"rigid jazz purist" and "a blistering critic of avant-garde jazz and fusion". Crouch commented: "We should laugh at those who make artistic claims for fusion." In The New Yorker Robert Boynton wrote: "Enthusiastic, combative, and never averse to attention, Crouch has a virtually insatiable appetite for controversy." Boynton also observed: "Few cultural critics have a vision as eclectic and intriguing as Stanley Crouch's. Fewer still actually fight to prove their points." Crouch was fired from JazzTimes following his controversial article "Putting the White Man in Charge" in which he stated that, since the 1960s, "white musicians who can play are too frequently elevated far beyond their abilities in order to allow white writers to make themselves feel more comfortable about being in the role of evaluating an art from which they feel substantially alienated." Association with Wynton Marsalis and Ken Burns Trumpeter Wynton Marsalis called Crouch "my best friend in the world" and "mentor". The two met after Marsalis, at the age of 17, settled in New York City to attend the Juilliard School. The two shared a close relationship, Crouch having written liner notes for Marsalis' albums since his debut album in 1982. When Marsalis served as "Senior Creative Consultant" for Ken Burns' 2001 documentary Jazz, Crouch served on the film's advisory board and appears extensively. Some jazz critics and aficionados cited the participation of Marsalis and Crouch specifically as reasons for what they believed to be the film's undue focus on traditional and straight-ahead jazz. After Jazz, Crouch appeared in other Burns films, including the DVD for the 2002 remastered version of The Civil War and the 2004 documentary Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson. Awards, honors, distinctions In 2004, Crouch was invited to a panel of judges for the PEN/Newman's Own Award, a $25,000 award designed to protect speech as it applies to the written word. In 2005, he was selected as one of the inaugural fellows by the Fletcher Foundation, which awards annual fellowships to people working on issues of race and civil rights and directed by Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. of Harvard University. In 2005, Crouch was named Man Of The Year by Patrick Lynch of the Police Benevolent Association of the City of New York for being "as bold in his support for New York City police officers as he is in his condemnation of the city’s “cheapskate” attitude in