LESTER YOUNG (Chapter II) Born into a musical family on 27 August 1909, Willis Lester Young came from Wilkinson County, Mississippi; Young, his sister Irma and brother Lee, were predominantly raised by his mother, a teacher, in Algiers, across the river from New Orleans. His father was a multi-instrumentalist who favoured trumpet, taught piano to a youthful Ben Webster. Many relatives in the extended family played in a band; his mother played baritone saxophone, Lee played soprano saxophone, Irma played C tenor saxophone; the band of cousins, aunts and uncles added up to ten saxophonists in total. Despite being taught by his father, Young avoided learning to read music, instead playing by ear, “My father got me an alto out of the pawnshop and I just picked it up and started playing it, that’s the way that went.” Frustrated, his father threw him out the family band for a while. According to Lester, “I went away and learned how to read the music. And, I came back in the band and played this music.” Young’s parents divorced when he was ten years old, after which his father sent his sister to abduct the children while their mother was out, after which they were taken on the road with the band; the children did not see their mother for years. Young played for his father from 1919 first on drums, taking up the alto saxophone when he was 13 years old. He left the band when he was seventeen, after refusing to tour the South. Finding work with other touring outfits, Young changed first to baritone saxophone then tenor saxophone in 1928, while with Art Bronson’s ‘Bostonians’. He joined a string of bands ending up in Walter Page’s ‘Blue Devils’ and their spin off, ‘Thirteen Original Blue Devils’. After touring with Clarence Love and King Oliver in 1933, Young moved to Kansas City to play with the Bennie Moten-George E. Lee band. kennyYoung sat in with the visiting Fletcher Henderson band at the Cherry Blossom, to substitute for their star soloist Coleman Hawkins who was absent; when Hawkins went to tour Europe, Young joined Henderson’s band. He was chided by his band mates for not sounding like Hawkins and soon quit to join Andy Kirk’s band. Next, Young joined Count Basie, making his recording debut in 1936, on ‘Shoe Shine Boy’, with ‘Jones-Smith Incorporated’, a quintet formed from Basie’s Orchestra. A few months later he played on his first record with Billie Holiday in 1937 as part of Teddy Wilson’s Orchestra. Young’s unique, cool style, intentionally playing high in the register on the tenor, set him apart from the majority of other saxophonists who had modeled themselves on Hawkins. Critic Benny Green described the difference, “Where Hawkins is profuse, Lester is pithy; where Hawkins is passionate, Lester is reflective.”
Posted on: Mon, 26 Jan 2015 09:28:38 +0000
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