A word or two about Leonard Feather, a man I first met through his writings when I was still a teenager and who later became my friend. I don’t know how many facts and stories I stuffed away in my head, things that jumped out from his voluminous Encyclopedia of Jazz and various supplemental encyclopedias and other books that came out in the decades that followed. My guess is he was very influential and a lot of jazz fans that came of age in the late 1950s and early 1960s had a similar experience.

Somewhere along the line I discovered that Leonard also played piano. He wasn’t Art Tatum, but could find his way around a keyboard and had been doing so since the late 1930s. I recall I came upon an old Continental 78 rpm disc in a junk shop and his name was on it. About the same time I bought a Lionel Hampton LP. It was the wonderfully outrageous 1945 All American Awards concert at Carnegie Hall and Leonard replaced Milt Buckner in the band for one song, to accompany Dinah Washington when she sang his composition, Evil Gal Blues. So he was a triple threat; he could write, play and compose. I was impressed. Still, I didn’t hurry out to get his recordings, but I kept reading his books and commentary.

I got to know Leonard in the 1970s, when he, along with his fellow Englishman, Stanley Dance, was very supportive of my fledgling record company. Leonard always had something nice to say about most of my releases in his regular column in the Los Angeles Times and when it was time to pick out someone to occupy the only cabin allotted for a critic during the first Floating Jazz Festival in 1983, I made the call to Leonard. He signed on, and in the process signed on for much more than he expected.

There was much confusion on the S/S Norway that year, but there was a good deal of music. I remember one day when a concert was supposed to hit at a certain time and the ship’s staff hadn’t set up the chairs properly. Shelley and I began to get things organized as best as we could and as we were moving things around the room Leonard came in, hoping to get a good seat down front. Shelley, who didn’t know his exalted place in the world of jazz, yelled at him and told him to start moving chairs, which he did with good spirit. They were friendly from that point on. The concert went well, as did most of them that year, Leonard wrote a glowing review and it helped jump-start our festival.

Leonard was not a wordsmith like Whitney Balliett or Otis Ferguson, but he was a skilled reporter who told the truth as he saw or heard it. Yet, because he was also a pianist and composer, he knew what it felt like on the other side, he knew how hard it was to not only catch a break but to keep going once you’d caught one. So he didn’t go out of his way to do any harm. If someone had a bad night, it wasn’t the headline the next day. He played the piano much the same way; he didn’t do any harm, and in many circumstances that was just fine.

Leonard came back to the S/S Norway many times and one of the most wonderful occasions was when he agreed to be a solo pianist at one of the annual Piano Spectaculars. It was 1992, and the reigning pianist on the ship that year was Dorothy Donegan. She’d been tearing it up for three straight years and she appeared on stage for the show wearing a Chanel hat and ready to take on anybody. She didn’t expect to have to take on Leonard Feather and Henry Mancini. It was one thing to blow away one of her fellow full time pianists, but quite another to take on legendary characters like Leonard and Henry. It all worked out and the audience was treated to wonderful four hand duets. To set the record straight, however, Leonard didn’t expect he’d be playing with Dorothy.

In early 1994 Leonard and Jane experienced severe damage with the Northridge earthquake. Their home was badly damaged and a falling bookcase injured Leonard. They were lucky the entire place didn’t go up in flames, and were saved by the water pipes that burst, which in turn put out a small fire that had started by ruptured gas lines. Everyone was very concerned about Leonard; he would turn eighty that year and was ill equipped to deal with the destruction and mayhem. 

That year we had back-to-back jazz festival at sea that would run for almost three weeks, from April 2 – 20. We suggested to Leonard that if he wanted, he could camp out at sea with all his friends. No need to clean up the mess or go to the store or prepare a meal. Leonard and Jane jumped on it. Not only did he get to relax and enjoy some good music, but he even managed to spend some time with Stanley Dance. I don’t know the circumstances, but for some reason these two old friends had somehow become estranged over the years. 

Stanley and Helen Dance signed on for the second half of the festival and the plan worked out as we’d hoped. I have a picture of all four going off the ship together when we landed in St. Kitts. It must have worked out because I didn’t hear any complaints. That’s the good news. The bad is that Leonard didn’t play the piano during those few weeks at sea and perhaps never did again. He made eighty and a few extra days, but though we spoke on the telephone, I never saw him again after the ship returned to Miami. He died a few months later, but all his words are still there for new generations of young jazz fans to absorb, if only their instructors will aim them in the right direction.

Leonard Feather and Dorothy Donegan, Saga Theater, At Sea Aboard the S/S Norway, November 1, 1993