It's always a shining hour for us to make an album with Ben (Webster) Dizzy (Gillespie), Charlie Parker, Lester Young - it was always marvelous to work with such great players.

-Oscar Peterson 1


Lester "Pres" Young was born in Woodville, Mississippi on August 27, 1909. He was the oldest of three children and grew up near New Orleans. By 1920, he had moved to Minneapolis with his musician father, Willis Handy Young, who taught all his children instruments and eventually formed a family band which toured with carnivals. Lester studied many instruments, finally settling on the alto saxophone when he was 13. He left the family band in 1927 and spent a year touring with Art Bronson's Bostonians, at which time he took up the tenor saxophone.

Until 1934, when he joined Count Basie, Lester played with many musicians including the Thirteen Original Blue Devils, Clarence Love and King Oliver. He played with Count Basie periodically until 1940, when he left the band to form his own small group. Next, he moved to Los Angeles to lead a separate band with his brother Lee. After this group disbanded in 1943, Lester rejoined Basie and was finally noticed by the general public. In 1944, he won first place in the Down Beat poll for top tenor saxophonist, the first of many such honours. He also became the favourite of a new generation of jazz musicians, such as John Coltrane and Stan Getz.

Throughout the late 1940s, Lester "continued to develop and modify his musical approach successfully except when he was drinking... From about 1953 until his death his recordings were noticeably less consistent, yet he was still able to produce some of his best work on concert recordings such as Prez in Europe (1956)." 2

During the 1950s, Lester performed and recorded with Oscar Peterson on many occasions, producing such albums as Lester Swings Again (1952). They toured extensively together with Jazz at the Philharmonic (JATP). Travelling from one location to the next, Lester Young would often call upon his alter-ego, "Dr. Willis" (a fictional psychologist), to offer humorous advice to those in need. This consistently succeeded in breaking tensions whenever disputes arose between JATP members, and made it much easier for the group to travel together for long periods. 3

Lester Young made his last recording at the Blue Note in Paris in early March, 1959 before falling seriously ill. He died on New York on March 15, 1959.


Selected Recordings:

Shoe Shine Boy, with Count Basie (1936, Voc. 3459)
Taxi War Dance, with Count Basie (1939, Voc. 4748)
The President Plays, with the Oscar Peterson Trio (1952, Verve 831 670-2)
Jazz at the Philharmonic, with Oscar Peterson (1952, Verve)
Sometimes I'm Happy (1943, Key. 604)
The Lester Young Story (1949-56, Verve 8308)


Footnotes

1 Palmer, Richard.   Oscar Peterson.   New York: Hippocrene Books Inc, 1984.

2 Kernfeld, Barry.   The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz.   London: Macmillan Press Ltd, 1988.

3 Lees, Gene.   Oscar Peterson: The Will to Swing.   Rocklin, California: Prima Publishing & Communications, 1990.

O.P. & Friends