‘He was a cultural bridge’

His presence was a constant at arts events for decades, but Roscoe Crenshaw was more than a man holding a camera. He bore witness and offered unwavering support for art with a St. Louis connection that was a creative response to the experience of being Black in America.

He documented a segment of the arts community that was criminally ignored by mainstream media, yet managed to have a global influence. He was an artist in his own right – as a photographer, writer and a poet. He had an encyclopedic knowledge of the best in local, national and international jazz.

Crenshaw passed away on Friday, June 20, 2025, after a series of ongoing health issues. He was 82.

“Ros was a living library who could fill in the missing links and the nuances which most jazz writers and historians miss,” said St. Louis-based saxophonist Jerome Williams in a touching Facebook tribute. “He spoke from experience, from being there and around the cats – and as a witness to what was happening on the scene and behind the scenes.”

Crenshaw was a longtime contributor to The St. Louis American, both as a writer and a photographer. He wrote mostly about jazz.

“He was more than just a contributor,” said St. Louis American News Editor Alvin A. Reid. “He was a friend of the paper.”

Roscoe Crenshaw was born on August 20, 1942. By the time he graduated Soldan High School, he had developed a true passion for jazz. In the nearly 70 years that followed, documenting the region’s footprint on the genre became an obsession.

“Roscoe Crenshaw captured almost all – if not literally every – established and rising musician who performed in St. Louis,” Williams said. “And many of those who are mentioned here are still making it happen either locally, nationally, internationally or as longtime residents and living icons abroad.”

His photographs ran the gamut of Black culture. 

“You don’t have very many individuals who were as conscientious as he was in terms of the arts and in terms of representing his people – our people – in this city as far as photographing and writing articles on them,” said longtime friend and collaborator George Sams.

Sams has a reputation as a former gallery owner, a musician and photo documentarian in his own right. He was an emerging teen musician with a love for jazz when he initially connected with Crenshaw.

“I met him when I was about 16 or so, in the 1960s,” Sams said. “He was older than I was. He went to Soldan, along with Lester Bouie and few other people during that time period. We met because we traveled in similar circles of musicians and other artists.”

Sams gave Crenshaw a show at his Metropolitan Gallery some years ago. The pair had made plans a few years ago to collaborate on a project that featured the images they had captured on the St. Louis music scene, but Crenshaw’s health declined to the point where they were unable to move forward.

“We were going to produce this photo album,” Sams said. “A lot of St. Louis artists have gone on to impact the world – Fontella Bass, Lester Bouie, Miles Davis, Julius Hemphill and the list goes on of people who have come out of or were based in this region. He was there to document what we were doing – and it wasn’t a transactional thing.”

Sams said Crenshaw was a historian – and more.

“The work that he was doing with Eugene Redmond with the writer’s club, he was functioning and collaborating with the writers over there too,” Sams said. “He was a cultural bridge, and he deserves credit for that.”

Even when his health began to betray him, Crenshaw tried his best to carry on. One of the last events where this reporter saw him in action was at the swearing in of the late Shirley LeFlore as Poet Laureate for the city of St. Louis in 2018. As he was snapping away with his camera, he appeared to lose his balance. He was scooped up before he could hit the floor. He was given orange juice, but refused additional medical treatment so that he could continue shooting – which he did for the remainder of the ceremony.

“Even when struggling with various ailments in his later years, he would still get out and support the arts,” Williams said. “I hope someone either reaches out or has a connection with his next of kin so that the treasure chest of his St. Louis photographic history – especially an astounding evolutionary period in Black culture in St. Louis – will be properly collated, preserved and accessible to us all, and for generations to come.”