VICTORY IS ASSURED

A sterling collection of essays and other pieces by the eminent critic and music historian.

As Mott writes, Crouch (1945-2020) was “a physical intellectual up from the streets of South-Central L.A. who never lost the presentation of himself as a slightly dangerous and not-to-be-fucked-with individual.” There’s not much evidence of the street-fighting-man stance here, though when Crouch turns it on, as with a delightful takedown of Joseph Epstein, it can raze whole city blocks. Few writers were as well schooled in the history of jazz as was Crouch, and one of the many high points here is a restored chapter from the unpublished second volume of his life of Charlie Parker, which finds Parker in a musical duel with an offending Dizzy Gillespie: “His rage took him to altissimo extremes of the alto, notes from that register came like darts, then he swooped all the way down, his horn honking and grunting, then suddenly moved to smooth melodic lines, sensual and ethereal in their translucency.” The author explores the genius of John Coltrane, whose musical evolutions stand as “proof that a man can invent himself,” and he offers a thoughtful reflection on George Herriman, whose "Krazy Kat" comic strip never quite gave away his multiracial roots but that elevated comic art to the level of slapstick, a medium that “is as democratic as death, which plays by no rules other than its own.” Though keenly attuned to currents in Black intellectual life, Crouch is equally at home discussing John Ford’s movie The Searchers and the “knuckleheads” of every ethnicity that one sees on daytime TV. The author also deftly assesses the best and the worst of the Blaxploitation films and the evolving but incomplete thought of Malcolm X. The book features an introduction by Jelani Cobb and an afterword by Wynton Marsalis.

Testimony to a remarkable intellect and essential to any student of modern cultural criticism.