[78-L] Leonard Feather's Inside Jazz

[Jeff Sultanof]

Geoffrey,

Thanks for reminding me that sometimes Giddins doesn't know what he's
talking about. How he could theorize that Monk was fall-guy is strange. Monk
was a peripheral figure during that time; few people were into what he was
doing, and Feather wanted to concentrate on the major figures of the music
to make his points, as he wrote the book to clear up a lot of
misunderstandings.

Giddins does not name these later generations of critics, a common flaw in
his writing. I believe him, but frankly hindsight is great when you don't
know the facts.

Jeff Sultanof

On Thu, Mar 11, 2010 at 12:04 AM, Geoffrey Wheeler <dialjazz at verizon.net>wrote:

>
> Here’s a shortened version of what Gary Giddens has to say about
> Feather’s “Inside Bebop.”
>
> In 1949, Feather published his first book, a shocking-pink $2 paperback
> with a tiny picture of his head ("the first critic to herald the new
> movement in jazz") under the title, Inside Be-Bop. It opened,
> hilariously, with six epigrams eviscerating bebop, including one from
> Hammond, who at the time found the whole subject of modern jazz
> anathema. Only 103 pages, it had an incalculable impact, making the
> case for Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie biographically,
> historically, and musically: even by today's standards, the
> transcriptions are exemplary. ... And though later generations of
> critics rebuked it and him for missing the boat on Thelonious Monk (my
> theory is he felt he needed a fall-guy to underscore the evaluative
> weight of his endorsements), he captained the ferry that brought Parker
> and company to port. Inside Be-Bop is probably the most plagiarized
> book ever published about jazz, as Leonard was quick to note. I told
> him much of the stealing was inadvertent: The book's central ideas
> passed so quickly into the realm of received wisdom, they were iterated
> by writers with no idea of their provenance. ...”
>
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