About Leonard Feather
Leonard Geoffrey Feather (13 September 1914 – 22 September 1994) was a British-born jazz pianist, composer, and producer, who was best known for his music journalism and other writing. == Biography == Feather was born in London, England, into an upper middle-class Jewish family. He learned to play the piano and clarinet without formal training and 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 UK and the US as a record producer finally settled in New York City in 1939, where he lived until moving to Los Angeles in 1960. Feather was co-editor of Metronome magazine and served as chief jazz critic for the Los Angeles Times until his death. Feather made a significant contribution to the development of jazz broadcasting in Britain, first devising three Evergreens of Jazz programmes broadcast in August and September 1936, using George Scott-Wood and His Six Swingers. Leonard Feather's Swing Time, which was first broadcast National Service in January 1937, probably derived its programme title from the 1936 American RKO musical film, songs from which were featured in BBC gramophone recitals several times in December 1936. Initially trailed in the Radio Times as a programme of "Gramophone Records of Dance Music (Swing Time)". He also wrote the regular "Tempo di Jazz" column in the Radio Times in the mid-1930s. Feather's compositions have been widely recorded, including "Evil Gal Blues" and "Blowtop Blues" by Dinah Washington, and what is possibly his biggest hit, "How Blue Can You Get?", co-written with his wife Jane, recorded by blues artists Louis Jordan and B. B. King.
Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.