Customer Reviews

Lester Leaps In: The Life and Times of Lester 'Pres' Young

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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.

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.

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.

Abysmal. Beyond introducing some previously unreported biographical minutiae, this volume adds nothing to what has been previously written about this great artist. It is claimed but not demonstrated that Lester has been misunderstood by "Eurocentric" critics. The book is poorly organized and often badly written-some of it reads like a junior high term paper. Here's the amateurish opening sentence: "Lester `Pres' (or `Prez') Young (1909-1959) was without question one of the most influential tenor saxophonists of the twentieth century."
It often seems that author, a professor of history and Black Studies, has chosen his subject arbitrarily. The book is filled with digressions and generalizations about the black American experience; Jim Crow, West African culture, etc. that are not specific to an understanding of Lester Young any more than to any other black musician of his era. That Lester was black does not "explain" him any more than it does less talented black musicians of his era for whom no claim to genius or eccentricity is made. Lester's "alleged inscrutability" is seen by Daniels as a reaction to racial oppression; is it not possible other factors shaped his personality and music?
There is little discussion of Lester's work; most of his greatest solos go unmentioned. The author's lack of comprehension of Lester's style is reflected in such preposterous statements as the claim (p.152) that he brought to the tenor sax the same techniques Lonnie Johnson and Robert Johnson used on guitar. (He seems to be referring to Lester's use of repeated notes with alternate fingerings, not characteristic of either Johnson. Lester has little in common with these guitarists,certainly no more than other saxophonists who played the blues.)
Daniels demonstrates no understanding, musical or emotional, of wherein Lester's greatness lies, or how his playing was a departure from that of Coleman Hawkins.

Douglas Daniels should be congratulated for digging deep in researching Lester Young's early ways with his father. The Minneapolis days are also explored, as well as the importance of group comradeship in the Kansas City Seven. Interviews with sidemen dispel the myth of a decline after WW II, and I would have appreciated more quotes from these interviews.

Some common themes throughout the book are the impact of race in the south and in touring and booking policies. Pres's integrity, independence, and perhaps stoicism is highlighted. The importance of Lester to swing, bebop, cool, and the "beat-nicks" is obvious in the well-written last "Legacy" chapter. Throughout the book one gets the historical feel of the history of Jazz from Minstrel to King Oliver to Basie to Jazz at the Philharmonic.

There are weaknesses in the book. Young left few written letters and had few interviews, but there are many cases where Daniels infers inner thoughts from external surroundings.... for example "Oliver was a father figure to Young". Daniels' style is academic, and the dryness doesn't always work well for a true individual like Pres. The narrative would have benefited from more antidotes and quotes from Lester, particularly with respect to his relation with Billy Holiday. More emphasis on Lester's musical style and important recordings would have been expected, and a complete discography with sidemen, would have been more beneficial than the over 100 pages of notes.

I don't know what the author's intentions were in writing this book, but it certainly seems as though the life of Lester Young was not the main topic. Daniels spends more time on topics like racism and the unfair treatment of black musicians rather than actually talking about Lester Young. While it is important to talk about these topics in some detail to explain how it affected Lester Young, the author did not have to spend over half the book on them. Here's a little advice Mr. Daniels: If you're going to write a book on the racial inequalities of these times, write a book specifically on that, and with a title that suggests that topic. Don't write a book with a title of "The Life and Times of Lester "Pres" Young" and spend nearly the whole time talking about racism and racial inequalities.

I'm a saxophonist and a teacher in jazz conservatory in Helsinki, Finland. So I was very excited, when I found out that a new book about this strange character had been published. However, not much light came upon the man himself, nor his music. Still, I admire very much the precision that all the knowledge available about the man is presented. Also, the good thing is that the author does not try to analyze his recordings, analyses are often very boring. Musicians don't need them and the others don't understand. Still, where is Lester?

It was so refreshing to read a biography on one of America's greatest musicians from the perspective of an African American historian who had access to Pres' former colleagues and family members relative to what Pres was really like and what made him tick. What intimate family and peer relationships during his childhood, teenage years and adult years contributed to how he expressed himself through his music can only be told by a family member or a very, very close friend. Only African American colleagues of Pres can give us some insight as to how he really felt about America's Jim Crow practices which were actually sanctioned by the US Governmentprior to the Civil Rights Acts of 1954 & 1964) and how these Jim Crow practices may have influenced his mindset.

The Life and Times of Lester "Pres" Young is not for the faint hearted. It is a scholarly work! It is not "Lester Young Goes To Disneyland." Art forms depict what the artist sees as reality. Despite Jim Crow - the Pres was able to deliver. This book tells us about the character of the Man by the people that really knew him. Daniels has provided society with something we didn't have before - a look at Pres through the eyes of the people closest to him who "opened up" to an African American historian over a period of twenty years because they trusted him and believed that he understood the cultural nuances that exist in African American families that are different from many non African American families.

The author is an African-American militant and he's more worried on pamphletizing his political views than on narrating Prez's life. His views of the Jazz world are extremely naive and he tends to idealize everything related to African-Americans. One's got to be balanced...

I really am sorry that I actually paid money for this book. Lester Young is my favorite sax player and when I saw a new biography out on him I jumped at buying it. Lester Young really is just a pawn here. The author basically uses Lester's experiences with racial discrimination as a launching pad to go on huge rants of "Well, Black people weren't allowed to do this" and "Black people weren't allowed to do that" rather than actually talking about Lester. If Danials is so intent on writing about the mistreatment of Black people then he should have written a book on that instead. I mean, let's be serious. Most of us have been learning about the Civil Rights Movement and how poorly Black people were treated in those times since second grade. This is an adult biography and I think that the vast majority of people out there already know that Black people were not treated fairly in those days. There is no reason to spend 70% of the book bickering about it. I recently read a biography on the Irish patriot Michael Collins that was excellent. The author could have taken the same approach as Danials and spent all his time complaining about how England was responsible for centuries of murder and terror in Ireland, but he didn't. The focus of the book was always on Collins. Don't let this lousy book deter you from other stuff on Lester. Lester is one of the most interesting (if not the MOST interesting) of all jazz musicians. For a much better read on Lester Young check out "You Just Fight For Your Life." It was written WAY better than this book and is probably the best biography on Pres out there. It's out of print so you would probably have to get it through your library.