On August 27th, 1909, in Woodville, Mississippi, one of the three tenor saxophone giants was born, Lester Young, also known as the ‘Prez’ or the ‘Pres’ (Ron T). Along with Ben Webster and most notably, Coleman Hawkins, he culminated his own style of intricate swing and paved the road to bebop. Folks like Charlie Parker and Sonny Rollins had all of his solos memorized in every key, by heart. He was the father of every style of jazz that followed. In the 20’s and 30’s, jazz was the music of dance. meant for entertainment, it was the poor and low class that liked to listen to it. The rich usually looked down on such music, with the dominance of classical music during that time period. Lester Young, though, played a complicated type of swing, one
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When Lester Young returned to the civilian world, something new was taking the Jazz world by storm. Bebop. Culminated through New York nighttime jam sessions with Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillepsie along with Thelonious Monk and Max Roach, this new type of jazz required the player to be extremely well versed in music theory and had an altered style in improvisation. As we have touched on before, Prez was an extremely talented musician, but the one thing he lacked was music theory, something his parents hadn’t been able to pay for when he was a kid. Though many Jazz critics would hardly consider Lester Young your normal swing player, we have to understand the gravity of the bop movement. It was something completely new and radically different. Up until then, Jazz had evolved relatively smoothly. From New Orleans to Kansas City to Chicago to New York, changes have been made, but nothing drastic. There was also the problem that bebop usually consisted of a small group of a trumpeter, a saxophonist, a pianist, a drummer, and a bassist. This meant that many big bands that consisted of sometimes 20 musicians were put out of business, with many swing musicians out of the job struggling to find jobs. Most swing musicians didn’t have the music theory to play bop, nor the chops. Now one may have thought that Lester Young, often hailed as the father of Bop, would have been able to make this transition easily. What actually ended up happening though was that the Prex emerged from the camp differently. Many reported that he had become depressed, and wasn’t bouncing around on the horn like he used to. He began to drink excessively, with most of his post-war recordings recorded when he was high (which was most of the time). Another problem that he faced in the transition to Bop was that if one wants to play it, one must think harmonically/theoretically. But Young’s style, as we saw, was rooted in melody and
When Lester Young returned to the civilian world, something new was taking the Jazz world by storm. Bebop. Culminated through New York nighttime jam sessions with Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillepsie along with Thelonious Monk and Max Roach, this new type of jazz required the player to be extremely well versed in music theory and had an altered style in improvisation. As we have touched on before, Prez was an extremely talented musician, but the one thing he lacked was music theory, something his parents hadn’t been able to pay for when he was a kid. Though many Jazz critics would hardly consider Lester Young your normal swing player, we have to understand the gravity of the bop movement. It was something completely new and radically different. Up until then, Jazz had evolved relatively smoothly. From New Orleans to Kansas City to Chicago to New York, changes have been made, but nothing drastic. There was also the problem that bebop usually consisted of a small group of a trumpeter, a saxophonist, a pianist, a drummer, and a bassist. This meant that many big bands that consisted of sometimes 20 musicians were put out of business, with many swing musicians out of the job struggling to find jobs. Most swing musicians didn’t have the music theory to play bop, nor the chops. Now one may have thought that Lester Young, often hailed as the father of Bop, would have been able to make this transition easily. What actually ended up happening though was that the Prex emerged from the camp differently. Many reported that he had become depressed, and wasn’t bouncing around on the horn like he used to. He began to drink excessively, with most of his post-war recordings recorded when he was high (which was most of the time). Another problem that he faced in the transition to Bop was that if one wants to play it, one must think harmonically/theoretically. But Young’s style, as we saw, was rooted in melody and