Lester Young (Twayne's Music Series) [Hardcover]

Lewis Porter (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 080579459X | ISBN-13: 978-0805794595 | Publication Date: October 1985

Praise for Lester Young:

". . . a schematic of unparalleled insight and detail."
---Down Beat

"A monumental work."
---Dizzy Gillespie

". . . a major contribution to jazz scholarship . . . for its illumination of Lester Young's music and for setting the biographical record straight."
---Dan Morgenstern

Several new biographies of Lester Young have been published in the years since Lewis Porter's Lester Young first appeared, but none have supplanted or even attempted the in-depth study that Porter brings to his subject's music. With the same care and scholarship that characterized his John Coltrane, Porter analyzes the music that made Lester Young "the most original tenor sax in jazz."

In addition to helping us understand Lester Young's playing and stylistic evolution, Porter's analysis demonstrates that Young's playing at the end of his career did not mark a serious decline over his earlier style, as many critics have claimed.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 190 pages
• Publisher: Twayne Pub (October 1985)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 080579459X
• ISBN-13: 978-0805794595
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,655,757 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good analysis, August 30, 2006

By 

J. S. Geers "saintsday" (Cleveland, Ohio) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Lester Young (Jazz Perspectives) (Paperback)

If you want to understand what the musical elements are in Lester's hugely influential style, read this book and listen to every recording you can afford to lay hands on.
Porter does a great job of transcribing and annotating several Young solos from different points in his career and explains with solid scholarship exactly what Young was doing and some of the whys. Porter is not among those who dismiss Lester's later work with the cliche about all the best stuff being before WWII. Instead he breaks Young's career into three periods and examines each fairly. There are some gaps in his discography, i.e.,the session with Oscar Peterson, but that may be due to the original publication date pre-dating the advent of CDs.
Charlie Parker's idol and cited as a major influence by nearly every jazz saxophonist to follow him, Lester Young was indeed the President of the Saxophone.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Musical Mind of Lester Willis Young, April 29, 2007

By 

C. CRADDOCK "Cr@$#!!!!" (Bakersfield) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Lester Young (Jazz Perspectives) (Paperback)

This is a great book if you want to try to understand Prez. There are tons of transcribed solos, and you can listen and read along--or even better--play along. All examples are in Bb transcription, so you can play along on your own Tenor Sax.

Take for example the solo he did with Count Basie on Lady, Be Good. It is something new, something he created, it sounds like a real breakthrough, like music has been pushed to a new level. Worthy of further study. Or dig how modern Prez sounds on I Didn't Know What Time It Was. You can see several different versions of many standards, done years apart, showing the evolving sound. For instance, Just You, Just Me, the earliest version is so classic, but the later version at a quicker tempo is an interesting comparison.

Besides the transcriptions and discography, the prose is good, too. I like the writing, as it seems like it was written by a musician, with a great understanding of the music, and also a musical way of writing.