Prez w/ Strings???????

[Guest ariceffron]

i might have asked this before but i the search feature crapped out on me....does prez have a strings lp? If not, why not. That is rediculous. Do you know how good that would be. oh my god. any info appriciated. thanks

[mmilovan]

Hell yes, but nothing until now has been found, as far as I know. It surely be great.

According to Lewis Porter biography on this subject, Pres canceled his contract with Granz (how, how, he recorded in Paris for Verve), and signed with United Artists. The first session was prepared to be done with large string ansamble. He ordered poster to be made.

But nothing happened!

Or it did, and we don't know.

[pepe]

I'd rather have a hitherto unknown Lester without strings than with, unless Eddie Sauter did the writing.

[mikeweil]

  mmilovan said:

Hell yes, but nothing until now has been found, as far as I know. It surely be great.

According to Lewis Porter biography on this subject, Pres canceled his contract with Granz (how, how, he recorded in Paris for Verve), and signed with United Artists. The first session was prepared to be done with large string ansamble. He ordered poster to be made.

But nothing happened!

Or it did, and we don't know.

That certainly would have become the counterpart to "Lady In Satin" and the discussion just as controversial.

[mmilovan]

  mikeweil said:

That certainly would have become the counterpart to "Lady In Satin" and the discussion just as controversial.

Perhaps, but noone knows - in later years Pres was not so consistent, yet he can play beautifully, especially slow ballads or slow blues.

[Shrdlu]

In the interview with François Postif, taped just days before his death, Pres mentions a plan to record with strings. It's sad to think that he was already barely able to play anymore.

The interview is in the 8 CD Verve set, by the way, complete with vocabulary similar to the thread starter's.

[danasgoodstuff]

Shrdlu,

If you really think Lester's use of language is similar to Aric's you are insulting the former and unduly flattering the latter. Lester was much more articulate and inventive; the fact that they bopth used slang is trivial in itself... Not to make a tempest out of a teapot, you're certainly right to call attention to Lester's language as interesting.

[Shrdlu]

I didn't mean anything heavy by that - the remark was by way of a joke. All the same, Pres's language is very coarse in that interview (contrast it with the interview with Chris Albertson), and Pres himself says that his Dad "did not curse like I do". I don't think "slang" is quite the word, or, as François would have said, le mot juste.

But it's an absorbing interview once you get your personal curse filter going. Very sad, too, as you can hear the booze that killed him being poured, and matches being struck.

[JSngry]

I think it was the Rev. John Gensel (????) who called Prez a "poet of profanity" or some such. Carse his lnguage may indeed have been, but he was one of the very, very few who used such language in a totally non-abrasive manner. At least that's how it strikes me.

I'd have like to have heard Prez with a smaller string ensemble myself, something nice and intimate, nothing overblown, some soft and inviting strings and a nice, mellow rhythm section. For that matter, Prez with Chico Hamilton's first quintet, the one with Jim Hall and Fred Katz, might have been all the sympathetic stringage the man needed.

But as much as the man dug listening to Jo Stafford & Frank Sinatra, I'd think that in the right hands a strings date could have been darn successful.