bob Dylan. Or is that Jazz?
"For What It's Worth". Many years later it still bears listening to since it describes the nastiness of our times to a T. Not art?
Geez. People who take it upon themselves to denigrate an entire field of endeavor, because of their superior received wisdom, should try thinking for once instead of just mouthing off. Next you'll be telling me that Christianity is "obviously" the only religion worth while.
Just take your smug assertions and ram 'em.
Want to have fun? Go to the library and get Stanley Crouch's late '60s book of black nationalist poetry. I remember a line about cutting off Negroes' tongues stuck up the honkey's ass--almost a near-quote. He's spent the rest of his literary life trying to live that down. And trying to live down that he was a talentless would-be jazz drummer.
Keyy G as "jazz"? You must be kidding.
typo: "keyy G" = Kenny G
"I went down to the Hall of Justice, and that's what I saw... just us." -- Richard Pryor
top that one, stan.
Prof Fate--You know, those acronyms look like the same ones from the Oy Oy Seven book--probably the same guys!
Do you have it as an MP3? Thank you... !!
--Jen
"When you... are a black man.. ON FIRE, PEOPLE... get out of yo' way."
Stanley Crouch is a reactionary bully wannabe 50 years ago hipster. A jazz neoconcritic.
So, I'm white and Ruchard Pryor never made me uncomfortable, so thanks for speaking for me Stanley.
He made me think, he made me look inside myself; but that's not what I'd call uncomfortable. That's what's called life.
Sad. A people so confused about our racial identity that we are still struggling to define it even if we have to piss on the humanity of one of our cultural geniuses. Thank God we have the brilliant insight that is Stanley Crouch. He, so blessed with literary eloquence and cursed with comical visage. Is it any wonder he is always goin' on about minstrelsy? Surely he will settle for once and eternity what being black really means without any hint of his self-loathing and hatred of the lower class geechees that embarass him so. Great job of squatting and dumping all the ills of Black America for the last 30 years on Brother Richard, may his soul endure in eternal peace. Selah.
Well.
Stanley f*cking Crouch.
I expected an utterly vicious, jealous and sadly predictable takedown/eulogy from this walking "coon" drawing of an apologist--and still..still, I'm incensed at his myopic hatred of all that doesn't fall within his inch-square rubric of what he and his think-tank patrons deem appropriate "negro" art.
How do I say this gently? Oooh, by Jove, I've got it! With an arched eyebrow and a dusting of reserve, I look down my nose at the oh-so-sober-thinking contrarian race man Stanley and release a barely stifled "Geetthaf*gouttaheah" in his general direction.
Aaaah, I feel better already.
But Crouch's cellophane-clear discomfort with things that challenge his narrow "negro-doxy" is so ironic that it hurts. Does this dolt not recognize the similarities of his trashing of Pryor to the trashing of the trendsetters of his (and my) beloved Jazz? How people of influence found the liquid/lightning notes of Louis Armstrong "unmusical" and deemed it "Jungle Music"? It was ridiculed by the establishment as dirty, gutteral and savage. Familiar words, Stan?
It's funny how the establishment hung that moniker on Jazz until white virtuosos began to "master" it, ala Benny Goodman. Any half-wit who follows Jazz history knows this stuff. And let us not even venture into how the now-revered Bop was thought of even in many Jazz circles as the musical "coming of the apocalypse". But Crouch doesn't see--or rather refuses to see the pot/kettle stupidity of his putdown of Pryor as little more than an obscenity-spouting, race-baiting player to the dusky and pseudo-hip rubes in his hate-filled eyes.
What was Pryor? Well, first of all, he was not a joke-teller. he was in essence, a presentational anthropologist. A non-detached observer of people and the human condition itself. He was Zora Neale Hurston with a wider-cast net, a rubber face, malleable body, and a voicebox with infinite range, capable of broadcasting that which he'd seen--all through the fine-mesh filter of a mind attuned to the unvarnished realities of the world.
He was a living embodiment of the James Baldwin sentiment of how Blacks had no choice but to have to know their oppressors. "You don't know me. You have no desire to know me, or anything about me.", Baldwin told an interviewer in the mid 70's. "But I know me...and you force me to know you in your desire to make me fit in--which you don't really want me to do. Isn't that right?"
It's also quite telling that Crouch puts Cosby up there as his champion against nasty ol' Richard. As talented a comedian as Cosby was in his prime (And dammit, he was!), comparing the two is like comparing apples and steak--f*ck oranges. Cosby with his meteoric success and rapid embrace by the establishment as the desired "representative" of the race insofar as showbiz in the 60's was just that--a showbiz phenomenon. He made a bunch of Black dudes pursue comedy as a path to success, and his cultural significance was in his being embraced by a slowly opening dominant society.
Pryor was something else entirely. he stood up there on stage and was as funny as Cosby ever was--even funnier to many, but he also reflected a multitide of images of society like a one-man hall of mirrors. And in his reflecting, he dared challenge that which was until that time deemed taboo. He could do that because he was willing to be as hard on himself while being hilarious as he was on those he called down the thunder on. He kept it brutally real via his naked lack of hypocrisy. A school of thought Cosby would never partake of and would ultimately (at this present time) embarrrass him. Pryor's raw absorption, synthesis and humorous dismantling of every human foible spoke to a willingness on his part to be totally human and to a love affair with the intricacies of humanity. And it is this openness that that disturbs the misanthropic Crouch. To dig Richard Pryor, you had to be willing to accept human beings for what they were, no matter how flawed. If one sees flaws, natural human flaws as beneath one's self, reminders of one's painful lack of unattainable "perfection" or stumbling blocks to acceptance, one ends up in the narrow, cold box that folks like Stanley Crouch "live" in.
Richard was equally willing to point out racists, racism, racism's damaging effects on it's victims and practitioners, the head-spinning nexus of race, sex and class, how we cope with the inconsistencies and contradictions of all of those, pride, jealousy, hubris, shame and hypocrisy. Where Cosby inspired people to become comics, Pryor inspired people to think about the nature of the world around them. He inspired people to take down the gauzy film of propriety and gaze upon the awful/maddening/hilarious reality of how the world works.
It is no mistake that Pryor's ascendancy and take-no-prisoners comedy newsspeak came alongside the country-shattering baring of how the government really worked in the exposure of the Watergate scandal. The veil was being lifted--and Pryor was there to say, "Yeah, and this is what the ugly mother-f*cka looks like, too!"
I remember as a child, with my three brothers huddled at the top of the stairs in our bed clothes hushed silent as mice--as my parents and a few friends sat downstairs with the latest Pryor album playing on the old Quad stereo. The peals of laughter punctuated by bursts of "Damn rights!" and "Whooo! Tell Its!" My brothers and I wound up memorizing those Pryor bits perched like silent little gargoyles atop the staircase--noting his way with vocal rhythm, his ability to turn a phrase or take a phrase "us folk" used and deliver it in the funniest way ever heard. We marveled at his anthropoligical skill at not impersonating--but being a guilty child, a profane reverend, a wino, a martian, a White hippie, a Black pimp, a redneck KKK'er, a frustrated White cop, said cop's assimilationist Black partner, HAL the computer, a giraffe, a lion, a deer, Jim Brown, Muhammad Ali, a senile grandmaother, a combative, taciturn father, a gang-banger, a German Shepherd, a voodoo woman, an LSD trip, a wounded Cadillac, a crack pipe, a gold-digging ex-wife, a surly Chinese waiter, an itenerant Black griot from down south and yes, even a mother-f*cking heart attack.
He was one of the three people that made me want to pursue comedy writing--his impeccable timing, willingness to subsume all ego for the presenttaion and his way with words--above and beyond the "cuss" words that so inflame Crouch. My favorite Pryor line doesn't have a cuss word in it. he relays how a harridan of an ex showed up at a divorce/alimony proceeding, dressed like an angel and boo-hooing and acting out for all assembled.
"B*tch had everyone crying--the gallery, the judge, sh*t...b*tch even had me crying over her *ss. Judge said, 'Aw n*gger, we want every-thang. You got any dreams? We want them too!"
Got any dreams? We want them, too.
His delivery about how that scene played out is so sad/absurd/real and funny that it has stayed with me for some 30 years hence. It is but one of many transcendent moments from Pryor that Crouch deliberately dismisses. To boil Pryor down to a purveyor of cuss words is to pigeonhole Miles Davis as a trumpet player with no vibrato. (And as a monstrous Jazz lover, even I can look unflinchingly at how some of the most talented of the musicinas led countless followers down their own paths of destructive excesses. We lionize the early deaths of Jazz's greats the way today's kids sing Hosannas to fallen rappers. Charlie Parker/Fats Navarro/Lee Morgan sit parallel to Biggie, Pac and Jam Master Jay. But to somehow denigrate their art as a negative that led to the suffering of others past them is in a phrase, Crouch-ingly asinine.)
Crouch's unspoken issue here is one of jealousy. He fancies himself a chronicler of his negro times, a hard truth-teller and alleged literate observer/explainer of that which he sees.
And yet, in spite of all his high-falutin' verbiage, his no-threat-to-himself daring to be "contrarian" and willingness to let you know he's full of knowledge, he knows that were he to be given a billboard a hundred feet high by two-hundred feet wide to say his best at it's biggest--he could not have the impact of a three-minute classic bit from Richard Pryor in a dingy club thirty years ago. The socio-cultural impact of Pryor's words dwarfs anything Crouch will ever do or say in his miserable, sour little life.
Pryor sits there with the likes of Hurston, Will Rogers, Langston Hughes and Twain in the pantheon of American commentators and that's what rankles Crouch so--Pryor's crossing over from comedian to socio/cultural/phenomenon. When Stanley's gone, what will his legacy be...aside from being known as a tan Nat Hentoff--able to over-intellectualize about Jazz while spouting retrograde neo-con talking points? Shall we remember him as a Thomas Sowell sans hair? Or as a confused, embittered flare-tossing negro with a white-hot disregard for that which challenges his establishment-signed-off-on vanilla sense of style? Pryor's sennsibility would say, "Keep it real!", and thus would make me consider the latter descripton for poor, addled Stanley.
Pryor however, would take one look at him and sum him up in three little words.
"That N*gger's Crazy!"
This may come as a shock to Crouch but Bob Hope the ultimate establishment comedian was a huge fan of Pryor's. He once told Dick Cavett that he went to see Pryor's Live at the Sunset Strip and laughed for days afterwards.
The old school guys knew what Pryor was doing.
God, I loved Richard Pryor. My father also loved Pryor. And my dad also died as a direct result of MS.
Jesus. What a great comic. What a great entertainer. The guy was brutally honest on stage. Painfully funny.
Margaret Cho is like that, too. Or at least in the one movie of her I've seen, "I'm The One That I Want." (I think that was the name of it...) I walked out of there thinking I hadn't seen any comedy like that it since Pryor's "Live on Sunset Strip."
"Sunset Strip" was a revelation to this suburban white gal.
Bless Richard Pryor.
I love Richard Pryor. His comedic genius will live on forever. And Crouch is just dead wrong about linking Pryor to hip hop and rap. It's an insult to link him to that crap.
Everyone focuses on Pryor's vulgarity, but his vulgarity was used appropriately as emphasis within black vernacular. Something many modern day black comedians don't understand. They curse, get laughs from mostly very unfunny material. Pryor's material is funny and he weaves vulgar words throughout it seamlessly, there's nothing gratuitous about it. His approach is very old school, because that's the way it was done, in a very natural way of expressing yourself on the street corner. Cursing wasn't as self-conscious as it is today. And I think it's because nowadays, very young kids have free reign with it, whereas before, cussing was something you did undercover and not in the earshot of adults. It may sound strange to some, but it had more meaning and Richard used it this way to its fullest extent.
However, if you are someone that cringes at the mere sound of a word like mothafucka, then you'll close down and miss the humor of Pryor's monologues that are laced with some very sharp and real observations on being black in America. "That Nigga's Crazy" is a brilliant piece of work. It will make you laugh so hard you'll cry and then make you really cry at some of the incredibly poignant, tragic stories within the monologues.
So basically, Crouch, who BTW gives jazz a bad name, has showed some exquisitely bad taste in ragging on a man who was a comic genius and who lived a tortured life to the end.
And comparing Cosby and Pryor is not worth the apples and oranges commentary.
One last comment, a good friend saw Pryor's first appearance at the Apollo and his act was basically clean for the show. She said he had people rolling on the floor. As someone pointed out, his timing was flawless. He had a good eye for what was funny and his delivery was awesome. He could have traveled the Cosby route and kept it clean and probably been just as famous, but he was haunted by demons of his personal life and when the politics of the 60's allowed him the freedom to dispel those demons he went with it. I respect him for that. But more important, I am so grateful he reached into our hearts, made us laugh.
"To dig Richard Pryor, you had to be willing to accept human beings for what they were, no matter how flawed. If one sees flaws, natural human flaws as beneath one's self, reminders of one's painful lack of unattainable "perfection" or stumbling blocks to acceptance, one ends up in the narrow, cold box that folks like Stanley Crouch "live" in."
LM, thanks for always 'makin it plain', and for your brilliant posts.
Prof fate, I always remember the routine about his Catholic wife:
"Pope says you gotta do it! ah-un-ah!"
I knew a girl from Peoria, IL, a nice French-speaking Catholic girl, and she told me that the morning after Pryor had appeared on the Tonight Show and dissed the women, ladies and girls from there into being majorly PO'd at them. Which as Stuart Smalley would say is fine, because a lot of good satire or comedy should 'sting' and offend from time to time.
Pryor was fearless and inventive, a fitting epitaph for a man of such comic genius.
What Crouch mimizes is that Pryor is one of the few Americans, regardless of race, where you can say everytrhing which came after him changed.
He was akin to Jackson Pollock or Alfred Hitchcock or Orson Wells or Duke Ellington or Ernest Hemingway or Hank Williams.
His work ushered in a new era of comic artistry on stage. Bill Cosby was a hero because he fit into white society, he was a TV star when Pryor was playing clubs and people respected that.
The fact was that he wasn't dirtier than Redd Foxx or even Moms Mabely, who's records were a staple in my home Or even Buddy Hackett, who's vulagrity blew me away.
But he was smarter. Pryor was smart enough to avoid the abject self-destruction of Lenny Bruce, and to make his stories universal.
But it wasn't just him, it was his partner Paul Mooney as well. Mooney wrote Pryor's best routines, organized them and is still one of the funniest men working today. But Pryor had the stage presence as well, and a charm few people had.
What Crouch minimizes, shamefully, is how he freed white comics to tell their truths. George Carlin and Robert Klein made money because there was a Richard Pryor. He made being yourself marketable.
It's easy to focus on what he meant to black people, too easy, in fact. But he made it possible for everyone to be honest and funny at the same time.
If Crouch thinks Pryor was vulgar, he ought to read Miles' autobiography. Every third word in the book is "motherfucker."
Not that there's anything wrong with that.
.
Yeah, LM, lovely post. I liked "What was Pryor? Well, first of all, he was not a joke-teller. he was in essence, a presentational anthropologist. A non-detached observer of people and the human condition itself. He was Zora Neale Hurston with a wider-cast net, a rubber face, malleable body, and a voicebox with infinite range..."
The fact is the guy was a phenom. A genius. As you say, a rubber face and a voicebox with infinite range. It's like watching a perfectly conditioned and very talented NFL player like Marvin Harrison catch a gorgeous 50 pass. You wish you could do it, and make the big bucks, but you never will be able to.
I mean, sure, a guy can have a decent brain and grow up to be pretty philosopical and understand anthropology at a street level. And he might even have a gift of telling a joke and having good timing. But the face and the voices were just killer, to me. To *hear* people like he did, and then to duplicate it with a twist, yow!, just such a gift.
His career was cut short too soon, and he died too young. And Crouch is a complete moron for criticising him in any way. It's like criticising Einstein. You don't have the chops to do it. No one does.
There could be no better memorial to the memory, and legacy, of this great comedic genius than the eloquent words shared on this board. Fuck Stanley Crouch up his slimy ass with a red hot poker, and rest in peace Brother Richard.
The Doc
It doesn't appear to me that Crouch is being all that critical of Pryor's routines, which he acknowledges were the works of an extraordinary talent. It seems to me that what Crouch is dissing Pryor for is opening the door for lesser comics to glomm onto the more sensational parts of his act while completely missing his artistry.
But that's what happens in life/art. Should we be critical of the Beatles for Oasis, or Marcel Duchamp for Jeff Coons, or Rodgers and Hammerstein for Andrew Lloyd Webber?
What Crouch mimizes is that Pryor is one of the few Americans, regardless of race, where you can say everytrhing which came after him changed.
He was akin to Jackson Pollock or Alfred Hitchcock or Orson Wells or Duke Ellington or Ernest Hemingway or Hank Williams.
Damn straight, Steve. He was, a demarcation line. A major historical point in American expression--a two legged, breathing example of the artistic power of the first amendment writ large.
Folks forget about Pryor's time "in the wilderness" when after his Vegas breakdown (he jumped up on a gaming table buck naked and screamed "Blackjack!"--and was summarily banned from the Vegas circuit by "connected" types.) he woodshedded in Berkeley with a collective of Black writers like Ishmael Reed, Cecil Brown and others and eventually tapped the full talent wellspring within himself. He returned from his artistic cloistering a "new" Pryor--not the somewhat edgy Cosby-esque performer of before, but rather a vessel or medium for the voices of society to pour through, filtered by his outrageous brand of "funny".
Mooney was his wingman--a strong shaper of the raw material exploding from Richard and a gifted comic mind himself with a strong sense of wordplay (I worked with Paul on a TV pilot in the nineties and while he was a bitter, occasionally mean dude, he was undeniably a mega-talent with an almost Joyce-ean talent for word-spin.). Pryor's secret weapon though was his weird, gawky "everyman"-ish physical presentation. But from that base persona, he could transform--blowing himself up into "six-foot-five, 422 pounds of ma--aan" or shrinking himself down to the size of an in-heat spider monkey chasing punanny in the trees.
Pryor kicked down the door, and rushed in, whupping *ss with abandon, with Carlin and Klein covering his assault on the mores of a Burns and Schreiber-ed (who were "funny" in a safe, vanilla way) to death, American public. The Pryor holy troika from 1974's That N*gger's Crazy, to 1975's Is It Something I Said and finally 1976's Bicentennial N*gger in addition to being the Grammy Winners for Best Comedy Album in 1975, '76 and '77 were also arguably the three best, most ground-breaking, and growth-evident consecutive comedy albums ever released.
Coppolla had Godfather, The Conversation, and Godfather II.
The Beatles tore through Rubber Soul, Revolver and Sgt. Pepper's.
And Pryor had his Holy Trinity as well.
As good as Klein and Carlin were, they were Batman and Flash to Pryor's bullet-bouncing comedy Superman who flew point.
Crouch's ugly hatred smacks of bravery envy as well. He would never, ever dare look through the harsh prism Pryor did--to look at the world--and more bravely at his twisted self.
No heart, Stanley. None at all. And less honesty than that. Sad and expected. 
Richard Pryor is still great, and I hate to detract from this thread.
But, Karmakin, jazz is instrinsically better because at its best it is more demanding than rock'n'roll or rap. Its musicians are better musicians. A lot of jazz musicians can play rock and blues. It's a step down in demands on their skills for them to play 12-bar blues. Three chords and you can write a "rock opera," for goodness sake. And rap is so uncomplicated that you can do it without even knowing how to use a record player, let alone a real musical instrument, although at least the rappers or their producers know more about varying their rhythm. It took the likes of the Beatles and Pink Floyd months to do their albums, but Davis and the rest of the bebop folks would cut classics in a few days, a week at the most, and it was better rehearsed and better played, not just studio overdubs. Jazz musicians are musicians, that's the difference.
Also, I said classical orchestral pieces, specifically, and then shortened that to just classical. You know very well what I'm talking about, so don't play semantics now.
mike in dc, it's interesting that you bring up Miles' name and fusion. To most serious jazz folks, Bitches Brew was when Miles began his creative decline. Sure, Hancock can play, and rock folks think it's a great work of art. But, jazz buffs turn their noses down at it, I think somewhat deservedly. Bitches Brew is so average by comparison to even "lesser" works involving Mile's, like Cannonball Adderley's Somethin' Else or his own Sketches of Spain. Yeah, that's right, his lesser works are just so much better than Bitches Brew, it boggles the mind to think it's the same artist. The guy had to do new things, I guess.
Fast Eddy, Dylan is the exception that proves the rule.
Back to mourning.
Brian, speaking as a jazz musician, you're full of it. Sorry. The whole high/low distinction is bullshit anyway. I'm frankly amazed that you get Richard Pryor but you don't get that.
To most serious jazz folks, Bitches Brew was when Miles began his creative decline.
Sure, if you define "serious jazz folks" as "Stanley Crouch." Cannon's Somethin' Else is a fine blowing session, but it's only a blowing session. Putting it up there with a creative breakthrough like Bitches Brew (or any of the 1970's records that followed) is completely ridiculous. But hell, don't take my word for it -- ask any gigging jazz musician under the age of 40.
IMO, I think today's black comedians are more from the Redd Foxx school of comedy. Be as crude/nasty and loud as you wanna be to get laughs. Sometimes, they are funny, but mostly they never soar to the creative/insightful heights of Richard Pryor.
And as far as Pryor opening the door to what is currently the hip hop rap world, that door was opened by the sociological factors of a society's failure to deal with racism and poverty. I wish the rappers would REALLY listen to Richard Pryor routines. They might learn something. But then maybe not. Their lives are different from what Richard came through. It's hard for kids being raised in single mother households to relate to Pryor's classic routine when his father told him to be home by "eleben." "And bring me a paper!"
Crouch can try to connect Pryor to the mysoginistic attitudes so prevalant in rap today all he wants to. But he's barking up the wrong tree. Fingers should be pointed elsewhere.
"Crouch can try to connect Pryor to the mysoginistic attitudes so prevalant in rap today all he wants to. But he's barking up the wrong tree. Fingers should be pointed elsewhere."
Pryor's humor routinely featured crafty, sassy and assertive hilarious women.
MAN: Oh yeah? Well, I'm 'a find me some new p*ssy!
WOMAN: If you had two more inches of d*ck, you'd find some new p*ssy right here!
Or his hilarious observation on how the crazier and stupider men get in arguments, the more calm, cool and collected women get?
MAN: (CRAZED) Yaaaaaaaagggh! You git the f*ck outta here!
WOMAN: (DEADPAN) Okay. I will.
MAN: Aaaaaaargh! I don't ever wanna see your *ss again!
WOMAN: Don't worry. (BEAT) You won't.
He could be hard on women too, but he was as rough on men, particularly his own flawed self.
Dare we discuss the Picasso-esque level of psychic and physical brutality the likes of Crouch's lionized Miles visited on his various women? And more salient yet, what of Stanley's own well-noted hair-trigger violent streak, featuring punchouts of various colleagues at the Village Voice years ago--along with the alleged sexual hyper-aggressiveness that got him bounced from said Voice after a particularly egregious line-crossing at a Holiday party?
It's called transference. And the poor, psychically-wounded bastard is drowning on it. Tsk.
LM, you are truly a gift to Gilly's comment boards. F**kin' brilliant.
Thad, speaking as someone with taste and education, you're full of it.
You're telling me "I Am The Walrus" is really as good as "Take Five?" Yeah, that's what I thought.
If you really are a decent musician, you know very well, better than I, that jazz is one hell of a lot more demanding of your talents than pop, than rock, than roll. Same with a variety of classical pieces. That's the difference between high and low. One takes education, training. And the other a moron like Sid Vicious is considered a genius.
Also, note that I referred to Somethin' Else as a lesser work, still better than Bitches Brew, though. But, "only a blowin' session?" Most musicians would be happy if they did something once that good.
Look, 99 times -- no, 999 times out of 1,000 -- I'm going to be listening to rock, folk, blues, maybe rap, occassionally country. I don't even like jazz that much. But I'm sharp enough to tell when something is really just a load a crap being sold to me, that I may indeed enjoy, and when something is actually art.
You don't think there's a distinction between high and low art? Then why is a Monet worth so damn much, priceless virtually, and dogs-playing-poker prints not? You can withold your value judgements all you want. I'd prefer to keep mine. Most intelligent folks I know make distinctions about all sorts of things all the time, including about art. And, yeah, jazz is a greater, better, more demanding, and higher form than pop-rock-rap-country.
As for whether or not I "get Pryor," whatever that means, why don't you go read from the top of the thread on down. I never once defended what Crouch said about Pryor. Not once. So why don't you go read what I wrote instead of implying that I said something I didn't. But I guess it's easier to just think what you want to think instead of actually reading what I wrote.
Brian, Thad is disputing your Bitches Brew and later is crap idea. Talking about getting or not getting the genius of Pryor is a red herring. If you want to be serious then explain why Miles's post 1969 work is so bad.
Brian, I saw you plam that card:
"You don't think there's a distinction between high and low art? Then why is a Monet worth so damn much, priceless virtually, and dogs-playing-poker prints not?"
That's not a difference between high and low art, that is the difference between good and bad art.
That has nothing to do with the differences between jazz and rock, or jazz and rap.
Your comparison of "I'm the Walrus" and "Take Five" is laughable as well. The latter is a nice technical exercise remarkable only for the fact that it is so hummable; you didn;t think it being in 5/4 time is any great achievement, did you? Better tell Hues Corporation then; "Rock the Boat" was (partially) in 5/4 time as well...
But those are just minor quibbles. I don't really care if you have to denigrate rock or rap to make your beloved jazz look better: what I most object to is your sterile, pseudo-intellectual approach to jazz: as if the only thing that counts is how difficult it is!
It's that overintellectualising of jazz, the denial that it was once just as popular and vulgar as rock or rap that made it into a niche genre.
And that this over intellectualising is also a way to deny the Blackness of jazz seems obvious.
Andy, I don't even claim to be a jazz afficianado. I'm just stating the obvious.
Don't tell me the Pryor thing is a canard. I know. I didn't dispute what Crouch said was garbage. I agree that it was. Thad implied I agreed with him, twice by my count.
I never said Bitches Brew is crap, either. I said it was part of his creative decline.
Here's a comparison with another artistic group. Stones. Fine band. Had lots of good songs after 1972. Even a great album in 1978. But, does anybody doubt that Goat's Head Soup was the start of a serious creative decline they've never really recovered from, no matter that they've had hits and a single good album since? Heck, no. Exile is the end of what that band really had to say that was important.
It happens to most artists, and even people in other fields. People like Bill Shakespeare and Monet are the rare ones. Even Picasso faltered. Most novelists are lucky to get a single great book. The rest is for posterity. It extends to other fields of endeavor as well. Physicists are notoriously over the hill by 30. It happens. And, yes, it happened with Davis. It happened to Pryor, too, although it was disease which cut his productivity short.
Don't believe it with Miles?
Exhibit A: All Blues, off Kind of Blue, 1959.
Exhibit B: Pharaoh's Dance, from the aforementioned Bitches Brew, 1969.
You tell me, Andy, honestly, which one do you think will be really remembered and studied more thoroughly in three hundred years? Which is better remembered now? And All Blues isn't even his best composition.
I think it's pretty self-evident, and anybody who doesn't has ruined their ears with pop.
You're telling me "I Am The Walrus" is really as good as "Take Five?"
No, I'm saying "I Am The Walrus" is much better than "Take Five".
Seriously, "Take Five"? I don't think you want to hang your case on that -- it's a not-very-well-regarded tune, recorded by a popular but not very-well-regarded band. That Brubeck quartet didn't exactly swing your socks off. Again, don't take my word for it (although I do know what I'm talking about, check my bio).
Meanwhile, "I Am The Walrus" is far more distinctive and sophisticated from a textural and coloristic and conceptual point of view than most jazz recordings. If you put a high value on those things, and a lower value on harmonic complexity or improvisation, you can easily make the case -- and I would -- that "I Am The Walrus" is much better than some of the rote, uninspired, largely interchangeable blowing sessions released on Blue Note, Prestige, and Riverside in the '50s and '60s. Just because it has a walking bass line and a swinging ride cymbal, improvised solos, and capable playing, it's automatically inducted into the Temple of Ultimate Art? Please.
For a musicological analysis of just how sophisticated a tune like "I Am The Walrus" really is, check here.
If you really are a decent musician
Hey, check the MP3's on my blog and decide for yourself.
you know very well, better than I, that jazz is one hell of a lot more demanding of your talents than pop, than rock, than roll.
Well, no, I don't actually agree with that at all.
But for the sake of argument, let's grant your premise -- jazz and classical music are much harder to play than rock. Even if that's true -- so what? Just because something's hard to do doesn't make it aesthetically worthwhile. I could make it a lot harder for me to play the piano by cutting off a few fingers, or sabotaging the piano with wire cutters.
Even within jazz, on a technical level, it's a lot harder to make the changes on "Giant Steps" than it is on, say, "Bye Bye Blackbird." But that doesn't mean that just because someone can nail "Giant Steps" that they've played a more musical solo. Getting back to Miles, he sure as hell would have scuffled all over "Giant Steps" -- but he improvised heart-wrenchingly beautiful lines over a simple set of changes like "Bye Bye Blackbird."
Look, Miles didn't have Clifford Brown's chops. Monk certainly didn't have Art Tatum's facility. Phil Woods has a lot more technique than Ornette Coleman. But who's better? Music isn't some kind of Olympic event -- it's about a lot more than just technical difficulty.
But, "only a blowin' session?"
Yes, Something Else is (mostly) a blowing session -- three standards and three nondescript originals. They probably didn't rehearse, the standards they knew at the rest they would have just read everything on the date, probably worked out the arrangements on the spot. The playing is fine -- enjoyable sure, but kinda routine, and very similar to what we've heard Miles, Cannon, Hank, etc do before. There's nothing wrong with it, but it's hardly an album for the ages.
It's certainly nowhere near the innovative records Miles made with his 60's quintet (Miles Smiles, Neferttiti, etc) -- all of which led up logically to Bitches Brew, which, regardless of what you think of it, was a hugely original, conceptually unique, and historically important and influential record. Denigrating it compared to a very minor (if enjoyable) Cannon record like Something Else is, I'm sorry, kinda ignorant.
Look, I even think Bitches Brew is a bit overrated compared to later Miles records like Live-Evil and On The Corner -- but have you even listened to these albums? Or did you just decide a priori that the records were worthless because Miles sometimes uses a wah-wah pedal? (That's more or less Crouch's position, BTW).
You don't think there's a distinction between high and low art? Then why is a Monet worth so damn much, priceless virtually, and dogs-playing-poker prints not? You can withold your value judgements all you want. I'd prefer to keep mine. Most intelligent folks I know make distinctions about all sorts of things all the time, including about art. And, yeah, jazz is a greater, better, more demanding, and higher form than pop-rock-rap-country.
Red herrings about the value of paintings aside, I never said you couldn't make distinctions. You seem to think I'm saying something completely absurd, like "The Oscar Meyer wiener jingle and The Shape of Jazz to Come are artistically equivalent" -- which I"m not. Obviously.
But it's equally absurd to claim that entire genres of music are necessarily aesthetically superior to other genres, as you do above. Seriously, that's as ridiculous as saying that thrillers are always better than scifi movies.
There's brilliant, lasting music for the ages in all genres. I love jazz, I've played it and written it and studied it all my adult life, and I'll still take, e.g., Johnny Cash singing "Folsom Prison Blues" over all but the very best of Miles, Trane, Monk, Duke, Louis, and Ornette. (And certainly over Take Five, fercrissakes.)
Brian, seriously, give it up. Even by your own standards, "Pharoh's Dance" is a far more complex piece of music than "All Blues," and, if anything, Bitches Brew is even more influential and groundbreaking than Kind of Blue.
Not that academia has anything to do with anything, but since you brought it up, "All Blues" is actually not studied much in conservatories because there's not much meat on it at all. It's a extremely simple, straightforward composition -- that's kind of the whole point of the record. "Pharoh's Dance" is thick with densely layered textures, rhythms and harmonies, unusual instrumental combinations, structural complexity, etc. People have written doctoral dissertations on everything going on in that tune. I'm not saying any of this makes it necessarily better than "All Blues," but then again, I'm not the one comitted to the idea that "more complexity equals better music."
Thad, if you're the best of today's composers, then civilization is in deep trouble, 'cuz you don't even recognize the low tastes you're embracing. At least I know I'm slumming it 99.99% of the time when listening to pop. I Am the Walrus is stoner noise, and it isn't even particularly good Beatles. Goo goo g' joob, indeed.
Actually, I don't really think that about you, because I don't think you even believe what you're saying. You're just spouting it:
...if anything, Bitches Brew is even more influential and groundbreaking than Kind of Blue.
But is it better?
Like I said, spouting it. You're going on about how jazz and "classical" aren't any intrinsically better than rock, rap, country, blues or folk, but your bio' and career are strongly arguing otherwise, and you know it. Don't be afraid to own up to your own music, jazz and orchestral pieces, and say what's what. It's no wonder people think today's Nashville sounds are actually music when real artists like you won't even stand up for the superiority of your own chosen genre.
I've listened to crap rock'n'roll and rap my whole life, but even I recognize better music when I hear it, like jazz or good orchestral pieces, even if I haven't developed a taste for it. You on the other hand very well know better.
Anyway, I said more demanding, more difficult, harder -- not more complex. Of course, there's not a lot of complexity in three chords played at "11" on the volume knob, either. I'll address the rest later when I've got more time.
And to paraphrase and mangle Chevy Chase, Richard Pryor's still dead.
You can't compare diffrent periods of music history which are forged out of diffrent philosophies. Comparing Pryer and Cosby, has as much value as comparing Mozart and Beethoven. They had diffrent values and used diffrent methods to create their own unique art. One is not better than the other, but perhaps their innovations were mutually exclusive and dependant on one another so the other could take the next step without the prior.
Brian Bell, you are arguing a point-of-view that to this day launches a Civil War in any music school at all higher level institutions.
But I don't know if your using the proper terms, because what you are saying can come off as extremely elitist if not done with more than blanket generalizations. People who don't study music don't know the history of music (speaking about Western Art Music at least.)
I'll tell you a secret:
We will only remember the INNOVATORS in music. They alone (for the most part) will garner enough staying power to last a hundred years beyond their death. Those who push the envelope will secure a place in the history books of Western Art Music. All else will be resigned to the footnotes.
Why do we remember Josquin De Prez? Orlando De Lassus? Or J.S. Bach, Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin, Berlioz, Bartok, Wagner, Schenberg (sp), Berg, Webern, Ives, Cowell, Cage?
We remebmer them because they pushed music farther than ANY of their contemporaries! They each contributed something immensly influencial that allowed those to came after them to take the next step! Some of them did it consciencly, some of them w/out intent.
It's a fasinating story to follow the work of Du Prez who made a forumla for structure in music and harmony that allowed the next composers to take the next step. There was always "Contemporary" music being produced especially by the travelling street musicians, but we have little record of their accomplishments left behind.
Then we come to Bach, who many argue was NOT an innovator, but I think they are blind to his genius! The Art of The Fugue, The Well-Tempered Clavair which in itself was a trend that launched the "Common practice period" of major minor we are held hostage to now. The very idea of "Equal Temperment" in tuning is fundamental to music as we know it today! Bach genius lies in his ability to reconcile. He reconciled the words to the musical line, he reconciled the spirtital and the mathematical, he reconciled the horizontal and the vertical with his motor-like baroque style of polyphony! I am in awe of his genius! On many levels! There is a reason we study him for Part-Writing analysis!
Then Mozart, who some also claim is NOT an innovator! It's true he didn't usher in a new era of music, he instead brought classisim to it's zenith! Mozart defines classicism in classical music! He was innovative because (even thought he wrote some 40-odd symphonies, countless chamber works, choral, and concerto's, he was an OPERA composer! He brought "DRAMA" to music unlike any of his predicessors! In a purely tonal way, using tension in music (Dominant V verses Tonic I) to highten our aural experience! Without the passion he ushered in using his command of musicianship to create tension in music, we couldn't have the great next step of Romanticism!
Beethoven was a bridge to the new period, he was bombastic! He expanded the orchestra to new heights going lower then ever before and higher than ever in range! He created his own musical formulas and pioneered alternative musical landscapes! He added a Choir to a symphony! He broke the 3 movement symphony, hell he didn't seem to know when to finish writing! The man was totally DEAF, and the funny thing is that most of the music written after he lost his hearing is the some of the greatest pieces ever written by him!
Handing the Baton to Brahms, who was the only major Symphony writer after Beethoven and Hayden (who was Beethoven's teacher) who continued in the Romantic tradition with his own spin. Along with Chopin whos innovation in music was in skirting ALL the standard rules of tonality!
Brahm's chief rival was Wagner! Who stretched tonality to the point of breaking, he might as well NOT write a key signature in some of his music because you cannot identify it anyway because it is saturated in chromatisicim! Wagner who was a horrid person (as most of these composers were on a human level) also an Opera Composer led the way for Schengber (I cant spell his name, I never could even in college!) The inventor of 12-tone composition! His students were Webern, Berg... Webern is my favorite whose minature compositions are a universe unto themselves! Also the teacher of Cage! Who opened the windows of music by letting some FRESH AIR IN! An innovator. I should note that Ives is the foremost American composer and contemporary of Schenberg, but unlike S. He stumbled upon atonality by Experiance! While S. stumbled upon atonality because he believed it was the next logical step! It was a conscience effort on his part, as part of a grand tradition that reached all the way back to J.S. Bach! Who can also be traced back to his idol Buxtehude!
But then something happend! Something unheard of in anything thus encountered in Western Art Music history.
You see, all this time there was ALWAYS a contemporary "popular" music amoung the general populus. The drinking songs, the love songs (As an old teacher of mine said, "There are only two types of songs in this world, a Love Song, and a Non-Love song) and all other religious music. Most of that fell by the wayside as time marched on. There was always a strong arm of "Serious" music being produced by these composers of old kept alive by the patronage of the Royality.
By the end of his live Mozart was pretty much freelancing, but Beethoven was the FIRST free lance musican/composer! He bowed to no man, and was servant to none! Even J.S. Bach was seen as nothing more than a servant to his Patron. Nothing more than a chef, butler or maid.
In the early 1900's there was a second off-shoot in American Music, that of contemporary popular music. SO for the first time in history we have two musical genres fighting for dominance, we have "serious" I don't like the use "high art" like so many textbooks do, it implys a judgement where none lies! And the Contemporary popular!
But these two genres of music serve two diffrent masters! "Serious" art music is created for the sake of art itself, for experimentation, and for the art of the possible. Popular contemporary music serves at the whim of the general populus. And with the advent of the modern recording industry it has degenerated into something closer to maintaining an image. It's my experiance that most (not all) popular music is watered down so that it caters to the most general lowest common denominator of society, and therefore caters to everyone and noone at the same time. Because at it's very core, popular music is meant to be Commercially Popular after-all!
They didn't have CD's back then, or printed musical scores during the Ars Nova period (New Music 1300's). All we have are treatices that have survived! We are living in an unprecedented age, so what happens next is still up in the air! It dosen't mean that Rock, Pop, Rap will die out, or never be remembered! After all, we still have some lingering vestiges of ancient pop music with us today "greensleeves" for example.
Jazz is an extremely complex musical language, and it seems to have the built in innovative spirit that will ensure its staying power.
But what of Dylan? Even the Beetles tried to live up anything he wrote, he was the J.S. of his time, a master who everyone looked up to, in order to emulate. His music is loaded with polticial and cultural references that can fly by in an instant if you're not paying attention. He is innovative, and not just because his vocal quality is less than "Bel Canto."
Pop is not very innovative, in my humble opinion. It can be nothing more than candy for the ear.
Rap on the other hand has potential! If you think about it, the Rap video has a representation of almost all the performing arts in one single viewing! That's quite innovative! Music, Dance, & Poetry. And if you consider the film it's represented on, all they need to add are a few paintings, they will have representation of the Visual Arts as well There is strong potential there for staying power! Aside from the political as well... just as Dylans music was loaded, so to is/was Rap.
Will Jazz survive, most likely yes. Will rock/pop, probably not. They might still sing an Elton John song in the year 2200, it will be an "old folk song" at that point in history
Remember we are evolving our ear as time marches on as well! What was dissonant in the past is not so much anymore. We no longer have to avoid rules and "devil's chord's" (tritones) in fact Stravinsky used it in his Rite of Spring Ballet quite effectivly
You should also know, that as mediocrity rules today as "American Idols" are churned out of the machine that we call the "Music Industry" today, kept aloft with unheard of amounts of money; there is an ENTIRE generation of experimental Modern Contemporary composers out there today, who are virtually UNHEARD in todays society!
They are the Innovators! And we will have our day, and secure our rightful place in history! Once we remove the distribution monopoly of the RIAA, the monster will toppel and a new era, an "Ars Nova" if you will, will emerge yet again.
It's all cyclical, 1300's, 1600's, 1900's... the next big craze is scheduled to hit 2200. Who knows what the future brings? We can give a dam good educated guess!
LM:
"he knows that were he to be given a billboard a hundred feet high by two-hundred feet wide to say his best at it's biggest--he could not have the impact of a three-minute classic bit from Richard Pryor in a dingy club thirty years ago."
Word. And how's that blog coming along?
I don't know about you, rob7534, but I have no problem being an elitist, I'm a liberal after all.
; )
Oh, and Dylan was and is a prophet, rob7534, which is why he went so far beyond his reach, because he was...Touched, in all figurative senses.
Brian Bell: You where obviously never a metal head. Good heavy metal (classic stuff not death or thrash) is every bit as complex as any classical pice, in fact most of the greats of metal are classicly traind musicians. Doubt me, listen to the the a side of triumph of steel by man of war, amazing pice, had my dad (classical buff) wondering which cmposer wrote the melody before the gutiars started.
It seems to me we have here in Stanley Crouch someone who never really grew up, but just grew to be an old child who at one point gave up on his attempts to belong, to be part of some "in crowd", who consequently puts down everything past, oh, say, 1957 for the hell of it, as many others have already pointed out. I can't believe this douche actually thought himself to be a "man of the people" after bitch-slapping someone who couldn't tolerate his sorry excuse for prose. After torturing myself reading yet another one of his bullshit "everything is those lousy cussin' hip-hoppers' fault!" rants, I still can't decide for myself exactly who the hell he thinks he's appealing to with the crap he continually puts out.
Rich was the greatest: bravely introspective, a delightfully benevolent scamp, the embodiment of satirical comedic genus and a hero to many .
Glad we had you and sorry you left us so soon.
Be at peace,
Greg
Crouch at it again, huh?
Lord, this guy makes me tired. When is he going to have a heart attack?
The fool is just jealous. Jealous.
Lower Manhattanite and Jen said all I wanna say. I've got to correct papers for the finals.
But I say hundreds are going to be at the funeral and at the wake. No, thousands. Wish I could be there--like with Marvin Gaye.
My fave albums: the breakthrough That Nigger's Crazy, my alltime favorite, Is It Something I Said?, and the scary but downright true Bicentennial Nigger.
All his concert films. Not all of his commercial films. The ones to see: Lady Sings the Blues Blue Collar, Silver Streak, and Stir Crazy.
And the one he wasn't in but wrote: "Black Bart," aka Blazing Saddles.
Rich, you deserve better than this bullshyt. We all do.
Anyway, I said more demanding, more difficult, harder -- not more complex.
You still haven't made a case for why "more demanding, more difficult, harder" automatically equals "better." Henry James is a more demanding author than, say, Hemingway. Stockhausen is more difficult than Stravinsky. The music of Yes is harder to play (on a purely technical level) than the music of James Brown. But what does any of that have to do with if it's any damn good?
And you say I'm "spouting," "slumming," being insincere, etc., when here you are trying to make a case for the intrinsic value for jazz and classical music when you actually much prefer to listen to rock and pop?
You know, it wasn't that long ago that the vast majority of classical music fans and critics used exactly the same arguments as you are now employing to try to exclude jazz from the Temple of Art. Many still do, of course -- but now that jazz has mainstream academic respectability, guys like Crouch and Wynton want to turn around and slam shut the door behind them. "We got ours, now the rest of y'all can go screw."
Seriously, I really sincerely cannot get excited about these high/low distinctions, especially when it comes to entire genres. I'll leave that kind of blinkered thinking to guys like Stanley Crouch.
Music either succeeds or fails on its own merits, and trivialities like what genre it falls into, or how demanding it is of the performer, have absolutely nothing to do with it.
Steve
I love your site and your commentary.
That said, I am not sure why you drew attention to Crouch's distasteful attack of the dearly departed.
Anybody with any sense and familiarity with Richard Pryor loved the man for having a very endearing intelligence and humor - two things he aimed at the truths of this world, good and bad.
Celebrate the man, not his detractors.
Thanks.
Something to keep in mind is that after 1965 or so, Crouch started dissing Miles, whining about his electric period and claiming (in the documentary "A different kind of blue") that listening to "Bitches Brew" was like getting hit in the head by a hammer (or words to that effect). With Wynton, Crouch got a do-over; he's clearly kept a tight grip on him. Not that Wynton is stupid, but Crouch to Wynton is like Rove to Bush.
and claiming (in the documentary "A different kind of blue") that listening to "Bitches Brew" was like getting hit in the head by a hammer.
Wow...Stanley must've had "Brew" on in heavy rotation for about four years or so based on his nutty mewlings nowadays.
Richard Pryor changed the world. I enjoyed every single time I saw Richard Pryor. Long may he live in our memories.
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