BLAST FROM THE PAST: Reading Eagle writer called out the Berks Jazz Fest for not being real jazz

John Fidler is one of the most skilled writer/editor the Reading Eagle employs. It says so at the end of his every column, where he gloats that he holds a master's degree in English. That puts him light years ahead of the paper's other desk clowns, who need to look it up to determine whether a traffic accident occurred in Bernville or Upper Meatball Township.John Fidler, M.A., knows jazz when he hears it.

A few years back, Fidler decided to call a licorice stick a licorice stick. He filed a commentary (read it here) that said the Berks Jazz Fest books not the pure improvisational stylings of Bird or Coltrane but the loungey noodlings of Blood Sweat & Tears scrubs.

John Ernesto, who double-dips as a Reading Eagle manager and general manager of the Jazz Fest (guess which commands most hours in his "work"day?), went into panic shock. He phoned editor Chuck Gallagher bright and early that Sunday morning and ripped him a new eardrum. Gallagher blew him off, shrugging, "I can't talk right now. I'm rehearsing a new play. I'm playing the title role in a version of "The Wizard of Oz" set in Shakespeare's day. Goodbye and good luck."

Ernesto never forgave such indignity. How he's plotting to move his pride and joy from under the auspices of the Berks Arts Council and strike out on his own...but not before he runs up his Eagle credit card with "business" lunches every weekday at the Peanut Bar. (The paper laid off five admen just yesterday to pay for his tab.) That will leave only the Greater Reading Film Festival for Arts Council boy-genius Chris Cannon to drive into the ditch.

Does Albert Boscov know he's sponsoring a jazz festival that is jazz in the same sense that a woodpecker is a carpenter? Perhaps he could sponsor the Reading School District instead and obtain naming rights for the high school.