Eisner, who grew up in Manhattan, the child of left-leaning parents who hosted fundraisers for Ethel and Julius Rosenberg (one of his earliest memories is of Paul Robeson singing) was never the smartest kid intheroom, but he always wanted to get As and spent a lot of time studying how the smart kids learned.
At age 87, he easily had the most modern ears intheroom, and took her to task for singing a phrase with a flatted fifth in it a cliche inthe jazz idiom for many decades.