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About Lester Young

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Musician

Lester "Prez" Young was one of the giants of the tenor saxophone. He was the greatest improviser between Coleman Hawkins and Louis Armstrong of the 1920s and Charlie Parker in the 1940s. From the beginning, he set out to be different: He had his own lingo; In the Forties, he grew his hair out. The other tenor players held their saxophones upright in front of them, so Young held his out to the side, kind of like a flute (see picture above). Then, there was the way he played: Hawkins played around harmonic runs. He played flurries of notes and had a HUGE tone that the other tenor players of the day emulated. Young used a softer tone that resulted In a soft, light sound (if you didn't know better, you would think the two were playing different instruments). Young used less notes and slurred notes together, creating more melodic solos. He played the ordinary in an extraordinary way, using a lot of subtleties to produce music that Billie Holiday said flips you out of your seat with surprise.

Album

The Sound Of America

By Norman Granz

Label: Verve
Released: 2026
Track listing: CD1: Blues; Picasso; Tenderly; Like Someone in Love; New Basie Blues; Castle Rock; Con Poco Coco ; Louise; Taking a Chance on Love; Easy Living; Flamingo; You Won’t Be Satisfied (Until You Break My Heart); I’ll Never Be the Same ; Dale’s Wail ; That Old Black Magic

CD2: Laura; Session #1 — Ballad Medley: All the Things You Are/Dearly Beloved/The Nearness of You/I’ll Get By/Everything Happens to Me/The Man I Love/What’s New?/Someone to Watch Over Me/Isn’t It Romantic; Thou Swell; Cocktails for Two; Why Was I Born?; On the Street Where You Live; Lullaby of the Leaves; Blue Room I Thought About You ; Chelsea Bridge — rehearsal; No Strings.

Article: Late Night Thoughts on Jazz

Texas Tenors and the Big Beat

by Marshall Bowden
July 30, 2002

This article first appeared on All About Jazz in July 2002. Texas is a miniature of the cultural and musical melting pot that is American music. Texas shares a border with Louisiana, inheriting some of that state's French and Caribbean roots, and when it comes to the blues, Texas has its own style. Texas ...

Article: Late Night Thoughts on Jazz

Lester Young & Ageism

by Marshall Bowden
June 26, 2001

This article first appeared on All About Jazz in June 2001. Jazz is an art form that rewards experience. The enthusiasm of youth is often enough to cover some defects or a lack of originality, but any artist that stays with it over a career that spans decades generally deepens his or her ability ...

Article: Album Review

Chad Fowler / Eri Yamamoto: Polkadots & Moonbeams

Read "Polkadots & Moonbeams" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
September 29, 2026

Some of the finest duo recordings give the listener the sensation of eavesdropping on an intimate encounter. The recordings of Tony Bennett and Bill Evans come to mind, as does the music of Billie Holiday and Lester Young. Polkadots & Moonbeams, by pianist Eri Yamamoto and saxophonist Chad Fowler, creates that same feeling. Although recorded in ...

Article: Building a Jazz Library

Ronnie Cuber: Baritone Boss

by Mark McKergow
September 14, 2026

Ronnie Cuber (1941-2022) made his mark on the jazz world as a versatile and muscular baritone saxophonist. Born in New York on Christmas Day 1941, he started on tenor saxophone but switched to baritone at 17, attracted by the vacant chair in Marshall Brown's Newport Jazz Youth Band (which also featured lifelong colleagues Eddie Gomez and Michael ...

Article: Profile

Percy France: Live from the West End

by Daniel Gould
August 27, 2026

If you know Percy France, most likely you are a fan of “greasy" organ jazz, particularly on Blue Note Records during their classic era. He was an integral part of Jimmy Smith's Home Cookin' (1959) and Freddie Roach's Down to Earth (1962). Or perhaps you came to jazz through r&b acts like the Bill Doggett combo. The ...

Article: Big Band in the Sky

Alan Greenspan, 1926–2026: The Reedman Who Conducted the Economy

by Kofi Adjepong-Boateng
June 26, 2026

He kept the clarinet. Sixty years after he last played for money, the central banker still had the instrument from his dance-band days; when a television crew trooped in, he turned it over in his hands but would not play it, remembering too well how it was supposed to sound. Alan Greenspan, who died ...

Article: Take Five With...

Take Five with Clarinetist Davide Sgarra

by AAJ Staff
June 1, 2026

Meet Davide SgarraDavide Sgarra is an Italian jazz clarinetist and saxophonist based in Brooklyn, New York. Born and raised near Varese in northern Italy, he went on to earn his Bachelor of Music from the Royal Conservatoire of The Hague in the Netherlands and his Master of Music from Manhattan School of Music in New York ...

Article: History of Jazz

In Circuses and Carnivals, Sideshows Brought Black Music To The Heartland

by Arthur R George
May 30, 2026

Black musicians in circus and carnival sideshow bands from the late 1800s well into the Twentieth Century brought ragtime and what would become jazz and rhythm and blues to white audiences deep into Midwest agricultural regions. Trumpeter Lester Bowie, later known for the avant-garde Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), ...