“I play a swing tenor,’ Lester Young once said, and it certainly is true, but it
only begins to tell the story of a style that brought on a new way of playing jazz.
Lester never confined his ideas to the standard two or four-bar patterns. They over-
lapped the bar lines frequently. Also, the custom of accenting on strong beats went
by the boards as he subtly shifted his rhythmic patterns. He always has thought ahead
in a tune, which has made it possible for him to anticipate chord changes and lead
into them with the maximum grace and logic. Like Bix Beiderbecke and Frank Trum-
bauer, he enjoyed the sound of impressionist harmonies, and he incorporated them
naturally into his bouncing swing style. In the Spring of 1949, in the Record Changer,
Ross Russell undertook a brilliant series of articles dealing with bop instrumentation.
His first piece, entitled “The Parent Style,” dealt with Lester.
Said Russell, “Lester added variety to the melodic line, but he knew well how
to balance the parts. He is complex, but is never complicated. Wild crescendos are
contrasted with hammering repetitions, iridescent multi-note passages with sections
where notes are massed like blocks. Short statements lead to long flowing sentences.
Lester’s solos are replete with dips and soaring flights, surprises, twists, hoarse shouts
and bubbling laughter. The holes—and like Basie, Lester leaves many—are deliberate
and meaningful.”
The Lester Young story began in Woodville, Miss., August 27, 1909. The family
moved soon thereafter to New Orleans, and although Lester left there when he was
10, the memory of the tailgate bands has remained with him. His father was a band-
master and teacher (some years later, Ben Webster was to be one of his pupils) and
he taught Lester drums, then alto sax. With an outfit called the Bostonians, Lester
changed to tenor. While the great King Oliver located in the Midwest, young Lester
jobbed around with him for a year or more and absorbed the traditionalist’s slant
on the blues.
The story has been told many times that Lester, working in Minneapolis, heard
Count Basie on the radio, broadcasting from Kansas City. He decided that Basie
needed another tenor man, and sent him a wire offering his services. Basie accepted
and thus opened a new Chapter of jazz history. Shortly thereafter, Jo Jones joined the
band on drums and opened another course to modernism—this time for the rhythm
section.
In 1936, John Hammond and Benny Goodman persuaded Music Corporation of
America to bring Basie east, and the band obtained a Decca recording contract.
However, before the first Decca date, a small unit from the band, including Basie,
Lester and Jones, made four sides for Vocalion under the tag “Smith-Jones Orches-
tra,” and that date, which produced the incomparable “Shoe Shine Boy” and “Lady
Be Good,” marked Lester’s disc debut. Thereafter, he produced dozens of memorable
sides with Basie, including the romping, driving “Every Tub” and such tours de force
as “Miss Thing” and “The World Is Mad.”
In a more intimate setting, he wielded an influence for warm, lyrical expression
in ballads. This refers to the sides he cut between 1936 and ’38 with Teddy Wilson
and Billie Holiday for Brunswick. His obbligatos to the vocalist, and the breathy,
personal solo passages he took between her choruses, have never been rivaled for
sheer beauty. During that time, in fact, he was living at the home of “Lady Day”
and her mothery and in their mutual admiration, Billie gave him the title of “Presi-
dent” and he tagged her “Lady Day”—titles which they have held unchallenged to
this day.
By 1941, Lester had had his fill of big band playing—the constant section blow-
ing, broken up by brief eight or 16 bar solos—when he had so much more to express.
He started his own combo and worked at Cafe Society in New York. He spent a good
part of °44 and °45 in the army, and after his release went back to small jazz units.
Norman Granz, one of his staunchest fans, began recording him immediately for a
new West Coast label, featured him in his award-winning film, “Jammin’ The Blues,”
and incorporated him into most of his Jazz At The Philharmonic tours.
Oddly enough, while there were some Lester followers during his Basie period,
his influence didn’t really catch a firm hold until the late ’40’s. Then it did so
emphatically, virtually obliterating other tenor styles. The Woody Herman band,
with its “Four Brothers” sax section, actually at first consisted of four tenor saxo-
phonists, all playing with Lester’s sound. To fashion that sound, Woody at times
employed such men as Stan Getz, Zoot Sims, Herbie Steward, Al Cohn and Jimmy
Giuffre. Others in the idiom included Paul Quinichette (called the “Vice Pres” and
often indistinguishable from Lester whom he once followed into the Basie band),
Allen Eager, Brew Moore, Dexter Gordon, Wardell Gray and such latter-day stylists
as Arno Marsh, Dave Pell, Bill Perkins, Bob Cooper, Warne Marsh, and alto saxo-
_=sphtnists Tee Konitz and Paul Desmond.
“4th ey 56, Lester was called in for a recording session by Norman Granz, along
_. ‘with Wilson§ Jones, Gene Ramey, Vic Dickenson, Roy Eldridge and Freddie Greene.
4 (He reportedly played so well that Granz postponed his departure for the Coast and
ramets ect JEL hake nee Senn econ gE rr tetere tpt
called together several quartet sessions with Pres, Teddy, Jo and Gene. This recording
is the result of those sessions.
Lester’s co-leader in the quartet is the above-mentioned Teddy Wilson, a musi-
cian whose background is similar to Lester’s and whose influence likewise has been
widespread and profound. Teddy is a perennial “modern” who has not changed his
style radically since the mid-’30’s, but who always has fit in comfortably with players
of the modern schools, even participating in several of the important recordings of
the Bop Era. Teddy’s rhythmic approach and his harmonic resourcefulness are
timeless. He took the “trumpet” style of Earl Hines and refined it, organized it.
He inaugurated the walking tenths in his bass, as opposed to the older “swing” bass.
As a member of the Benny Goodman Quartet and Trio, with Gene Krupa and
Lionel Hampton, Teddy’s became an international name. Everyone came to recognize
his clean, articulate and symmetrical solos and nearly every young jazz pianist
absorbed something of his style.
Teddy was born in Austin, Tex., in November, 1912. For four years, he studied
piano and violin at Tuskegee and majored in music at Talladega College. He moved
to Detroit in 1929 and played with bands in that vicinity until ’31, when he landed
in Chicago. For two years he gathered way-back experience with outfits led by Louis
Armstrong, Erskine Tate and the late clarinetist Jimmie Noone, who was a prime
influence on Benny Goodman himself.
In °33, he joined Benny Carter in New York and participated in a recording
session cut by Carter for English Parlophone, under the aegis of John Hammond.
One night, at Mildred Bailey's apartment, Hammond arranged to have Teddy and
Benny Goodman play some “chamber pazz,” with Mildred’s brother joining in on
drums. And that’s where the idea for the Goodman Trio was born. Teddy was with
Benny from 1935 through half of 1939, when he left to form his own big band. During
his time with Benny, Hammond brought Teddy into the Brunswick and Vocalion
studios for a good many recording sessions, usually using Basie men and some Good-
man men, and often featuring as vocalist Billie Holiday. Teddy also was Mildred
Bailey’s favorite accompanist, and on these dates, Basie-ites Young and Jones had
first call, along with Buck Clayton and Walter Page. Together, these people brought
lyricism in jazz to a new peak, combining urbanity with the basic feeling of Kansas
City blues.
After leaving Goodman, Teddy eventually went back to small groups, heading
an outfit at Cafe Society for some years. On several occasions he rejoined Goodman,
but for the most part, he spent his time playing on radio and recordings, and in
teaching. Every summer, from 1945 through 1952, he taught jazz piano at Juilliard.
Jo Jones, born in Chicago in 1911, opened the door to the modern concept of
percussion in jazz, and with Lester, to the bop movement. This man, who, with Basie,
was called upon to swing the most powerful band of all time, actually was the master
of the light, subtle cymbal stroke. He initiated the idea of keeping the four beats
going on his cymbal, setting up a legato feeling along with a tingling timbre, and
leaving his bass drum foot free to accent where necessary.
Perhaps one of the most successful drummers of the new jazz period, Chico
Hamilton, recently recognized Jones on a recording and had this to say: “The master!
I love him, I love him! . . . I can’t say enough about him. This is the man for whom
the instrument was made. Jo is responsible for me in many ways, and I attribute what
success I have to him. He’s really Mr. Drums!”
Jonathan Jones was with Basie from 1936-48, except for an army hitch. Then
he was with JATP and with Lester Young’s combo for two years, in addition to
clubbing and recording, mainly around New York City.
The bassist in the quartet, Gene Ramey, is a younger man, but his roots are
similar to those of his three colleagues. Like Wilson, he was born in Austin, Tex., in
1913. In 1932, he moved to Kansas City and received a thorough grounding in the
K.C. idiom. He threw away his sousaphone and studied string bass with the great
Walter Page. Between °38 and °40, he played with Jay McShann’s K.C. band, which
for several of those years included young Charlie Parker on saxophone. In the heyday
of bop on 52nd Street, he played with all varieties of groups, from the Kansas City
combo of Hot Lips Page to the swing unit of Ben Webster to Charlie Parker’s bop
group. During part of 52 and ’53, he was one of the replacements for Walter Page
in the Count Basie band, and during this period, he has worked and recorded with
the modernist units led by Stan Getz, Art Blakey, Thelonous Monk, Horace Silver,
and, of course, Lester Young. —Bill Smion
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