Leonard Feather

Leonard Geoffrey Feather (September 13th, 1914 – September 22nd, 1994) was a British-born jazz pianist, composer, and producer who was best known for his music journalism and other writing.

Feather was born in London into a strictly conformist upper-middle-class Jewish family. He learned to play the piano and clarinet (though was not formally trained), and had started writing about jazz and film by his late teens. At the age of twenty-one Feather made his first visit to the United States, and after working in the U.K. and the U.S. as a record producer finally settled in New York City in 1939, where he lived until moving to Los Angeles in 1960. Feather served as chief jazz critic for the Los Angeles Times until his death. He died in Sherman Oaks, California at the age of eighty.