You Got to Be Original, Man!: The Music of Lester Young

Lester Young, the legendary tenor sax player known as Pres , created music for nearly 25 years. This companion volume to You Just Fight for Your Life , the biography of Young’s life details 251 recording sessions. Listed chronologically, each session has its own introduction that contains title, personnel, date and place of recording, record label, discographical information with matrix numbers, the number of the newest or most complete release of the actual session and, where applicable, whether recording is from concert, radio or TV. The solography lists every solo played by Young, published or unpublished, and contains some newly discovered items including critical assessments of the solos, in many cases illustrated by the author’s own transcriptions of the improvizations. Each solo analysis contains song title, form and the number of takes followed by a listing of the personnel and individual soloists. Included here are notations for over 80 Young solos and excerpts for many more written for a B flat instrument so that musicians can play along with their Lester Young recordings. Access to musicians and song titles is facilitated by a song index and a name index that keys items to the numbered sessions, and an index of the transcribed solos refer to the pages where the solos are to be found.