Lester Leaps In: The Life and Times of Lester Pres Young

by Douglas Henry Daniels

Book Overview

He was jazz's first hipster. He performed in sunglasses and coined and popularized phrases like "that's cool" and "you dig?" He always wore a suit and his trademark porkpie hat. He influenced everyone from B. B. King to Stan Getz to Allen Ginsberg, creating a lyrical style of playing that forever changed the sound of the tenor saxophone.

In this groundbreaking biography of Lester Young (1909-1959), historian Douglas Daniels brings to life the man and his world, and corrects a number of misconceptions. Even though others have identified Young as a Kansas City musician, Daniels traces his roots to the blues of Louisiana and his early years traveling with his father's band and the legendary Oklahoma City Blue Devils. Later we see the jazz culture of New York in the early 1940s, when Young was launched to national and international fame with the Count Basie Orchestra and began to accompany his close friend Billie Holiday. After a year spent in an Army prison on a conviction for marijuana use, Young made changes in his music but never lost his sensitivity or soul.

The first ever to gain access to Young's family and many musicians who performed with him, Daniels reconstructs the world in which Young lived and played: the racism that he and other black musicians faced, the feeling of home and family that they created together on the road, and what his music meant to black audiences. Young emerges as a kind friend, a loving parent, and a gentle and sensitive man who had, in the words of Reginald Scott, "the saddest eyes I ever saw

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0807071250
• ISBN13: 9780807071250
• Release Date: February 2003
• Publisher: Beacon Press
• Length: 536 Pages
• Weight: 1.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 6.2" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Cultural Differences or The Other America

It was so refreshing to read a biography on one of America's greatest musicians from the perspective of an African American historian who had access to Pres' former colleagues and family members relative to what Pres was really like and what made him tick. What intimate family and peer relationships during his childhood, teenage years and adult years contributed to how he expressed himself through his music can only be told by a family member or a very, very close friend. Only African American colleagues of Pres can give us some insight as to how he really felt about America's Jim Crow practices which were actually sanctioned by the US Governmentprior to the Civil Rights Acts of 1954 & 1964) and how these Jim Crow practices may have influenced his mindset.The Life and Times of Lester "Pres" Young is not for the faint hearted. It is a scholarly work! It is not "Lester Young Goes To Disneyland." Art forms depict what the artist sees as reality. Despite Jim Crow - the Pres was able to deliver. This book tells us about the character of the Man by the people that really knew him. Daniels has provided society with something we didn't have before - a look at Pres through the eyes of the people closest to him who "opened up" to an African American historian over a period of twenty years because they trusted him and believed that he understood the cultural nuances that exist in African American families that are different from many non African American families.