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Leonard Feather (An
Encounter With Miles Davis)
by Jim Beebe
Jim Beebe is a recently retired Chicago Jazz Trombonist. This article
appeared in the Dixieland Jazz Mailing List.
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I have been asked to post a piece wherein I related an
encounter with
Miles Davis that had some significance to me. This was in a piece I
wrote on Leonard Feather, a prominent jazz critic years ago.
by Jim Beebe
[Ed. Lorraine Feather's article about her father, to which Beebe
refers, has been removed from this website at her request.]
I wrote this not only for myself but for so many musicians who are no
longer here and never had a forum to call Feather on his scurrilous
writing. Lorraine Feather's piece, "Life with Feather," cries out for
correction and comment. Her recollections of her father, jazz critic
Leonard Feather, are much fonder than those of most jazz musicians.
Sadly, she carries forth the same bitter prejudices and distorted
history that were harbored so long by her father.
Right off, Lorraine tells us that the Esquire Jazz Polls (1940s) would
"typically honor Dixieland artists and ignore more modern sounds...."
The inference here is that Esquire rigged these Polls in favor of so
called "Dixieland" artists. That is until Leonard Feather came to the
rescue with a Critics Poll. Of course the "Critics" would know better
than the average fan and would vote for the "modern" artists. Just who
these inferior "Dixieland" artists were is never identified.
The truth is a wee bit different. Leonard Feather came here from
England and wangled his way into a position of influence as a writer
on the NY Jazz scene in the 1940s. As the newer, more modern jazz
sounds and artists began to emerge, Feather decreed that all pre-bebop
musicians were hopelessly old-hat and outdated. No matter what style
or era they played within, they were now lumped together as
"Dixieland" musicians. Feather wasn't the only writer to do this, but
he was by far the most vicious. Many great musicians who now most of
us revere as legends Feather declared antiques.
This had devastating ramifications for many musicians, as younger fans
picked up on this via the jazz magazines that Feather and the others
wrote for, and they would shun any but the latest be-bop musicians.
Art Hodes is a good example. He was then very active in New York and
became one of Feather's targets on his growing hit list. Hodes was
also doing some respectable writing which moved him notches higher on
this list. In every column or article, Feather would take nasty shots
at Hodes...as corny, outdated, etc.
Feather had also gained some influence with the jazz record companies.
They were afraid of him, afraid that he might shoot down their
recordings or artists in print. Lester Young had a contract to do a
recording of blues tunes for a particular record company and he wanted
Art Hodes on piano for this date. Art had worked a number of times
with Lester and he was one of the great blues pianists, so this made
perfect sense.
But Feather stepped in and told the record company not to use Hodes,
he was too old fashioned. Hodes was cut out of this date at a time
when he desperately needed the money and the pleasure and artistic
recognition of recording with Pres.( Lester Young). Art never forgot
this vicious act and in his later years he told of getting booked on a
jazz cruise with Feather. Art said that Feather acted as though none
of the early nastiness ever happened.
I was a young musician/fan getting out of high school, going to
college and into military service. I had fallen in love with earlier
"classic" jazz styles and musicians. This was the New Orleans jazz
style known broadly as Dixieland jazz. Dixieland was an honorable
term then which denoted the polyphonic counterpoint ensemble style.
Honorable, that is, until Leonard Feather decided that it was an
out-of-date, inferior, and corny.
I began reading the jazz publications and Feather was a predominant
writer. Almost every article or review was negative in tone and
usually full of contempt and vicious remarks about "Dixieland" or
pre-bop musicians. But even the modern musicians became targets of
his poison pen.
I could not, for the life of me, figure out why he was constantly
knocking this wonderful music and these tremendous musicians. This
was the wonderful 78 recording era and I had no pictures or anything
to go by. I didn't know if these guys were young or old, white or
black or whatever. And I didn't care. All I knew was that I liked the
music. I was aware of the modern sounds and recordings but at that
time I was not much interested in them.
The negativity that emanated from Feather and others was so fierce
that I, as a young fan, imagined that the "Dixieland" and "Bebop"
musicians must hate each other. Oddly enough, the guy who straightened
me out on this was Miles Davis. Here is how that happened.
After a couple of years of college, the Korean war was on and I ended
up in the Marines and was stationed in San Francisco for a year. This
was very fortunate for me, as almost every great jazz musician in
every style came through. The Hangover Club had the leading traveling
dixieland-traditional groups and the Blackhawk booked the leading
Mainstream-modern groups. I bounced like a yo-yo between these two
clubs...and others.
At one point Miles Davis was at the Blackhawk. Bob Scobey was having
a bi-weekly Sunday jazz session with guest artists at another club. I
was usually there and Scobey's sessions were in the
traditional-dixieland-mainstream bag. I walked in there one Sunday
and Miles Davis was the guest artist. I was stunned...I could not
believe this because in my mind these guys had to hate each other.
Yet here was Miles who was very congenial and joined right in. They
did middle-of-the-road stuff that everyone was comfortable with and
they seemed to be having a good time musically.
During a break I got up my nerve and went up to Miles. I stammered
out something to the effect that I couldn't believe that he was there
playing with Scobey as I had it in my mind from what I read that
stylistically they could never play together and they must dislike
each other. Right off Miles said, "You've been reading that asshole
Leonard Feather, haven't you?" I nodded and Miles neatly and briefly
explained that the divisions in jazz were artificial and promoted by
writers like Feather.
He said that they were professional musicians and these divisions and
contempt for other styles did not exist among professionals, except
with some of the younger ones. He explained briefly how the different
jazz styles were connected and interwoven.
This little exchange with Miles changed forever the way I looked at
jazz and music in general. I became a professional musician and made
a rather loose hobby of tracking Leonard Feather and his writing via
Downbeat and other publications.
Feather ran the Downbeat Blindfold Test for a number of years. Each
month would have a different guest, a name musician and Feather would
play recordings without telling who was on the recordings. The guest
was to try and guess who it was and make comments. Feather was quite
sly and used this forum to, of course, put down the
"dixieland-classic" jazz musicians.
Jelly Roll Morton became one of his main targets and Feather made a
ferocious effort to denigrate and discredit Morton. And he was slick
in the way that he did it. He would have a modern artist as guest and
play him one of Morton's records...not one of Morton's better records
but always one of his lesser recordings. The idea was to elicit a
negative comment...which he usually got...but not always.
Feather would also use this forum to try and pit musicians against
each other...to get them to make negative comments about each other.
Here is an example: Jack Teagarden was his guest and Jack hardly ever
knocked anyone. But Feather got him to. He played Jack the worst
recording that Bill Harris ever did. Out of all the great recordings
that Harris did, Feather picked this one, done when he was drunk or
sick, that should never have been released. Feather relished
revealing in print Teagarden's scathing remarks.
A few musicians did get in some payback. Muggsy Spanier slugged
Feather in a bar over some things that he had written and there were
other and some quite clever bits of revenge. Ralph Sutton always
called him, Trafalgar Quill. Sadly, Feather was quite universally
despised by most jazz musicians.
I was in L.A. one summer after Feather became the jazz critic for the
Los Angeles Times. His reviews were almost always negative. Great
musicians, many of whom are now legends, were cut down with nasty,
vitriolic remarks. A few years later I was with Art Hodes at a
Disneyland Jazz event. In our group was Doc Evans, Barney Bigard, Bob
Cousins etc...there is no way that this was not a good group. Not to
Feather, who didn't forget his old target, Art Hodes. It was sad to
see him attack Art yet once again in the L.A. Times.
Feather was an amateur song writer and was forever trying to pressure
jazz artists into recording his songs. British jazz writer Steve
Voce, last year in a Jazz Journal article, wrote of an interview with
Stan Kenton. Kenton told how Feather tried to strong arm him into
doing an album of his songs. Stan said that Feather's songs were
hopeless and he couldn't record them. Stan Kenton related how he
turned down Feather as diplomatically as he could but ever after this
he became one of Feather's principle targets with a barrage of columns
and reviews which attacked Stan, his band and his recordings.
One could go on at some length about Feather's
negative influence on
the American Jazz scene. Lorraine Feather sees her father as "less a
critic per se than a champion of the music he had fallen in love with
as a young Englishman." I wish that this was so but the truth is
otherwise.
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