• Stanley Crouch, outspoken columnist and jazz lover, dead at 74

    Stanley Crouch, outspoken columnist and jazz lover, dead at 74

    Stanley Crouch, a contentious and influential critic, columnist and self-taught Renaissance man who in fiction and nonfiction was inspired by his knowledge and love of blues and jazz and his impulse to step over the line, died Wednesday at age 74. His wife, Gloria Nixon-Crouch, told The Associated Press that he died at a hospice …