Stanley Crouch's Liner Notes to DOWN THROUGH THE YEARS

It's always a treat to encounter Stanley Crouch's voice in the form of physical liner notes, and with the convenience of smartphone-assisted OCR, it's easier than ever to share those writings, which otherwise remain uncollected (despite the excellent recent collection Victory is Assured assembled by long-time Crouch editor and neighbor to me, Glenn Mott). I picked up a copy of Clifford Jordan's final recording, Down Through the Years: The Clifford Jordan Big Band, Live at Condon's, New York , which features vintage Crouch on one of my favorite tenorists documented on location at 117 East 15th Street in Manhattan. It was too good not to share, and a quick search on the foremost online search engine didn't pull up any results for "very wily dragon of the blues," so presumably the text of the notes hasn't been indexed on the web yet in any form. Here we go, all the way back to 1992: * * * Clifford Jordan has long been a figure of saxophone lumine