Lennie was a very critical cat. Looking back, he had a positive function in his criticisms to keep musical standards high, but I think that he was overly critical alot of the time. He told me that "Bill Evans has some nice chords, but they are all worked out", for example. I gave him Now he Sings Now He Sobs, and all he told me that "Chick's comping chords were too staccato in the LH".
He definately despised much of the FREE JAZZ thing in the 60's, telling us it was "all emotion, no feeling". I can dig where he was coming from because everybody was buying into alot of the bullshit free jazz stuff that was going on, but still I think he was overcritical in general..
Dave Frank