The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • Page 194

B10 CALIFORNIA LOSANGELESTIMES Obituaries By Valerie J. Nelson Times Staff Writer Sid Feller, a producer and arranger who helped create the rich, orchestral big band sound for Ray Charles that resulted in such hits as on My and Stop Loving has died. He was 89. Feller, who had a history of heart trouble, died Feb. 16 at his home in the Cleveland suburb of Orange Village, said his daughter, Debbie Feller Glassman.

From the moment they stepped into a recording studio in 1959, Feller and Charles clicked. Their musical partnership lasted 30 years and resulted in hundreds of songs. Feller also regularly toured with Charles as aconductor. they were working together, they were soul Michael Lydon, author of the 1998 biography Charles: Man and told The Times. Sid and Ray understood each other Charles, famous for being prickly about his music, Feller, said David Ritz, who co-wrote 1978 autobiography, Ray: Ray Own told me that Feller is as close as ever going to come to having a Jewish how Sid was very warm and Ritz said.

In a 2002 interview with Billboard magazine, Charles said of Feller, my angel. He exactly what I wanted how to make them strings improvisational flourishes were, in reality, carefully orchestrated. and I had worked out the charts weeks before, and Ray change a Feller recalled in Charles: Man and after take, sob and crack his voice in the same Sidney Harold Feller was born Dec. 24, 1916, in New York City, one of three children of Michael Feller, an Austrian Jew who sold citrus fruit in adowntown market, and his wife, Riva. While a Boy Scout, Feller learned to play trumpet and performed in New York City and the Catskills.

The piano entered his life through athird-floor window after his mother agreed to have one hoisted into his Brooklyn apartment. A friend helped him learn music theory, but he was self-taught as an arranger. He was taking trumpet lessons in 1938 when he spotted Gertrude Hager, a 16-year-old chorus girl. They got married three years later while Feller was learning to become a bandleader at Army music school at Ft.Knox, Ky. In 1951, he became a conductor and arranger for Capitol Records and made his reputation arranging easy- listening music for Jackie Gleason.

Instead of creating a standard big band sound with strings, Feller used orchestral touches and interesting melodic lines, Lydon said. Oboes were a signature touch. At Capitol and ABC Records be- ginning in 1955, Feller also worked with Dean Martin, Peggy Lee, Mel Torme, Paul Anka, guitarist Charlie Byrd and Woody big band. He had few writing credits but received one for Say No in for the 1963Elvis Presley movie in In 1965, Feller moved to Los Angeles to work as a freelance arranger and producer, including arranging music for Flip Wilson (1970 to 1974). He also worked with jazz singer Nancy Wilson and with Eddie Fisher.

In an appearance on Tonight Show Starring Johnny the 1970s, Paul McCartney was asked which covers of his music he most liked. said, love Sid arrangements of and for Ray recalled Tony Gumina, president of the Cleveland-based Ray Charles Marketing Group. Feller moved to Camarillo in 1977 and retired from arranging in the late 1980s. He no longer kept a piano in his house, which baffled Charles. could someone with such music in him just Charles asked Lydon.

With his health failing he had a quadruple bypass in the late 1990s Feller and his wife moved to Ohio to live with his daughter Debbie. At a screening of the 2004bio- graphical movie Feller cried throughout because he felt Jamie Oscar-winning performance brought his friend back to life. Charles had died four months before the release. Eight of the 17 soundtracks on credited Feller as producer. Recently, conducting baton and a photograph of him with Charles became part of the Smithsonian permanent collection.

In addition to his wife and his daughter Debbie, Feller is survived by two other daughters, Lois of Northridge and Jane Toland of Loyalton, a son, Bill, of a brother; and five grandchildren. SID FELLER The producer and arranger, shown with Ray Charles, also worked for Jackie Gleason, Peggy Lee and Flip Wilson Paul McCartney once lauded arrangements of Beatles songs. they were working together, they were soul brothers. Musically, Sid and Ray understood each other Michael Lydon, author, Charles: Man and Sidney H. Feller, 89; Producer-Arranger Helped Create Rich Orchestral Sound for Ray Charles By Dennis McLellan Times Staff Writer Joel Dorius was teaching Shakespeare, classic English literature and poetry at Smith College in Northampton, when his quiet life as an academic was shattered in 1960.

The victim of a federal crackdown on obscenity in the mails, he was arrested, dismissed from his job at the elite college and left feeling like a for decades. Dorius, one of three teachers at Smith College who lost their jobs after being convicted of possessing gay pornography but were later exonerated in the headline-making case, died Feb. 14 at his home in San Francisco after a battle with bone marrow cancer. He was 87. The stage for what critics have described as a homosexual witch hunt and sexual McCarthyism was set when Postmaster General Arthur E.

Summerfield of the Eisenhower administration launched acampaign to out smut in the family an effort aided by passing of a number of measures that allowed postal inspectors to open and examine mail. At the same time, Massachusetts passed a state law that turned possession of obscene material from a misdemeanor into a felony punishable by up to five years in prison. troubles began after three state troopers, a Northampton policeman and afederal postal inspector raided the apartment of Smith College English professor and literary critic and biographer Newton Arvin. In their search, they found box-loads of gay erotica, including some hard-core pornography but primarily consisting of muscle magazines featuring men in underwear or posing straps material that today would be considered akin to a Calvin Klein ad. They also found diaries, in which he chronicled his homosexual encounters.

Arvin had shared photos of male nudes with fellow Smith colleagues Dorius and Edward Spofford at a party several nights before the raid, and while undergoing questioning, Arvin gave police their names and those of a number of other men. soon, the spirit of old Salem was resurrected in Northampton, and the righteous were once again out to get the Dorius wrote in a 2003 essay in the Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide. shared some photos of male was our dastardly deed, the unspeakable act from which all else Barry Werth, author of the 2001 book Scarlet Professor: Newton Arvin: A Literary Life Shattered by said the arrests sent panic throughout the elite college campuses in the gave a lot of Werth told The Times this week. a two-week period, the police thought they were in the midst of busting up a major pornography Dorius was vacationing on Cape Cod when his home was searched. actually heard on the car radio on the way back that he was being by the police, said Werth, who interviewed Dorius for his book.

the time he returned home, his apartment had been ransacked by the Among the objectionable items seized were reproductions of ancient Etruscan frescoes. As Werth recalled, believe the police found pictures of naked men. They find any hard-core pornography, but it was all lumped Werth said that about a year after the arrests of Arvin, Dorius and Spofford, Supreme Court ruled that all these beefcake magazines, which were simply pictures of men naked or semi-naked, were and visually but were not So their arrests, Werth said, almost at the last moment could Although they were threatened with long sentences, none of the three went to prison. Arvin, who was reportedly pressured by the prosecution to testify against Dorius and Spofford, was charged with lewdness and possession of pornography. He pleaded guilty and received fine and a one-year suspended sentence.

Smith College allowed the 60-year- old Arvin, the only one of the three with tenure, to retire after his conviction. Arvin, who had won the National Book Award for his 1951 biography of Herman Melville, died of pancreatic cancer in 1963. Dorius and Spofford, whose contracts with Smith were not renewed, were found guilty of possessing pornography. But they pursued an appeal based on a 1961 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that materials seized without a legal warrant could not be used in evidence against the person from whom they were seized.

And in 1963, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court acquitted them of the charges. Losing his teaching job at Smith life, Werth said. Joel ever wanted was to he added. had taught at Harvard and Yale, and he believed after he was arrested that he would never teach again. He felt shamed and disgraced and deprived of his vocation and After a stint at a publishing company in New York, Dorius accepted a position as a guest professor at the University of Hamburg in Germany; he held the post two years.

Then someone at San Francisco State knew how important a scholar and teacher he was recruited back to this Werth said. Spofford retired from Stanford University in 1988; Dorius retired from San Francisco State in 1984. was kind of an accidental hero in the movement of gay Father Paul G. Crowley, chairman of the department of religious studies at Santa Clara University, said of his longtime friend. The Massachusetts court that came down ad- dressed the legality of search warrants more than it did civil rights as Crowley told The Times this week.

it had a reverberating effect, I think, because he stood as a symbol of what unjust laws and social attitudes were doing to gay people at that time and could still Born Raymond Joel Dorius in Salt Lake City on Jan. 4, 1919, the educator was raised a Mormon by his salesman father and teacher mother. After graduating from the University of Utah, he began his career as an educator at Harvard, where he earned his doctorate. After teaching at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology during World War II, he taught at Yale before joining the Smith faculty in 1958. Although the college never issued a formal apology, it sought to openly make amends with Dorius and Spofford in 2003 by holding a public forum on civil liberties and by establishing a fund in their names for the study of civil liberties and freedom of expression.

It also created the Newton Arvin Prize in American Studies. lived in the shadow of my disgrace for decades, I can barely believe that my name is at least being Dorius wrote in 2003. long ago, I was, as a gay man, considered a member of a criminal minority, punished savagely for an event that today seems Dorius is survived by his sister-in-law, Arlene Dorius, of Newport Beach; two nieces; and a nephew. Donations in his name may be sent to the American Civil Liberties Union, 125 Broad 18th Floor, New York, NY 10004. JOEL DORIUS The teacher lost his college post after his conviction, which was reversed on appeal.

He and two colleagues some photos of male was our dastardly deed, the unspeakable act from which all else he said. Joel Dorius, 87; Educator Convicted, Exonerated in Gay Pornography Case stood as a symbol of what unjust laws and social attitudes were doing to gay Father Paul G. Crowley, a longtime friend of Dorius.