13 April 2021

Lester Young Genius Killed By Alcohol – 13 March 2021 Phantom Dancer

Greg Poppleton's Phantom Dancer swing jazz radio show

Lester Young, jazz tenor saxophonist called ‘The Prez’, is this week’s Phantom Dancer feature artist from live 1940s-50s broadcasts. Young was one of the most influential saxophonists, playing “a free-floating style, wheeling and diving like a gull, banking with low, funky riffs that pleased dancers and listeners alike”. Alcohol killed him.

The Phantom Dancer – your non-stop mix of swing and jazz from live 1920s-60s radio and TV hosted by me, Greg Poppleton.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFNh4wFGd6c

1920s-30s

Lester Young grew up in a musical family. His brother, Lee, was a drummer. (You’ll hear a broadcast by Lester and Lee on this week’s Phantom Dancer). His father lead the family band in which he played trumpet, alto sax, drums and violin. Joining Walter Page’s Blue Devils Orchestra, Lester switched saxes from alto to tenor. He also doubled clarinet, until his clarinet was stolen at a gig in 1939. (He was given a replacement clarinet in 1957).

One of Young’s key influences was Frank Trumbauer, who was famous in the 1920s Paul Whiteman Orchestra and who played the C-melody saxophone (between the alto and tenor in pitch) Young moved to Kansas City in 1933 to play in the Count Basie Orchestra. During the 1930s he also played in the bands of Andy Kirk and Fletcher Henderson. He also played in small groups that included pianist Teddy Wilson and singer Billie Holiday who gave him the nickname, Prez.

1940s

Young left the Basie band in late 1940. He played in small groups often with his brother, drummer Lee Young, including more studio sessions with Billie Holiday and Nat “King” Cole in June 1942.

In December 1943 Young returned to the Basie Orchestra for a 10-month stint before he was drafted into the army during World War II.

PLASTIC REEDS

Lester Young was beginning to make much greater use of a plastic reed in the early 1940s. They gave his playing a heavier, breathier tone. He never abandoned the cane reed, but used the plastic reed a significant share of the time from 1943 until the end of his life. His tone also thickened from this time with a change in saxophone mouthpiece from a metal Otto Link to an ebonite Brilhart.

In August 1944 Young appeared alongside drummer Jo Jones, trumpeter Harry “Sweets” Edison, and fellow tenor saxophonist Illinois Jacquet in Gjon Mili’s short film Jammin’ the Blues. In 1946 Young joined Norman Granz’s Jazz at the Philharmonic (JATP), touring regularly with them over the next 12 years. He made many studio recordings under Granz’s supervision, including more trio recordings with Nat King Cole. Young also recorded extensively in the late 1940s for Aladdin Records (1946-7) and for Savoy (1944, ’49 and ’50), some sessions of which included Basie on piano.  

KILLED BY PLONK

The quality and consistency of Lester Young’s playing ebbed gradually in the latter half of the 1940s. And from 1951, his playing declined precipitously as his drinking increased. He began to rely on a small number of clichéd phrases and reduced creativity and originality, despite his claims that he did not want to be a “repeater pencil” (Young coined this phrase to describe the act of repeating one’s own past ideas. Young also coined the hipster words, ‘cool’ for good and ‘bread’ for money.). Young’s playing and health went and in November 1955 he was admited to hospital a ‘nervous breakdown’.

On December 8, 1957, Young appeared with Billie Holiday, Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster, Roy Eldridge, and Gerry Mulligan in the CBS television special ‘The Sound of Jazz’, performing, ‘Fine and Mellow’. You’ll hear this reunion with Holiday, with whom he had lost contact over the years, on this week’s Phantom Dancer. Young’s solo was brilliant, acclaimed by some observers as an unparalleled marvel of economy, phrasing and extraordinarily moving emotion. Nat Hentoff, one of the show’s producers, later commented, “Lester got up, and he played the purest blues I have ever heard…in the control room we were all crying.”

 
Young made his final studio recordings and live performances in Paris in March 1959 with drummer Kenny Clarke at the tail end of an abbreviated European tour during which he ate almost nothing and drank heavily. On a flight to New York City, he suffered from internal bleeding due to alcoholism and died in the early morning hours of 15 March, 1959, only hours after arriving back in New York. He was only 49.  

13 APRIL PLAY LIST