[78-L] Leonard Feather: an alternate opinion

[Cary Ginell]

This is from my brother, Richard, who has been writing jazz and classical reviews for decades. We both knew Leonard - him more than me. I just had close encounters with him at the Playboy Jazz Festival. Here's Richard's take on Feather:

> 
> Leonard's reputation was a double-edged sword, for sure. Many, if not 
> most, of us learned jazz at his feet via his encyclopedias and liner 
> notes, but early on there were some egregious conflicts of interest, 
> like lionizing Duke Ellington constantly in print while he was in 
> business running a record label with Ellington's son, Mercer. Turns out 
> he was right about Duke, yet for years I saw red whenever I read a 
> Feather piece on Ellington because there was too much uncritical hero 
> worship.
> 
> I will say this -- my first encounter with Leonard bore some 
> resemblance to Chris Albertson's, but Leonard's reaction was completely 
> different. I was the jazz critic at the Daily News at the time, and I 
> had read a Feather piece in the Times in which he name-checked the 
> critics working in the L.A. area – and my name was left off. So I fired 
> off a letter in his direction taking him to task for leaving me out -- 
> probably in intemperate language – along with some clips. Well, he 
> wrote back, completely contrite, apologizing and offering to meet me 
> for lunch sometime. We did, he couldn't have been nicer, and we became 
> friends.
> 
> True, he did occasionally steal some of my words for his own reviews. 
> It became so predictable that I even alerted the Philharmonic once to 
> watch out for these words in Leonard's next piece – yep, they appeared 
> right on cue. In my naivete, I was amused and flattered that this 
> "icon" and "legend" would want to steal this pipsqueak's ideas. But I 
> learned to keep my mouth shut later.
> 
> 
>Cary Ginell

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