17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
An exciting entry in jazz criticism, July 7, 2009
In a refreshing approach that I think might be unprecedented, Daniels treats Lester Young's story in the context of Black Studies.
Daniels is not a musician, and his book, while very good, could only have been improved by editorial oversight by a musician or (this would have been best) musician/scholars like Lewis Porter or Loren Schoenberg. In addition to noting some mild technical inaccuracies, I'm unimpressed by Daniels's emphasis on the Black Church and religion in general. I just don't hear this in Young's music.
Quibbles aside, Daniels's book is based on twenty years of unique interviews he did with Young's relations and fellow musicians. He thinks that Young's community has had its ups and downs with the world of white jazz criticism, and in this Daniels can only be right. Daniels supplies amazing information about how the white-run publications DownBeat and Metronome ripped Young to shreds for the last fifteen years of his life while Young was revered as a cultural hero in contemporary black press like the Chicago Defender and the New York Amsterdam News. (Around the same time George T. Simon -- Glenn Miller's drummer and biographer -- reviewed a Young performance in Melody Maker saying that Lester Young couldn't play on the changes of the simple standard "A Foggy Day," Ebony published an pictorial on Young called, "How to Make a Porkpie Hat.") Even today, when I talk to older black musicians, they give Young an iconic, heroic status that is as related to what he represented as to what he played. Young is the perfect subject for a Black Studies approach.
At any rate, the entry of black writers into jazz should be celebrated, whether they are musicians or not. They are a much-needed voice in the choir. I'm appalled at the defamatory one and two star reviews on here on Amazon. (They have prompted this, my first Amazon review.) Daniels is certainly not "militant" or "neo-conservative." He's not racist, either, being appropriately careful to document Young's lifelong love of Bix Beiderbecke, Frankie Trumbauer, and Jimmy Dorsey. (A love that has been the sorest sticking point to black-centric musicians and critics in jazz history!) Daniels talks to white sidemen like Barney Kessel too.
The story of Young's upbringing and family is told nowhere else in such detail than in Lester Leaps In. I don't think a white jazz critic would have downplayed this information if they could have gotten it, but that's the point: only Daniels could have gotten it. This is the most recent major book on Lester Young, and future writers will be indebted to Daniels for sharing some of this inside material.
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24 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Wish someone who loved Pres and knew music had written this, April 11, 2003
This review is from: Lester Leaps In: The Life and Times of Lester 'Pres' Young (Hardcover)
Unfortunately, this is not the great full, musically, and factually satisfying book I hoped it would be when I bought it. Still if you love Pres, you do need this book.
Everything the other comments say negative about this book is true. I say this as an academic who has written texts that have been used in Black studies for decades. I do find his comments about racism and reception of Young and his attempt to draw on comment on Young in the Black press to be interesting and to the general point. However, to explain why these forces had one effect on Lester Young, and say another effect on Duke Ellington is the real task of a biographer.
Daniels sounds like a neo conservative of the Albert Murray Wynton Marsalis variety. He tries to shoehorn Lester Young into his own beliefs in the strength of traditional conservative Black middle class culture and institutions regardless of the facts. To do this, Daniels goes off on long digressions where any practical information about or reference to Lester Young disappears, and instead we suffer under Daniels's blather.
For example, even though Lester quit school in the fourth grade and always said he hated school, Daniels tries to paint Lester's success as a product of his parents stressing the importance of education (LOL). Even though Lester stopped going to church as soon as he was old enough not to get a licking for it, Daniels tries to paint him as a product of his own fairy tale view of the "Black Church."
There little sytematic discussion of Lester's music, his saxophone playing as it relates to the real art of the saxophone, or of Jazz and popular music. There is no commentary on some of the more interesting studies of Lester's music: Günter Schuler's analysis in his Swing book comes to mind. In fact there is almost no discussion of Lester Young's real role in the Count Basie Orchestra on a musical level. This, the central part of Lester's work, is simply brushed aside.
Aside from the interesting comments about his relations with his family that mainly come from Daniel's hard work locating and interviewing friends and family of Lester Young, Lester Young's personality seems to disappear as the book procedes. What we get instead are excuses for Daniels to launch on 5-10-20 page essays on his views about African American culture, racism in America, the strength of the Black middle class, and other topics.
Even Daniels does not believe the reader can really understand Lester Young by reading this huge expensive tome. He constantly refers to matters that he expects the reader to already know about fully from somewhere else. He leaves out so many things and he has a number of factual errors. He seems to be ignorant of a lot of things that are available in other texts on the subject that would support his arguments as well as stuff that would not
One droll example is that in an interview about continuing swing bands in the 1950s, Pres sarcastically answered, "Bob Crosby is still swinging." Daniels is so ignorant of Lester Young and music that he takes this statement for good coin about Pres's appreciation of the Bobcats. Daniels' is ignorant of the obvious sarcasm in the remark. Pres considered Bob Crosby so square that he used "Bob Crosby" his nickname for narks! If he needed to inform a fellow pot lover to lay low because of a narc, Lester would say, "Bob Crosby is here." If the heat was heavy, Pres would say, "Yeah and his brother Bing too!" Isn't there someone who really knows about Lester Young and loves him enough not to make such mistakes able to get a research grant and a book contract to write the book this should have been?
What is good about this book is that Daniels has unearthed a lot of material about Lester's family, his growing up, and how relatives and other musicians viewed him personally. The portrait of Lester personally is much more like what people I have met who knew or met him have given than what any other book has given us.
He does provide some information, though scant, about Lester's marriages and female affiliations,
Even in this regard facts that are apparent in other texts that would question the picture of Pres as simply a family loving, square representative of Black middle class values that loved family and golf and had a good relationship with his wives all along are neglected. For example Daniels briefly mentions Elaine Swain, the woman who lived with and helped out Pres in every way in the last years of his life when Pres left his wife, home, and kids and moved into the Alvin Hotel in Manhatten. Daniels says nothing about Swain's relationship with Pres. He really doesn't seem to know that other sources indicate that Lester's scene had gotten so far Daniels' picture of Pres's supposed suburban bliss that Swain shoplifted to support Pres during those final days.
Daniel's tries to defend Pres's post war music against those who claim it deteriorated. I agree about that, and find Lester's Last regular recording, Laughing Just to Keep from Crying a masterpiece: it stayed replaying on my CD player a full day after I got it. However, Daniels just doesn't know enough about music to provide a real description of the place of his later music and its relationship to Pres's art as a whole and the history of Jazz. Daniels has nothing to say about Pres's self-destructive drinking other than to say other musicians and Barrymore were alcoholics. Because he is simply ignorant of Jazz and music, he can't really point out the great albums in Young's post war work like that one and The Jazz Giants, or for that matter the great cuts on his work with basie and Billie before the war either!
The information on the family and personal life--taken with a grain of salt and only accepted where Daniels is presenting documented information about Lester Young as opposed to his own general ideas--is useful, but only if it is added to other work on Lester.
Again, isn't there someone else who loves lester young, is really familiar with the literature about Lester Young, knows enough about Jazz music to write intelligently about the music, and who cares enough to write the book this should have been.
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12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
NOT ENOUGH LESTER!!!, February 12, 2002
This review is from: Lester Leaps In: The Life and Times of Lester 'Pres' Young (Hardcover)
First, let me state, I am a huge Lester Young Fan. As a sax player, myself, he is my musical idol. This book is so vague, it hardly covers the man at all. The author is more concerned with the racism and segregated history of jazz. This is o.k. but should be in a different book. We want more on the man. Also, there are errors in the telling. Just two come to mind. Jefferson Davis was born in Kentucky not Mississippi and Lionel Barrymore was not an alcoholic, his brother, John was. Don't get me wrong, this book is a huge undertaking for the story it tells but alot of it is "probably", "maybe", "people think." It's way too vague on the facts. It is , however, worth a look because there is alot of jazz history worth reading about. I've read the author's other works and they are much better.
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