Stanley Crouch's Breath

Several years ago, the journalist and social critic Stanley Crouch interviewed my upstairs neighbor, the late legendary jazz drummer (and a former president of my building's co-op board), Charli Persip, at Minton's Playhouse, considered the birthplace of bebop. It's located on West 118th Street in Harlem. (Both Crouch and Persip died a few weeks apart in 2020.)

I got to meet Crouch only one time around 1982 or 1983 when I was a proofreader at The Village Voice. He came over to where I was sitting, presumably to discuss the article of his that I had proofread. I don't recall what was said but what was most memorable as he stood over me was getting a whiff of his bad breath.

In subsequent years, I read his New York Daily News column and saw him being interviewed more than once on Charlie Rose's public TV show (I hope he used mouthwash before going on-camera). I also remember seeing him appear as one of the authoritative talking heads in Ken Burns's documentary series on jazz.

From then on, whenever I saw his name in print or saw him on TV, my mind would go back to the first time I encountered him and got assaulted by his breath.

Compton And Los Angeles Are Separate Cities

In the New York Times obituary (July 4, 2025) of the prolific hip hop choreographer for films and TV, Dave Scott, who grew up in Compton, California, and died in Las Vegas at age 52, Compton is described as "the city in South Central Los Angeles." I've lived and attended public schools in both places and know, if the obituary writer doesn't, that Compton is a city near Los Angeles, not in Los Angeles.

The obituary writer would have been on firmer ground if he or she or they had written that Compton is a city located in Los Angeles County.

How A Gossip Column Provided An Opportunity

When the ultra-right wing New York Post's gossip column Page Six was actually on page 6, not page 12 or page 20, I saw an item that stated that the civil rights icon Andrew Young was running for mayor of Atlanta and was giving up his Los Angeles Times-syndicated opinion column. Since, it was reported, the paper was looking for replacement writers for the column, I immediately contacted the L. A. Times about their talent search. Soon after I was able to contribute three columns.

One of those columns was about homosexuality in the black community. The Oregon Journal in Portland published the article in August 1981 with the headline, "Gays Are Black, Too." The Times editor I submitted the article to begrudgingly sent it out, saying that Andrew Young would not have written about the subject. That was precisely why the column needed to be written. It gave attention to a segment of the black community that was stigmatized and rendered invisible and voiceless.

Unfortunately, Young's column was dropped by many newspapers because it was his opinions they were interested in publishing. To me, this attitude was short-sighted and foolish.  No one should expect one person to speak for all black people. You would've thought they would've been glad to have a multiplicity of black voices and perspectives on a variety of topics. I think it's a safe bet to say that some of those voices they weren't interested in hearing from might have been the next James Baldwin or the next Toni Morrison or the next Audre Lorde.

Anyway, this was the first, and only, time I ever got a job opportunity via a gossip column.