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

Daniels, Douglas H.

 
9780807071250: Lester Leaps In: The Life and Times of Lester Pres Young
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0807071250 ISBN 13: 9780807071250
Verlag: Beacon Press, 2003

Inhaltsangabe

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

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Douglas Henry Daniels is professor of black studies and history at the University of California, Santa Barbara. The author of Pioneer Urbanites: A Social and Cultural History of Black San Francisco, he lives in Santa Barbara.

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1


The President of the Tenor Saxophone


Lester "Pres" (or "Prez") Young (1909–1959) was without question one of the
most influential tenor saxophonists of the twentieth century. While Coleman
Hawkins is justly recognized as having been the first to popularize the tenor
saxophone in jazz, Young revealed an entirely new dimension to the
instrument. Then, too, Young was a genuine cultural hero to many fans and
other musicians, partly because of his unique musical style, but also
because he was a real rebel—or individualist, depending upon one's point of
view. His refusal to bow to the dictates of popular opinion regarding his
playing, or to the military authorities after he was drafted (eventually leading
to his court-martial in early 1945), only enhanced his stature among his fans
in an age of patriotism and conformity.
He was, as guitarist Barney Kessel maintained, perhaps the most
controversial as well as one of the most gifted of musicians. Besides denying
having been influenced by Coleman Hawkins, he was notoriously aloof, at
once shy and uncommunicative, relying on his own unique jargon, jazz slang,
and witty comments when he did speak. He was described by more than one
writer as elusive and, in his later life, suspicious. Even some of his fellow
musicians found him strange, with some likening him to an extraterrestrial.
The saxophonist was a musical legend, one of those colorful jazz characters
of the 1940s, but he also had a serious drinking problem that ultimately
robbed him of his health. Only his inner circle and a few hangers-on knew his
private side. He was actually gentle, sensitive, and quite chivalrous toward
women; he never spoke ill of anyone and was generous to a fault with loans
and gifts. And there was yet another dimension to his private life: like Louis
Armstrong, he smoked marijuana daily and unashamedly, in the solitude of
his hotel rooms.
Despite his controversial character, he was, in the opinion of
everyone who played with him, of his family, and of many fans, first and
foremost a superior musician. Both his virtuosity as a soloist and his actual
compositions were singularly influential among musicians besides
saxophonists, and his manner of speech, style of dress, and general
demeanor all led the Beat Generation to lionize him. He first came to the
notice of the public with the Count Basie band in 1936, and the title by which
he became known, "Pres," or "Prez"—short for "President of the Tenor
Saxophone"—would last long after his passing in 1959. Moreover, acclaim for
his musical prowess was the rule for him for over two decades. His popularity
among his fans endured despite his poor health toward the end and in spite
of the considered opinion of many critics and reviewers that his playing had
diminished in quality.
This book deals with the life and significance of this brilliant
saxophonist, but it is not the usual type of jazz biography. When I started
working on it, no full-length biography of Young had ever been published, but
as other such volumes began to appear, I became even more firmly
convinced that there was much more to the history of Black folk and to the
evolution of jazz than could be found in these or many other books about
Black musicians. I had always admired those earlier jazz biographies that
were based on interviews with their subjects and that were thus, in a sense,
autobiographical, such as Alan Lomax's Mister Jelly Roll and Larry Gara's
The Baby Dodds Story. But that was a model I could not follow, since I
myself never met Young (I was just a teenager when he died), and no one
else ever interviewed him at length, as Lomax and Gara did Jelly Roll Morton
and Dodds, respectively. The problem was daunting: how does one write the
biography of someone who left only a few interviews but hundreds of hours of
recorded music, when readers are so accustomed to reading about people
who kept diaries, scrapbooks of clippings, and other kinds of written records?
Further complicating matters was the fact that Young himself did
not often contribute to the clear presentation of the details of his own life; he
not only was careless about dating events but, as his nephew James Tolbert
has noted, could be "kind of frosty" toward interviewers and people he did not
know. Lee Young claimed that the writer Ralph Gleason got close enough to
his brother to appreciate his sterling worth, but Gleason was alone among
critics in this regard. Nonetheless, the saxophonist did stick to the facts in
some areas, notably when it came to his early musical training, and such
information, corroborated to the extent that it can be, provides some insights
that can be compared to the recollections of other musicians of his
generation.
What this work attempts to do is in some ways very simple. My
object has been, first, to uncover historical evidence that may shed new light
on the details and significance of the saxophonist's life, utilizing published
interviews with him as well as public records, archives, and oral histories; and
then, second, to interpret that within the context of what we know about his
family, about the careers of other, contemporary musicians, and about Black
history and culture. This necessitates taking into account the views of
Young's family members as well as his fellow musicians, an approach that in
itself seems reasonable enough, until one considers that often the opinions of
Black folk are not taken seriously, both in the United States in general and in
jazz scholarship in particular. Only then does it become apparent just how
controversial such a strategy might be.
Many writers interview jazz musicians to glean details of their
lives, discographical information, and accounts of specific incidents,
especially humorous ones, but these writers are usually journalists, not
historians. Also of significance is the fact that on those occasions when
musicians speak of the philosophy behind their music, such ideas are rarely
analyzed or even commented upon by writers. While I have relied to some
extent upon evidence and opinions from some critics (some of whom are
superb at what they do), the writings of other journalists have more often
carried the day because their ideas are in better accord with prevailing beliefs
about Black musicians. Where I have made use of the pronouncements and
opinions of critics—or of relatives and sidemen, for that matter—I have been
careful not to blithely accept them as the final word on a matter, a failing that
is seen in far too many histories, in my estimation.
I wanted, in this work, to place Young and his experiences front
and center and within their appropriate historical context, a context that has
changed considerably thanks to the efforts of scholars over the past
generation. The music culture is far too important to be neglected by those
interested in its various manifestations, from songs and dances to slang,
dress, and lifestyles. Also, jazz audiences—dancers, fans, and other various
jazzophiles—tend to interact with "their" music to a much greater degree than
those who favor European classical works. Black music, including jazz,
involves significant audience activity; beyond dancing, audience members
offer vocal encouragement, and the music itself often serves a backdrop for
partying, conversation, and carrying on. As the composer and pianist
Thomas "Fats" Waller once explained, swing was "just a musical phase of
our social life."1 This fact, however, is largely lost on the wider public and on
many...

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Verlag
Beacon Press
Erscheinungsdatum
2003
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0807071250
ISBN 13 
9780807071250
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
534
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
gpsr@libri.de
gpsr@libri.de

Friedensallee 273
Hamburg
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Deutschland

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ISBN 10:  0807071021 ISBN 13:  9780807071021
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