The Lester Young Collection 1936-47

This is part of a mini-series on our competitively priced budget label Fabulous under the banner of Jazz Legends, presenting some of great and influential names of jazz, with recordings drawn from the classic era of the genre’s development between 1920 and 1950. Lester Young was one of the great tenor sax stylists, as well as an fine clarinettist (notably with Billie Holiday) and had a huge influence on his peers and those who followed, his smooth, elegant, free-flowing phrases giving his music a relaxed and cool flavour. He was closely associated with the Kansas City scene and most especially with Count Basie, whose bands he played with for several extended periods over the years. This great value 24-track collection starts with his earliest recordings and traces the first decade of his career, including a gap in 1944-5 when he was in the US Army and imprisoned in detention barracks for a year for marijuana possession, the inspiration for “DB Blues”. It includes examples of not only his work with Basie, Teddy Wilson and Billie Holiday, but also the groups which he led himself, so it is an interesting cross-section of material, showing how his sound and style developed through this period. It also features many other top flight musicians of the time.