Jump to content

Leonard Feather's Encyclopedia Of Jazz In The Sixties


Recommended Posts

I've looked at it a fair amount back in the day, library had it...the more you know, the more problematic it becomes. Not factually, but just...choices made, and the Feather-pimping (call it bias or personal preference if you like) angle becomes a lot more obvious in this later book, because, it was the 60s, and everybody knew more by then.

It would have been ok if he had called it Hi, I'm Leonard Feather, This Is Who I Like, but it wasn't called that, was it....

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think he was still in NYC when this was published, so it's not as bad as it got in The Encyclopedia Of Jazz In The Seventies, but still..."certain artists" are afforded recognition/write-ups that one could argue was out of line with their actual overall significance/impact. Otoh, good for anybody to get more spotlight than they would ordinarily get, but otoh, when there's a clearly discernible pattern...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Whatever the problems with who's in and who's out, however, it's a valuable resource for when you need biographical information on those that are included. It's not infallible on the facts but pretty good most of the time. I have been glad to have it on my shelf.

Edited by Mark Stryker
Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Mark Stryker said:

Whatever the problems with who's in and who's out, however, it's a valuable resource for when you need biographical information on those that are included. It's not infallible on the facts but pretty good most of the time. I have been glad to have it on my shelf.

I agree.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've got all of the Feather Encyclopedias and, when I have access to them, they can be useful and amusing (with application of hindsight...though not as much as the Panassies).

Relying on the first encyclopedia, I discovered that a certain prominent sax and flute man was having a birthday on the night of a concert I was attending.  I decided to let the pianist know.  He made a really over-the-top announcement.   Unfortunately, the birthdate was wrong.  I felt about two inches tall.  Apologies were insufficient.  That was thirty-five years ago.   

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Tell me more about it, please. I cannot say too much about LF, only knew his liner notes on the first records I had when I was almost a kid.

 

But I always thought LF was more a fan of swing into bebop and hard bop and not further. Did he dig Ornette, Don Cherry, Sun Ra, etc so much that he could write an encyclopedia of jazz of the 60´s ?????

And a LF book about the 70´s ??? Was he into funk and fusion and all that good stuff we had ?

It must have happened a miracle with LF that suddenly he might have dug what happened in jazz in the 70´s , because in LF´s book "From Satchmo to Miles" he seems not to understand what Miles does (and that book is so old it was written in the early 70´s, so Miles was just at the very early beginning of electric (On the Corner ) .

Edited by Gheorghe
Link to comment
Share on other sites

21 hours ago, Mark Stryker said:

Whatever the problems with who's in and who's out, however, it's a valuable resource for when you need biographical information on those that are included. It's not infallible on the facts but pretty good most of the time. I have been glad to have it on my shelf.

All in all I agree with this assessment too.

I've had his "Encyclopedia Yearbook of Jazz" published in 1956 as well as his "New Yearbook of Jazz" published in 1958 (both reprinted in the early 90s in one volume) as well as his standard opus "Encyclopedia of Jazz" copyrighted in 1960 (subheaded "The New Edition of the Encyclopedia of Jazz") and found this latter one a very useful reference work (and an interesting "period piece" when referring to the other feature articles included). Long before I was able to buy thiese books, I often browsed through the Encyclopedia published in 1960 in the library of our local Amerika Haus (still in existence at the time).

They also had the Encyclopedia of Jazz in the Sixties which I found less interesting or essential to my interests at the time (I might think differently about it today but would not invest huge sums for a copy), much like his subsequent colume of the 70s. Gheorghe, from what i have seen these are not books focusing primarily on free or funk or fusion or whatever but "updates" of his 1960 encyclopedia, i.e. with updates of the biographies of the musicians included in the earlier book. New developments are featured too, including the folk blues revival. Like others have said before, his preferences become more obvious there but I would not hold this all that much against him. You just have to take these limitations into account. Others, when covering jazz of that period, dwelled exclusively on the latest fads that were all the rage and gave all those short shrift who had been around before (and STILL carried on), so overall the printed matter out there balances things ...

Edited by Big Beat Steve
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thank you Big Beat Steve .

So, his books cannot be compared with something like Joachim Ernst Behrend "Jazz-Buch", who really was interested in writing about the current styles. My 1977 edition had it all in it, the Free Jazz from the last decade, and the electric jazz of the 70´s . 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It depends on what (and what approach to the subject) you are looking for. The way I see it, Feather did acknowledge the new developments but approached them from the foundations of previous styles of jazz. In my PERSONAL opinion Berendt is one those others who went all overboard (way too much in my opinion) in embracing whatever was new-fangled and "current", often dismissing what had been going on before (and STILL went on by those from earlier decades who still were around and stuck to their guns) because by then whatever was the "latest thing" (I am not saying "New Thing" because the connotations are different as you know) in jazz seemed to merit all the attention, and it seems to me he only found these latest developments to be fully valid. Everything else was passé. And I must admit I never got to grips with his later writings when he even went so far as to say about the further development of jazz that "no, jazz doesn't have to swing. Swing is not needed for it to be jazz", and other utter nonsense. And this even before he went all esoteric ("out in left field", as Terry Gibbs would have described it:g) ...

So in a way he was one of those "antipodes" of Leonard Feathers' approach. Though I would not say Feather was as conventional or traditional-minded as Stanley Dance, John Chilton or others in that vein.

Edited by Big Beat Steve
Link to comment
Share on other sites

None?

Unless your power goes out or something. But even then, Feather gives me the heebie-jeebies, to this day. So...I don't have a need to know birthdays, and have learned enough from enough other sources that if my power went out, I'd rather use a Leonard Feather "encyclopedia" to start a fire than for reading. Fire give more light and more heat!

And for some reason, now I'm hearing "Norwegian Wood"....

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Jazz/Grove has a few nice things, e.g. Felicity Howlett on Tatum, but many entries are a joke. I wrote a review of it, which I may post if I can find it. My favorite perhaps from Jazz/Grove was this on Joe Maini: "He died after losing a game of Russian Roulette."

Oddly enough, that negative review of Jazz/Grove got me tangled up in revealing ways with both Mr. Feather and one of his rivals for low man on the jazz journalist totem pole, Gene Lees.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, jlhoots said:

So now we don't like Gene Lees either. Just checking.

Well, I don't like Lees -- YMMV.

Two more gems from Jazz/Grove, both from its editor Barry Kernfeld (these may have been altered in later editions, at least I hope so):

“... on tours with Jazz at the Philharmonic, [Flip Phillips]  acquired a reputation for his energetic improvisations …; despite his rather tasteless, honking tone, these performances were popular with audiences.”

Flip wasn't popular with JATP fans "despite" his honking but because of it. 

Kenny Dorham “rivaled his greatest contemporaries in technical command.”
I love KD's playing, but the above statement is absurd.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

22 hours ago, Gheorghe said:

Tell me more about it, please. I cannot say too much about LF, only knew his liner notes on the first records I had when I was almost a kid.

 

But I always thought LF was more a fan of swing into bebop and hard bop and not further. Did he dig Ornette, Don Cherry, Sun Ra, etc so much that he could write an encyclopedia of jazz of the 60´s ?????

And a LF book about the 70´s ??? Was he into funk and fusion and all that good stuff we had ?

It must have happened a miracle with LF that suddenly he might have dug what happened in jazz in the 70´s , because in LF´s book "From Satchmo to Miles" he seems not to understand what Miles does (and that book is so old it was written in the early 70´s, so Miles was just at the very early beginning of electric (On the Corner ) .

Leonard did write liners for a few CTI albums IIRC, definitely "The California Concert", and at the beginning of "CTI Summer Jazz At The Hollywood Bowl" he dryly remarks "if jazz was dead, this was the biggest funeral I ever saw".  So, he must have had some taste for what was going on in the 70's.  Though it does seem in the liners to (I think) Stan Getz' "The Dolphin" on Concord, he seemed to delight in the fact Getz was returning to a purely acoustic quartet mainly playing standards, versus what he did at Columbia, making odd mention at the beginning that Stan at Concord was making real music, and had artistic control.  Feather and Ira Gitler's notes on LP's have had a huge impact on me on how I write about jazz, if not necessarily agreeing with their viewpoints on acoustic vs electric and vice versa.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, CJ Shearn said:

Leonard did write liners for a few CTI albums IIRC, definitely "The California Concert", and at the beginning of "CTI Summer Jazz At The Hollywood Bowl" he dryly remarks "if jazz was dead, this was the biggest funeral I ever saw".  So, he must have had some taste for what was going on in the 70's.  Though it does seem in the liners to (I think) Stan Getz' "The Dolphin" on Concord, he seemed to delight in the fact Getz was returning to a purely acoustic quartet mainly playing standards, versus what he did at Columbia, making odd mention at the beginning that Stan at Concord was making real music, and had artistic control.  Feather and Ira Gitler's notes on LP's have had a huge impact on me on how I write about jazz, if not necessarily agreeing with their viewpoints on acoustic vs electric and vice versa.

Stan Getz returning to acoustic jazz and the acoustics vs electric reminds me of that 3 or 4 CDs from Montreux 1977 (CBS All Stars or like that), with Stan and other´s from the acoustic era, together with some of the foremost electric players like Bob James, Billy Cobham etc.

I also can say that I reallly enjoyed Feathers and Ira Gitlers liner notes, but it was mainly on older albums, many of them BN.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

8 hours ago, Larry Kart said:

Well, I don't like Lees -- YMMV.

Two more gems from Jazz/Grove, both from its editor Barry Kernfeld (these may have been altered in later editions, at least I hope so):

“... on tours with Jazz at the Philharmonic, [Flip Phillips]  acquired a reputation for his energetic improvisations …; despite his rather tasteless, honking tone, these performances were popular with audiences.”

Flip wasn't popular with JATP fans "despite" his honking but because of it. 

 


If you (or whoever repeated this statement ad nauseam through the times) think Flip Phillips (or buy this story unchecked) was honking that extremely then you ain't heard many out-and-out honkers.

And when it comes to "taste", all those honkers were just forerunners of the screechers and squeakers like Brötzmann et al. to come on in later decades anyway.

YMMV (or one man's meat being another man's poison) indeed and off-tone phrasing can be interpreted in a number of ways as you can see, even if such analogies are anathema to some out there (yes I know ... ) ;)



 

Edited by Big Beat Steve
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...