Prez...

[Kalo]

.....

Pretty much all of my jazz collection is either from the bop or avant garde camps...So my question is...if you could recommend one non-Basie Lester Young CD to someone with a listening background like mine, which one would it be?

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This, too, is avant-garde.

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Is it just me, I love Lester but this session is really poor. Much like th eworst of Bud on verve it should have stayed in the vaults IMO

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Well, this is one of those session that people either love or hate, and it's hard to argue it one way or the other, simply because the criteria for one reaction have very little, if anything, to do with the other one. I love it, and the recommendation is sincere and ongoing. On a session like this, it's as if Prez, not having the physical resources at hand to deal with the instrument in a "traditional" (even for him) way, found a way to get his story out anyway. A triumph of mood over matter, if you will. Granted, that story is sad, at times even disturbing (deeply so, in fact), but it is his story for that time and for that place, and like the "worst" of Bud Powell, I think it's a mistake, at a level beyond "musicality", to equate unpleasantness with unworthiness, much less with "unrealness" of some sort. The story was what it was. What it was not was false in any way.

I listen to this session for a sign, any sign, that what came out of Prez' horns that day was unintentional, and I don't hear any. Even the clarinet work, which finds him struggling with an instrument which he was ill-prepared at the time to return to, comes out as a statement, a message that took instrumental shortcomings & physical perils into consideration before being delivered. I don't hear a man "trying" to do something and falling short, I hear a man who knew in advance what he had to work with, physically, instrumetally, spiritually, and then proceeding accordingly from there. The results are such that one can either embrace them or be repelled by them, but it's hard to imagine anybody being indifferent to them. That's how strongly the message came across.

Yes, it's painful to listen to, no disputing that whatsoever, and those who wish to argue that such blatant pain and dissipation has no place being put on public display will get little if any argument from me. But it was, so how do we deal with it? For me, it's a matter of love. I love Lester Young (to the degree that I "know" him through his music), and to a depth that I love very few artists. Because of that, I'm as willing to hear the "bad" with as much empathy as I am the "good". My love is unconditional, and that means sharing the deepest pain as well as the highest euphoria, no questions asked, no "judgements" made. Very, VERY few artists reach me like that, but Prez is definitely one of them. Can't say that I've ever heard a note from him where I didn't feel it, good bad, or indifferent (and there are plenty of each). When somebody reaches you like that, even the "bad" has meaning, and sometimes that meaning cuts closer to the quick than the "good", or than is comfortable. But so be it.

Love's a bitch sometimes.

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Wow, Jim. Very eloquent. I've always valued this as part of the overall story of Lester Young, but your post will send me back to this album pronto (well, probably later tonight).

[jazzbo]

Austin is THE music town if you are interested in white music with rock beats or country shuffles.

[ghost of miles]

I gotta vote for "The Aladdin Sessions" as a nice introduction for the modern jazz fan, but sooner or later you're gonna love it all like I do! 

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My vote too!

[Kalo]

Austin is THE music town if you are interested in white music with rock beats or country shuffles.

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So where's "jazz central" in Texas?

[jazzbo]

Dallas possibly has the most goin' on. . . and it ain't enough.

[JSngry]

Funny, I was going to say Houston. Their local scene seems pretty healthy, all things considered.

Check this site out: http://www.jazzhouston.com/ They even have a bulletin board!

Of course, it ain't enough there, either. I play a cuppla "society" gigs down there each year, and the band is always stocked with local jazz players, and that's what they say.

[jazzbo]

I almost said Houston, I thought Dallas might have had a little bit of an edge, but that's just from this view. . . not an accurate one. San Antonio occasionally happens.

Whole state is clearly lacking.

[Soul Stream]

I couldn't say who really has the players (my instinct would be Houston), but as fans go, I'd have to give it to San Antonio. A small, but at least very knowledgable group of old-timers hidden in that town. Plus they have a full-time straight ahead jazz radio station which I'm not sure exists elsewhere in the Texas big cities.

[John L]

Man, that's really hard. . . .

Here's my carefully considered pick:

It's live.  It ROCKS.

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This is one of my very favorite records, a underrated item if there ever was one.