Copyright 2000 www.cosmopolis.ch Louis Gerber All rights
reserved.
Leonard Feather:
The Biographical Encyclopedia of Jazz
Leonard Feather and Ira Gitler have compiled the biographies of
3,300 jazz musicians from around the world. Arranged alphabetically according
to last name, each entry of this book chronologically lists the highlights of
every jazz musician's career. This is a must for basic information. Leonard
Feather is considered one of the deans of jazz criticism (another one was
German "jazz pope" Joachim-Ernst Berendt).
In the 1930s he moved from England to New York where he made a career as a
jazz journalist, producer, lecturer, broadcaster, musician, and writer of
hundreds of jazz compositions. In the mid 1950s he founded The Encyclopedia
of Jazz series and moved to California, becoming the jazz columnist of the
Los Angeles Times. He wrote Inside Bebop and The Book of Jazz.
Leonard Feather died in 1994. Ira Gitler is writing on jazz since 1951. In the
1960s he was the New York editor of Down Beat and continues to
contribute to that publication as well as to JazzTimes and other
publications. Ira Gitler is a record and concert producer. He teaches jazz
history at the Manhattan School of Music. His books include Jazz Masters of
the '40s and Swing to Bop.
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Leonard Feather and Ira Gitler: The Biographical
Encyclopedia of Jazz. OUP, 1999, 718 p. Get the book from Amazon.com or from Amazon.de.
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