Lester Young Said It

“I had a decision to make between Frankie Trumbauer and Jimmy Dorsey, you dig, and I wasn't sure which way I wanted to go. I'd buy me all those records and I'd play one by Jimmy and one by Trumbauer, you dig? I didn't know nothing about Hawk then, and they were the only ones telling a story I liked to hear. I had both of them made... I developed my tenor sound like an alto, to sound like a tenor, to sound like a bass, and I'm not through with it yet. That's why they get all trapped up , they say, 'Goddam, I never heard Prez play like this.' That's the way I want them to hear. That's modern, dig? Not what you played back in '49--it's what you play today, dig? A lot them got lost and walked out."

--Lester Young, in a 1959 interview with Francois Postif, from Jazz Panorama: From the Pages of The Jazz Review.