Lester Leaps in: The Life and Times of Lester "Pres" Young

The Life and Times of Lester "Pres" Young


The acclaimed biography of the legendary tenor saxophonist


"Lester Leaps In jumps off the page with authenticity and insight. The Prez was an amazing creator with a uniquely wicked sense of humor, and this book captures it all."
—Quincy Jones

"Twenty years in the making, this is the most thorough and penetrating book on the President of the Tenor Saxophone to date."
—Publishers Weekly

"A provocative book, presenting Lester Young in a novel, even controversial light while opening new avenues of possible investigation into one of the most tantalizingly enigmatic of all historic jazz figures."
—Richard Sudhalter, Los Angeles Times

"The lessons learned from Pres' painful life tell us a lot about ourselves and the horrible consequences of racism in America."
—T. Michael Crowell, San Diego Union-Tribune

Saxophonist Young dodged most everyone and made a sport of eluding interviewers and outsiders with his brand of elliptical jazz slang (one club owner cranked up a fan after Young said, "You're smotherin' me"). As a writer for Jet wrote just after Young's death in 1959: "No one really knew the true Lester." This makes Daniels's book all the more impressive. By interviewing for the first time many of Young's relatives, friends and band mates, while also examining and challenging virtually everything written about the man, Daniels (Pioneer Urbanites: A Social and Cultural History of Black San Francisco) adds a layer of understanding to an enigmatic figure. Throughout, the author, a professor of black studies and history at the University of California, Santa Barbara, offers a balanced portrait of a shy, sensitive man whose relaxed onstage persona masked an uneasy loner. The first two-thirds of the book focuses on Young's rise, beginning with his strict musical training and upbringing in his father's traveling minstrel show to his mythic duel against heavyweight Coleman Hawkins in a Kansas City nightclub and landing the lead tenor spot in Count Basie's Orchestra. The remainder is dedicated to Young's life post-1945, the year in which he was dishonorably discharged from the army for marijuana possession. While many critics nail this as the turning point in Young's career, Daniels encourages the reader to revisit the later works, which kept changing and drawing more fans until his death, at age 49, from drinking. This is a wonderful writing of his life. (Feb.) Forecast: Twenty years in the making, this is the most thorough and penetrating book on the President of the Tenor Saxophone to date.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

This first full-scale biography of legendary tenor saxophonist Lester Young celebrates the jazzman's musical genius while shedding significant light on his myth-shrouded personal life. Sifting through an impressive mountain of carefully documented research, history and black-studies, professor Daniels shows, among other things, the importance of home and religion in Young's early life as one of the members of a family band led by his father and the ways in which black musicians in the swing era re-created their shared sense of home and family on the road. Further, Daniels paints a detailed and revealing picture of the way racism affected every fabric of the lives of black musicians, and he argues persuasively that the image of Young as yet another self-destructive jazzman is not only erroneous but itself reflects the racist climate in which the saxophonist worked and lived. The portrait that emerges here is of a sensitive and loving soul who used music, alcohol, and his own version of hipster language to create a separate world for himself. The impact of Daniels' impressive scholarship, unfortunately, is somewhat dulled by his dry, academic writing style. Still, this is an important biography, both to jazz history and to American cultural studies. Bill Ott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

This biography of one of jazz's major innovators and iconoclasts places Young's music in the context of African American culture. While both Lewis Porter's Lester Young (o.p.) and Frank Buchman-Moller's You Just Fight for Your Life (1990) offer fine overviews of the tenor saxophonist's life, Daniels (history and black studies, Univ. of California, Santa Barbara) delves deeply into the mores and culture surrounding his subject as a child in Louisiana and then his stretch playing for his father's musical entourage. He then attacks the thorny issues of Young's desire to provide for his family while contending with strong urges to travel and play. Young's contradictory actions reveal a sensitive observer of life bedeviled by various personal and social problems, including chronic alcoholism and a hypersensitivity to racism. Daniels also shows that Young's music didn't deteriorate after his disastrous World War II army experiences but rather continued in fresh, invigorating ways. Although the author sometimes makes claims about Young's thoughts and feelings with little supporting evidence, this is nonetheless a worthwhile purchase for music, academic, and large public libraries. William G. Kenz, Minnesota State Univ., Moorhead

Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.