[Dixielandjazz] Leslie Kenton's Book

[Stephen G Barbone]

First posted about on the DJML over a year ago, Leslie Kenton's book,  
"Love Affair: The Memoir of a Forbidden Father-Daughter Relationship."  
is scheduled for release in mid February. For more info see: (Or  
Google the title)
http://www.rbooks.co.uk/product.aspx?id=0091910536
Jazz great Stan Kenton raped his daughter, she claims in new book
Stan Kenton, the bandleader considered to be one of the founding  
fathers of modern jazz, conducted an incestuous relationship with his  
daughter, she has claimed.
By Anita Singh, Showbusiness Editor - Telegraph Co. UK
Published: 8:00AM GMT 30 Jan 2010
Leslie Kenton, an author and former beauty editor of Harpers & Queen,  
said that her father first raped her when she was 11 and continued to  
do so until she was 13. She has chronicled events in her book, titled:  
"Love Affair: The Memoir of a Forbidden Father-Daughter Relationship."
The musician died in 1979, aged 67, after a long battle with  
alcoholism. Despite the abuse which led her to attempt suicide in her  
teens - Leslie Kenton said she still loved her father and describes  
him as a man of "creative genius, humor and joy". She believes he  
suffered from a condition known as dissociative identity disorder,  
which brought on selective amnesia.
The Stan Kenton Orchestra was one of the most popular US big bands of  
the 1940s and Kenton was famous for his experimental "wall of sound".  
The Kansas-born musician toured extensively and the alleged incest  
began in the summer of 1952, when Leslie ws sharing her father's hotel  
room during a tour.
"I believe he tried his best to resist touching me. Then, drowning in  
a sea of alcohol, he would come to my bed, only to deny the next  
morning that he'd been there," Kenton told the Mail on Sunday's You  
magazine.
"There's no question in my mind that what ultimately destroyed my  
father was his relationship with me. He was horrified by what he had  
done, yet he could never really face it."
Kenton, 68, said that she and her father shared a close bond when she  
was a child. "I think I was the only person on earth he felt he could  
be himself with. He would ring me in the middle of the night in a  
state and I would do everything I could to try and reassure him."
She confronted her father in 1972 when he visited London to record a  
show for the BBC. He went "as white as a sheet", Kenton said. "He was  
a big man and he physically crumpled." According to Kenton, her father  
told her: "All I can say is that I'm so sorry. At that part of my  
life, I didn't know what was going on."
The book, to be published next month by Vermilion, is dedicated: "For  
Stanley, with all my love."
Stan Kenton married three times and Leslie was the only child from his  
first marriage to Violet Peters. Born in California, she moved to  
England in her 20s and spent 14 years as health and beauty editor for  
Harpers & Queen (now Harper's Bazaar). She is now a novelist,  
broadcaster and "shamanic practitioner", and has four children. She  
splits her time between homes in London and New Zealand.
The Kenton family history already contained its fair share of tragedy  
and controversy. The musician's second wife, Ann Richards, a jazz  
singer, shot herself dead in 1981, leaving the couple's two children.  
Their son, Lance, was arrested for conspiracy to murder in 1978 after  
placing a rattlesnake in a lawyer's mailbox.
Kenton's book comes months after Mackenzie Phillips, the US actress,  
claimed to have had an incestuous relationship with her father, John  
Phillips, the musician behind The Mamas and The Papas.