Michael Feinstein plays preservationist for American musical history

When Michael Feinstein was almost too small to climb onto the bench, he pulled himself up to the family piano and started to play. The Feinstein home in Columbus, Ohio, was always full of popular music - his father sang; his mother was an amateur tap dancer - and little Michael somehow knew just how to place his fingers to create those same notes and chords.

Almost 50 years later, Feinstein is still making music in at least 150 concerts a year. But another childhood passion has also shaped his adult life, and that's the one that inspires "Michael Feinstein's American Songbook," airing the next three Wednesdays on PBS.

Before he could read the words on the covers, Feinstein collected record albums. His parents would take him to Goodwill or the Salvation Army, where he would buy 20 records for a dollar, he recalls in "American Songbook."

Today, Feinstein, 54, is dedicated to collecting and preserving as much American music as he can. His house in Los Angeles is filled to overflowing not just with records but also with reel-to-tapes, rare kinescopes and piles of ephemera, as paper items not meant to be preserved are known.

"When I first moved to Los Angeles, I discovered that movie studios would throw away archives, music publishers would get rid of old arrangements, manuscripts would be discarded, and complete orchestrations for shows would be tossed out," Feinstein says in "American Songbook." "Our musical heritage was literally disappearing because people didn't understand it was valuable to save it." Standing beside the 405 freeway in Los Angeles, he points out that it was built on a landfill created out of hundreds of thousands of musical scores discarded by MGM.

Feinstein invites "American Songbook" viewers into his home, where he spends much of his free time creating digital copies of musical finds unearthed in basements, attics and flea markets and shared by other collectors. We also go along as he shops, visits with other collectors and even walks on the treadmill.

"American Songbook" integrates its musical history lessons with Feinstein's personal stories, including memories of his close friendship with Rosemary Clooney and his work with Ira Gershwin to preserve the George and Ira Gershwin estate.

But the documentary is oddly organized to move backward in time, beginning with "Putting on the Tailfins," which looks at how singers of the 1950s (notably Frank Sinatra) adapted to the arrival of rock 'n' roll. Two versions of Sinatra singing Cole Porter's "Night and Day," one from the '30s and the other from 1961, are a revelation.


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