Quincy Troupe

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Quincy Thomas Troupe, Jr. (born July 22, 1939) is an American poet, editor, journalist and professor emeritus at the University of California, San Diego, in La Jolla, California.

He is best known as the biographer of Miles Davis, the jazz musician.

Early life

Troupe is the son of baseball catcher Quincy Trouppe (who added a second "P" to the family name while playing in Mexico to accommodate the Spanish pronunciation "Trou-pay"). As a teenager in 1955, he recalled hearing Miles Davis at a St. Louis, Missouri, fish joint, where some fellow patrons identified the 78 rpm juke-box record as "Donna", which was Davis' first recorded composition. (The record is most likely to have been the Charlie Parker Quintet session recorded for Savoy Records on May 8, 1947.)

In his book Miles and Me Troupe recalls the experience:

As a young man Troupe was athletic and attended Grambling State University on a basketball scholarship. However, after his first year he quit and subsequently joined the United States Army, where he was stationed in France and playing on the Army basketball team. While in France he had a chance encounter with the noted French Existentialist philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre, who recommended that Troupe try his hand at poetry.

When he returned to civilian life, Troupe moved to Los Angeles, where he became a regular presence at the Watts Writers Workshop and began working in a more jazz-based style. It was on a tour with the Watts group that he first began his academic life as a teacher. The Watts Writers Workshop was located in a building that also had a theater, allowing members to do readings, workshops, plays and presentations. It was a meeting point for many in the Black Power movement, Black Arts Movement and the civil rights movement and through it Troupe met many individuals involved in other cities including Ishmael Reed (Umbra Group), James Baldwin. In 1968, Troupe edited the anthology Watts Poets: A Book of New Poetry and Essays.

His work is associated with Black Arts Movement writers such as Amiri Baraka, Nikki Giovanni, Wanda Coleman, Haki Madhubuti and Ishmael Reed, who were also friends. Their work was diverse but was strongly informed by world literature and jazz music. Some time later it emerged that the Workshop had been a target of the covert FBI counterintelligence program COINTELPRO, and that the Workshop, along with its theater, were burned to the ground in 1973 by the FBI informant and infiltrator, Darthard Perry (a.k.a. Ed Riggs). It also emerged that Riggs had not only been sabotaging equipment at the Workshop but also used his association with it to infiltrate the Los Angeles chapter of the Black Panthers, and numerous other organizations that promoted black culture, ultimately being instrumental in their demise.

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Career

Troupe taught at the College of Staten Island in New York during the 1970s. He was a regular on the poetry circuit during his time as a performer solo or in groups around the country.

Troupe was recruited by Spin magazine in 1985 to write an exclusive two-part interview with Miles Davis, which led to Simon & Schuster's co-authorship for Davis' autobiography. Miles: The Autobiography was released in 1990 and received an American Book Award for the writers, gaining them numerous accolades and praise.

Troupe, a professor of Caribbean and American literatures as well as creative writing at the University of California, San Diego, from 1991 to 2003, was a professor of Caribbean and American literatures and creative writing.

Troupe was appointed California's first poet laureate by then Governor Gray Davis on June 11, 2002. Troupe did not have a degree from Grambling, according to a background check that followed his appointment; he attended for only two semesters from 1957–58 and then dropped out. He resigned rather than make it a political issue for the Democratic governor after admitting to not having a degree. Troupe resigned from the poet laureate's position in October 2002 and resigned from his post at UCSD as a result.

Troupe returned to New York City shortly after the scandal.

The year 2006 saw the publication of his co-made millionaire Chris Gardner's book The Pursuit of Happiness, which was released. Will Smith was inspired for a film of the same name later this year.

James Baldwin: The Legacy (1989) and Miles and Me: A Memoir of Miles Davis (2000) are two other notable Troupe works. He edited Giant Talk: An Anthology of Third World Writing (1975) and is a founding editor of Confrontation: A Journal of Third World Literature and American Rag.

Troupe and his partner, Margaret, currently reside in New York City.

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