Victor Stanley Feldman (7 April 1934 – 12 May 1987) was an English jazz musician who played mainly piano, vibraphone, and percussion. He began performing professionally during childhood, eventually earning acclaim in the UK jazz scene as an adult. Feldman emigrated to the United States in the mid-1950s, where he continued working in jazz and also as a session musician with a variety of pop and rock performers.
Feldman was born in Edgware on 7 April 1934. He caused a sensation as a musical prodigy when he was "discovered", aged seven. His family were all musical and his father founded the Feldman Swing Club in London in 1942 to showcase his talented sons. Feldman performed from a young age: "from 1941 to 1947 he played drums in a trio with his brothers; when he was nine he took up piano and when he was 14 started playing the vibraphone". He featured in the films King Arthur Was a Gentleman (1942) and Theatre Royal (1943). In 1944, he was featured at a concert with Glenn Miller's AAAF band, as "Kid Krupa" (in reference to drummer Gene Krupa). He also "took a prominent role in the musical Piccadilly Hayride" (1946–1948).
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His drums teacher Carlo Krahmer encouraged Feldman to play the vibraphone which he did first in the Ralph Sharon Sextet and later in the Roy Fox band. Feldman played with Vic Lewis and Ted Heath. Feldman played with Sharon from late 1949 to 1951, including performances in Switzerland. There were further overseas trips with Ronnie Scott (to Paris in 1952), and Harry Parry (to India). He also played with Parry in the UK from October 1953 to January 1954. From 1954, when he recorded with Jimmy Deuchar, and played again with Scott, "he was working mainly as a pianist and vibraphonist; his early vibraphone playing showed the influence of Milt Jackson".
Before leaving the UK to work in the US, Feldman recorded with Ronnie Scott's orchestra and quintet from 1954 to 1955, which also featured other important British jazz musicians such as Phil Seamen and Hank Shaw. It was Scott who recommended that Feldman emigrate to the US, which he did in 1955. Once there, his first steady work was with the Woody Herman Herd. He had frequent return trips to the UK over the following years. His 8-week visit in 1956–57 included studio recording sessions and club appearances. After Herman he joined Buddy DeFranco for a short time. In 1957, Feldman settled in Los Angeles permanently and then specialised in lucrative session work for the US film and recording industry.
His 1958 album The Arrival of Victor Feldman includes LaFaro and Stan Levey on drums. He recorded with many jazz artists, including Benny Goodman, George Shearing, Cannonball Adderley and Miles Davis, most notably on Davis' 1963 album Seven Steps to Heaven, the title tune being his own composition. Davis invited Feldman to join his group full-time, but Feldman declined, preferring the stability of studio work to the career of a touring musician.
He also branched out to work with a variety of musicians outside of jazz, recording with artists such as Frank Zappa in 1967, Steely Dan and Joni Mitchell in the 1970s and Tom Waits and Joe Walsh in the 1980s. It is Feldman's percussion work on Steely Dan's song "Do It Again" that gives the song its Latin groove. Feldman appears on all seven Steely Dan albums released in the 1970s and 1980 in the band's first incarnation.
Feldman's vibraphone soloing is featured extensively on the Grammy Award-winning The Music from Peter Gunn, with AllMusic writing, "There's some particularly impressive work by drummer Shelly Manne and vibes player Victor Feldman, whose cool, understated playing seems to deliberately recall that of Milt Jackson."
He cut jazz dates for Choice, Concord, Palo Alto, and TBA. In the ensuing years, Feldman crossed regularly from mainstream pop music to jazz and rock ‘n’ roll, accompanying Frank Sinatra, Neil Diamond, Steely Dan, the Doobie Brothers and Kenny Loggins, among others. He was heard on countless movie and TV sound tracks and had recently been on tour with his Generation Band, a group he formed with fellow studio musician and saxophonist Tom Scott.
Feldman died of a heart attack in 1987 at his Woodland Hills home in Los Angeles, aged 53, following an asthma attack. In 2009, he was inducted in the Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville.
(Edited from Wikipedia & Los Angeles Times)