Lester Young was one of the most individualistic jazz improvisers, and one of the great tenor saxophonists. Influenced by cornetist Bix BEIDERBECKE and saxophonist Frankié Trumbauer, Young developed a cool style of playing at a time when Coleman HAWKINS’ large tone and prominent vibrato was the norm. When most improvisers followed the standard two- and four-bar phrases of a popular song, Young would play against such phrasing in subtle and oblique ways. His fertile imagination allowed him to improvise a number of choruses without repeating his ideas.
Young was born on August 27, 1909, into a musical family, and studied several instruments from an early age. In the late 1920s he began playing with various groups. After 1933 his easy, flowing style of improvisation gained greater attention when he bested the reigning master of the tenor saxophone, Coleman Hawkins, in a jam session in Kansas City. He joined Count BASIE’s band in 1934, a perfect association that matched Young’s unique style with the smooth, relaxed swing of the Basie rhythm section.
After a few months with Basie, Young joined Fletcher HENDERSON’s orchestra and encountered a very different reaction. Friends and bandmembers tried to get Young to change his style to produce a bigger sound, closer to the hot jazz popularised by Hawkins. It was with relief that Young returned to Basie two years later. Basie encouraged an amicable rivalry between Young and Herschel Evans, a talented follower of Hawkins. In this forum Young was able to play the sort of music he had been suppressing for so long. This was Young’s happiest period. It was around this time he gained the nickname “The President” (or “Pres”), and with the Basie orchestra he set out to enjoy life; indulging in practical jokes, nicknaming the other members of the band, and even becoming the star pitcher for the Count Basie softball team.
Young had just completed a short film, Jammin’ the Blues (nominated for an Academy Award in 1945) when he was drafted into the army. He was a sensitive person, ill-suited to the harshness of military life, and was dishonourably discharged (charged with drug and alcohol use). The experience changed his life, leaving deep emotional scars.
Young continued to perform throughout most of the 1950s, although some critics noted a decline in his playing that paralleled the decline in his health. There were now new challenges to face. Bebop was the current trend and new players were using Young’s ideas to achieve fame and success at his expense. One of the problems facing Young was his incompatibility with the new players.
A notable exception to the general decline is Young’s performance on the 1957 CBS television program The Sound of Jazz. This program featured the song “Fine and Mellow,” written and sung by Billie HOLIDAY, with many other jazz greats. Günther Schuller considered Young’s single chorus on “Fine and Mellow” to be a perfect distillation of Young’s style and career, and one of the most moving performances in all of jazz.
Young died of a heart attack on March 15, 1959, yet his influence outlasted him. His phrasing and creativity can be heard in the alto-sax work of Charlie PARKER, and his cool style—laid-back and light-toned—provided the first alternative to the heavy tenor sax vocabulary laid out by Coleman Hawkins.
Paul Rinzler
SEE ALSO:
BEBOP; BIG BAND JAZZ; COOL JAZZ; GILLESPIE, DIZZY.
Büchmann-Møller, Frank.
You Just Fight for Your Life: The Story of Lester Young
(Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1990);
Büchmann-Møller, Frank.
You Just Got to Be Original, Man
(Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1990);
Porter, Lewis, ed. A Lester Young Reader
(Washington, D.C: Smithsonian
Institution Press, 1991).
The Lester Young Story;
Pres Conferences;
Pres and Teddy and Oscar.