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Lester Willis Young (August 27, 1909 – March 15, 1959), nicknamed "Pres" or "Prez", was an American jazz tenor saxophonist and occasional clarinetist.
Coming to prominence while a member of Count Basie's orchestra, Young was one of the most influential players on his instrument. In contrast to many of his hard-driving peers, Young played with a relaxed, cool tone and used sophisticated harmonies, using what one critic called "a free-floating style, wheeling and diving like a gull, banking with low, funky that pleased dancers and listeners alike".
Known for his hip, introverted style, he invented or popularized much of the hipster jargon which came to be associated with the music."Charlie Parker Parker was shy of hipster elaborations. He added nothing to the vocabulary, as did Lester Young, one of the great hip verbalists." Russell, Ross (1973). Bird Lives: The High Life and Hard Times of Charlie (Yardbird) Parker. DaCapo Press, p. 186
In his teens, he and his father clashed, and he often left home for long periods. His family moved to Minneapolis, in 1919 and Young stayed there for much of the 1920s, first picking up the tenor saxophone while living there. Young left the family band in 1927 at the age of 18 because he refused to tour in the Southern United States, where Jim Crow laws were in effect and racial segregation was required in public facilities.24 part "Interview with Lester Young", conducted in the 1950s. He became a member of the Bostonians, led by Art Bronson, and chose the tenor saxophone over the alto as his primary instrument. He made a habit of leaving, working, then going home. He left home permanently in 1932 when he became a member of the Blue Devils led by Walter Page.
Young recorded his first sides ever in 1936, with Basie but not with his orchestra but with a quintet, among the four side one of Lester masterpieces: his improvisation on the chords of the Gershwinian Lady Be Good. In the next four years with the Basie band, and in different small formations, other gems were recorded: "Every Tub", "Texas Shuffle", "Jumpin' at the Woodside", "Clap Hands! Here Comes Charley!", and "You Can Depend On Me" with a septet. While with Basie, Young made also small-group classic recordings with Billie Holiday, under Teddy Wilson's conduction, and for Milt Gabler's Commodore Records. Although recorded in New York, they are named after the Kansas City Seven of Buck Clayton, Dicky Wells, Basie, Young, Freddie Green, Rodney Richardson, and Jo Jones. In these sessions Young played also clarinet in a "liquid, nervous style." His clarinet work from 1938–39 is documented on recordings with Basie orchestra and small groups and Billie Holiday.
Billie and Lester met at a Harlem jam session in the early 1930s and worked together in the Count Basie band and in nightclubs on New York's 52nd St. At one point Lester moved into the apartment Billie shared with her mother, Sadie Fagan. Holiday always insisted their relationship was strictly platonic. She gave Lester the nickname "Pres" (sometimes written as "Prez") because he was the president of the saxophone. Playing on her name, he would call her "Lady Day."
Young's clarinet was stolen in 1939, so he abandoned the instrument until about 1957 when Norman Granz gave him one and urged him to play it (with very different results at that stage in Young's life).
Subsequently Young led a number of small groups that, for the next couple of years, often included his brother drummer Lee Young; live and broadcast recordings from this period exist. Young accompanied the singer Billie Holiday in a couple of studio sessions (1937–1941) and also made a small set of recordings with Nat "King" Cole (their first of several collaborations) in June 1942. His studio recordings are relatively sparse during the 1942 to 1943 period, largely due to the recording ban by the American Federation of Musicians. Small record labels not bound by union contracts continued to record, and Young recorded some sessions for Harry Lim's Keynote Records label in 1943.
In December 1943, Young returned to the Basie fold for a 10-month stint, cut short by his being Conscription into the U.S. Army during World War II. Recordings made during this and subsequent periods suggest Young was beginning to make much greater use of a plastic reed, which tended to give his playing a somewhat heavier, breathier tone (although still quite smooth compared to that of many other players). While he never abandoned the cane reed, he used the plastic reed a significant share of the time from 1943 until the end of his life. Another cause for the thickening of his tone around this time was a change in saxophone mouthpiece from a metal Otto Link to an ebonite Brilhart. In August 1944, Young appeared alongside drummer Jo Jones, trumpeter Sweets Edison, and fellow tenor saxophonist Illinois Jacquet in Gjon Mili's short film Jammin' the Blues.
He emerged from this treatment improved. In January 1956, he recorded two Granz-produced sessions including a reunion with pianist Teddy Wilson, trumpet player Roy Eldridge, trombonist Vic Dickenson, bassist Gene Ramey, and drummer Jo Jones – which were issued as The Jazz Giants '56 and Pres and Teddy albums. 1956 was a relatively good year for Lester Young, including a tour of Europe with Miles Davis and the Modern Jazz Quartet and a successful residency at Olivia Davis' Patio Lounge in Washington, D.C., with the Bill Potts Trio. Live recordings of Young and Potts in Washington were issued later.
Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, Young occasionally played as a featured guest with the Count Basie Orchestra. The best-known of these appearances is the July 1957 performance at the Newport Jazz Festival, with a line-up including many of his 1940s colleagues: Jo Jones, Roy Eldridge, Illinois Jacquet and Jimmy Rushing. In 1952 he was featured on Lester Young with the Oscar Peterson Trio, released in 1954 on Norgran Records. In 1956, he recorded two LPs with his 1930s collaborators Teddy Wilson and Jo Jones. AllMusic's Scott Yanow, reviewing one of the albums, Pres and Teddy, commented:
Young made his final studio recordings and live performances in Paris in March 1959 with drummer Kenny Clarke at the tail end of an abbreviated European tour during which he ate next to nothing and drank heavily. On a flight to New York City, he suffered from internal bleeding due to the effects of alcoholism and died in the early morning hours of March 15, 1959, only hours after arriving back in New York, at the age of 49.
According to jazz critic Leonard Feather, who rode with Holiday in a taxi to Young's funeral, she said after the services, "I'll be the next one to go." Holiday died four months later on July 17, 1959, at age 44.
His son, Lester Young, Jr. became an educator and in 2021 was elected chancellor of the New York State Board of Regents, the first African American to hold that position.
Wayne Shorter, then of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, composed a tribute called "Lester Left Town," which was released on the Jazz Messengers' 1960 album The Big Beat.
In 1981 OyamO (Charles F. Gordon) published the book The Resurrection of Lady Lester, subtitled "A Poetic Mood Song Based on the Legend of Lester Young", depicting Young's life. The work was subsequently adapted for the theater, and was staged in November of that year at the Manhattan Theater Club, New York City, with a four-piece jazz combo led by Dwight Andrews.
In the 1986 film Round Midnight, the fictional main character Dale Turner, played by Dexter Gordon, was partly based on Young – incorporating flashback references to his army experiences, and loosely depicting his time in Paris and his return to New York just before his death. Young is a major character in English people writer Geoff Dyer's 1991 fictional book about jazz, .
The 1994 documentary about the 1958 Esquire "A Great Day in Harlem" photograph of jazz musicians in New York, contains many remembrances of Young. For many of the other participants, the photo shoot was the last time they saw him alive; he was the first musician in the famous photo to pass away.
Don Byron recorded the album Ivey-Divey in gratitude for what he learned from studying Lester Young's work, modeled after a 1946 trio date with Buddy Rich and Nat King Cole. "Ivey-Divey" was one of Lester Young's common eccentric phrases.
Young was the subject and inspiration of Prez. Homage to Lester Young (1993), a book of poetry by Vancouver writer Jamie Reid.
Young was the subject of an opera, Prez: A Jazz Opera, that was written by Bernard Cash and Alan Plater and broadcast by BBC television in 1985.
Peter Straub's short story collection Magic Terror (2000) contains a story called "Pork Pie Hat", a fictionalized account of the life of Lester Young. Straub was inspired by Young's appearance on the 1957 CBS-TV show The Sound of Jazz, which he watched repeatedly, wondering how such a genius could have ended up "this present shambles, this human wreckage, hardly able to play at all".
On March 17, 2003, Young was added to the ASCAP Jazz Wall of Fame, along with Sidney Bechet, Al Cohn, Nat "King" Cole, Peggy Lee and Teddy Wilson. He was represented at the ceremony by his children Lester Young Jr and Yvette Young.
| 1946 | The Lester Young Buddy Rich Trio | MGN 1074 | 1956 | Reissued as Verve MGV 8164 (1957?) |
| 1950-1951 | Pres | MGN 1072 | 1956? | Reissued as Verve MGV 8162 (1957?) |
| 1950-1952 | The President | MGN 1005 | 1954 | |
| 1950-1952 | Lester Swings Again (reissue of MGN1005) | MGN 1093 | 1956 | Reissued as Verve MGV 8181 (1957?) |
| 1951-1953 | Lester's Here | MGN 1071 | 1956 | Reissued as Verve MGV 8161 (1957) |
| 1952 | Lester Young with the Oscar Peterson Trio #1 | MGN 5 Reissued in 1054 | 1954 | 10" |
| 1952 | Lester Young with the Oscar Peterson Trio #2 | MGN 6 Reissued in 1054 | 1954 | 10" |
| 1952 | The President Plays with the Oscar Peterson Trio | MGN 1054 | 1955 | Reissued as Verve MGV 8144 (1957) |
| 1954 | It Don't Mean a Thing (reissued as MGN 1100) | MGN 1022 | 1955 | Reissued as Verve MGV 8187 (1957) |
| 1955 | Pres and Sweets | MGN 1043 | 1956 | Reissued as Verve MGV 8134 (1957) |
| 1956 | The Jazz Giants '56 | MGN 1056 | 1956 | Reissued as Verve MGV 8146 (1956) |
| 1956 | Pres and Teddy | Verve MGV 8316 | 1957 | with Teddy Wilson |
| 1957-1958 | Going for Myself | Verve MGV 8298 | 1958 | with Harry Edison |
| 1958 | Laughin' to Keep from Cryin' | Verve MGV 8316 | 1959? | with Roy Eldridge and Harry Edison |
| 1959 | Lester Young in Paris | Verve MGV 8378 | 1960 | Reissued as Le dernier message de L Y |
| Multiple years | Pres | Live (Savoy Ballroom) | 402 | 1961 |
| 1950 | Pres is Blue | Live (Savoy Ballroom) | 405 | 1963 |
| 1948-1949 | Just You, Just Me | Live At Royal Roost | 409 | 1961 |
| ? | Live at the Savoy (aka The Pres) | Live | 504 | 1981 |
| ? | An Historical Meeting At The Summit | with Charlie Parker | 828 | 1961 |
| 1956 | Pres, In Washington, DC 1956, volume 1 | Live | 2308219 | 1980 |
| 1956 | Prez, In Washington, DC 1956, volume 2 | Live | 2308225 | 1980 |
| 1956 | Pres, In Washington, DC 1956, volume 3 | Live | 2308228 | 1981 |
| 1956 | Pres, In Washington, DC 1956, volume 4 | Live | 2308230 | 1981 |
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