Leonard Feather

Leonard Feather (born Sept. 13, 1914, London, Eng.—died Sept. 22, 1994, Encino, Calif., U.S.) was a British-born American jazz journalist, producer, and songwriter whose standard reference work, The Encyclopedia of Jazz, and energetic advocacy placed him among the most influential of jazz critics.

A writer for English popular music journals in the early 1930s, Feather moved to the United States in 1935 and soon thereafter began producing records by major artists, including saxophonists Benny Carter and Coleman Hawkins; he also sometimes arranged music and played piano for the recordings. In the early 1940s Feather worked as publicist for Duke Ellington. Meanwhile, his biting contempt for much traditional jazz led him into a running feud with fellow critic John Hammond, and trumpeter Muggsy Spanier allegedly slugged him before recording “Feather Brain.” Feather’s 1949 book Inside Be-Bop helped to elevate and sustain the high reputations of trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and saxophonist Charlie Parker. His Encyclopedia of Jazz, the first of a series of encyclopaedias focusing on different aspects of the tradition, was published in 1955; in addition to thousands of musician biographies, these works offered histories, musical analyses, studies of jazz’s place in society and its relation to classical music, and excerpts from the “Blindfold Test” column that Feather wrote for Metronome and Down Beat magazines for three decades. Among the songs he composed, “Evil Gal Blues” and “How Blue Can You Get?” were popular hits for Dinah Washington and B.B. King, respectively. Beginning in the mid-1960s, as jazz critic for the Los Angeles Times, he harshly criticized the avant-garde jazz that followed his beloved bebop. Feather continued writing into the 1990s.