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Pop & Circumstance: Lester Young's Minneapolis Years |
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Written by Max Sparber
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Sunday, May 18, 2008 at 10:14 PM |
 Minneapolis can lay a legitimate claim to a jazz legend.
Minneapolis is generally treated as a footnote in the history of jazz. Sure, it had its clubs, and it had its bands, and it was part of several jazz circuits, but Minneapolis didn't produce an identifiable sound, or a distinct scene. And, as far as most historians are concerned, Minneapolis cannot lay claim to a defining jazz artist in the way New Orleans can claim Louis Armstrong or Kansas City can claim Charlie Parker.
Here, the jazz historians are wrong. Minneapolis gets Lester Young, the porkpie-clad titan of the tenor saxophone.
Most biographies make a cursory mention of Young's stay in the Twin Cities, but because he lived here before he began recording, and before he joined the Count Basie Band in Kansas City, his years here are given short shrift. Lester Young first moved to Minneapolis at as young an age 10, and spent a majority of his time here from the age 17 on, when his family settled in the Twin Cities. Lester Young played in his family's band, the Billy Young Jazz Band, also known as the New Orleans Strutters, founded by Lester's father. They traveled the Midwest during the carnival season, with Lester initially playing drums, until he got tired of assembling and disassembling the kits, whereupon he switched to saxophone. The band held down residencies at the Radisson and St. Paul Hotels when they were not on the road.
Even after he settled in Kansas City, where he made his reputation, he returned to Minneapolis for extended stretches, playing for local bandleaders such as Leroy White and Rook Ganz; in fact, Lester Young spent most of 1934 and 1935 gigging in the Twin Cities. All told, Lester Young lived and worked in Minneapolis, on and off, for more than a decade, and they were his formative years as a saxophonist.
More importantly, Lester Young became an avid record collector while in Minneapolis, as recounted in A Lester Young Reader: "Lester began his disc acquisitions after the move to Minneapolis. Once there was a firm base, there was less traveling, which also meant fewer bands to hear. Records had to become a more important resource. Moreover, by that time, the winter of 1926-27, a lot more jazz was making it onto 78RPM discs that were newly utilizing microphones, rendering a better sound. At home in Minneapolis the trio of Pete Jones, Phil Phillips, and Lester Young would make their way to the record shop almost daily. In those days, you could preview a disc in the store before purchasing. The three would buy a few records each time, so they built up quit a collection."
Lester Young listened to these records with great interest, paying close attention to jazz soloists, such as Louis Armstrong, whose solos Lester Young learned on saxophone. By the time he began recording with Basie, he had already developed an idiosyncratic personal style—he was a sort of proto-hipster, exuding a deadpan calm and speaking a self-invented slang—as well as a unique style of saxophone soloing. At a time when the tenor saxophone was a brassy, noisy instrument, Lester Young's approach was cool, melodic, and understated, with an exquisite sense of melody and a tendency toward unexpected pauses. Some of this Lester Young had learned from years of gigging on the road, but much of the credit for his distinctive style must be given to his time in Minneapolis, listening to locally purchased records and memorizing the sound he liked.
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Last Updated: Tuesday, June 10, 2008 at 05:41 PM |
