STANLEY CROUCH INVOKES HERMAN MELVILLE, MOBY-DICK AT JULLIARD LECTURES REGARDING JAZZ IMPROVISATION

THE ORIGINAL IMPROVISOR
Music historian Stanley Crouch includes Moby-Dick in his lectures about jazz history at Juilliard, even though the novel was written over five decades before jazz developed. According to Crouch, Melville was an expert at improvisation.

"Moby-Dick is largely an improvisation in which you observe Herman Melville following his ear through the book. Moby-Dick is about as close to as spontaneously written book as you're going to encounter." He gets to the end of a chapter and says okay, what now? Oh, okay, I ll try that. And then he goes with it. The thing that's so amazing about it is that, form wise, the book is an extraordinary exhibition of absolute fearlessness."

--Stanley Crouch

"...In this piece of James P. Johnson's, who's often considered the father of stride piano, is that it has to me that same kind of a feeling that we get in Moby-Dick, which is that you have these motifs but they keep changing form."

--Stanley Crouch

Crouch discusses Jazz and Melville's literary improvisation

on NPR's Studio 360 radio program.

Pictured from top to bottom: Critic Stanley Crouch, Moby-Dick author Herman Melville, illustration of Moby-Dick, Jazz muician James P. Johnson