Who is lester young

Back in Algiers, Lester grew up in very musical surroundings. Both his father, Willis Handy Young — called Billy - and his mother Lizetta played several instruments, and all three children, Lester, Irma born , and Lee born were taught to play, too. Lester started on violin and trumpet, but eventually chose the drums at around the age of At this time — in — Billy and Lizetta separated.

Billy got custody over the children, organized a band with other members of the family and went on tour with a circus. At around the age of 12, Lester changed instrument from drums to alto saxophone, leaving the drums to Lee. Irma also took up the alto saxophone and became quite proficient on the instrument. It was during these years that Lester learned the way of speaking that he later became famous for.

On the carnival tours on the TOBA circuit members of the circuses and orchestras developed a jargon that only they could immediately understand. The term "cool" was also his invention and he was a master in creating nicknames that struck.

His habit of wearing a porkpie hat and a long, black coat which in the fifties became his mark, was not a unique invention but something he found in the Southern states in the thirties.

After a year, he rejoined the family band but left gain during the winter when he moved back to Minneapolis to play with Eddie Barefield. Lee Band, and Count Basie. Lester was always playing during these years. During his spare time he always seeked out jam sessions, and in December he took part in one at the Cherry Blossom, where he met Coleman Hawkins — the most famous tenor saxophonist at the time and father of the tenor saxophone in jazz — who came to town with the Fletcher Henderson band.

Lester went on tour with Miles Davis, but was very disheartened to receive bad ratings. Despite this recent downfall, the Encyclopedia Yearbook of Jazz named Lester Young the greatest tenor saxophone ever in Late Years.

It is likely that the disrespect he was beginning to receive led him to drink even more. Young had other complications including an untreated case of syphilis. He was admitted to a hospital in and was treated for malnutrition, alcoholism, and cirrhosis of the liver. He returned home in and was actually able to tour again briefly. Young returned to civilian life in the midst of a jazz revolution called bebop; he participated in Jazz at the Philharmonic JATP , a concert tour that mixed the young rebels with the Old Guard players, and Young fared better at these concerts than his great rival Coleman Hawkins.

His style was more adaptive to the new harmonics—in fact, he had been a primary inspiration for the new music. The sadness that had begun to enter Young's playing, however, is evident on a recording session with the Oscar Peterson Quartet, although his melodic inventiveness compensates somewhat for the loss of power.

Further signs of a crushed spirit gradually emerged, and the s was not a productive decade for Young. Symbolic of the decline, perhaps, was the quirky angle at which Young held his horn while playing: earlier it had been a 45 degree angle, but by the s the rakish tilt had vanished. Always a shy, sensitive man, Young was unable to rebound from the brutal humiliation officialdom had inflicted upon him; his playing in those final years, despite bursts of brilliance, seemed to lack conviction and grew increasingly mechanical and spiritless.

In the last dozen years of his life Young had long spells of poor health, undergoing hospital treatment on four separate occasions—in , in , in , and in A day after returning from a one-month Paris engagement, on March 15, , he died at the hotel of a heart attack brought on by esophageal varicosity and severe internal bleeding. When Young arrived on the major jazz scene in the mids the commanding presence of Coleman Hawkins dictated tenor saxophone style. Hawkins played with fierce intensity, investing every chorus virtually every bar with power and passion—the quintessential romantic.

Young, on the other hand, was all light and air, velvety of tone, buoyantly disregarding bar lines, floating the rhythm effortlessly, attacking the melody obliquely, subtly rather than head-on. Holiday invited him to live with her and her mother after he discovered a rat in his Harlem hotel. By , having recorded independently of each other, they cut some startlingly elegant music together, displaying an unparalleled musical compatibility that verged on telepathy.

Holiday admitted she wanted to sing in the style that Young improvised, while he often studied the lyrics before playing a song. Up to , they continued recording music together that was released through Teddy Wilson and his Orchestra, Billie Holiday and her Orchestra or Count Basie and his Orchestra. Despite the often-gruelling nature of these trips, this was a dynamic period for Young and Holiday.

The other musicians were also immensely fond of them. This included trombonist Benny Morton. The laughter, this was a top, this also goes for Lester. After three months of being drafted, he was arrested for possession of marijuana and barbiturates.

But it was more likely the discovery that he had a white common-law wife that antagonised the officials and provoked a trial and subsequent sentence of 10 months in the detention compound.