Prez and Hawk respected and liked one another and appeared together throughout their careers but their approaches were fundamentally different. When Hawk played hot, he sounded hot. Lester, on the other hand, always sounded cool no matter how hot he played. There was a decidedly cool approach in everything he did. This was true not only of his sax work but his clarinet work as well. Although not well known as a clarinet player, Young was quite accomplished on the instrument and played it on the 1938 New York recordings with the Kansas City Seven and his clarinet sensibility also reflected the cool aesthetic that was completely different from anything done by Goodman or Jimmy Dorsey. It was this coolness in Lester’s playing that caused fans of Hawk to reject him when he was brought in to replace him. Young is, in fact, the single bridge between Bix & Tram from the twenties to the eventual emergence of cool jazz in the fifties.
Lester Young 1939 ~ Original Lester Leaps In (Take 1) - YouTube
Count Basie - Jive at Five 1939 w/ Lester Young - YouTube
This was quite difficult road for Young to travel. He had to take on the entire jazz world and make it see his point-of-view and yet he succeeded. Without Young, there would have been no Stan Getz or Gerry Mulligan. Hot and cool are opposite sensibilities and aesthetics and the former was much more preferred in the jazz universe and many saw it as the embodiment of jazz and so the thought of a cool approach to jazz was a contradiction, a complete absurdity. Basie, evidently, saw some value in it though as he hired Lester for his band after working with him in previously in the Blue Devils. Perhaps he saw some use in pairing his cool approach with hotter approach of Herschel Evans to introduce a new sound to the big band—a sound that eventually became a new vocabulary. In fact, Lester’s spoken vocabulary also had a tremendous influence on jazz as much of the hepcat jive is attributable to him.
Lester reportedly refused to play on Friday the 13th and this led to Basie sacking him in 1940 after Young skipped a gig for this reason. Others say that Lester left on his own. Whatever the reason, they parted ways and Lester went to New York and began his productive career playing with Billie Holiday. Holiday’s ability to use her voice as a jazz instrument mixed incredibly well with Lester’s playing. They seemed made for each other. Lester was the toast of the jazz world and his trademark crooked neck and porkpie hat became iconic:
In 1943, Lester and Basie decided to get back together but it wouldn’t last as Lester had been drafted into the U.S. Army. While white musicians were almost always allowed to continue playing music after being conscripted (Glenn Miller, Les Paul, etc.), black musicians were generally shuttled into the regular army and forbidden to play their instruments. Lester was one of the black soldiers to suffer this indignity. Forbidden to play the sax, Lester turned to marijuana and alcohol to fill the void in his military life. He was caught with this contraband, court-martialed, served a year in detention and given a dishonorable discharge.
Lester Young- DB (Detention Barrack) Blues - YouTube
Lester’s piece about his experience in detention.
After the war, Lester Young found a steady with Jazz at the Philharmonic (JATP) founded by jazz impresario Norman Granz and many of the sessions were recorded and released on Granz’s highly influential label, Verve. During this time, Lester experimented with plastic reeds and made them a permanent part of his style alongside the wooden reeds he had always used. He also experimented with different mouthpieces. Lester recorded with Nat King Cole (terrific jazz pianist) on the Aladdin label and with Basie on the Savoy label.
Charlie Parker & Lester Young - Embraceable You - YouTube
A 1949 JATP performance with Charlie Parker and Roy Eldridge. The all-star lineup also included Ray Brown on bass, Buddy Rich on drums and Hank Jones on piano. Lester is just slaying it!
By 1951, however, Lester’s playing was noticeably declining due, in no small part, to his drinking. Yet, he was still capable of great performances as this 1952 clip of Lester with the Oscar Peterson Trio proves:
Lester Young with the Oscar Peterson Trio - YouTube
But his health was deteriorating which culminated in 1955 with a nervous breakdown. A couple of months later, however, Lester was detoxed and feeling healthy again. He began recording with Teddy Wilson and Roy Eldridge on Verve (Granz producing). Then he went with Miles Davis on a European tour. He would get together with Basie again 1957 for the Newport Jazz Festival which is considered one of his finest performances despite being quite ill.