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Lester Leaps in: The Life and Times of Lester "Pres" Young Hardcover – January 1, 2002

4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 27 ratings

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The Life and Times of Lester "Pres" Young


The acclaimed biography of the legendary tenor saxophonist


"Lester Leaps In jumps off the page with authenticity and insight. The Prez was an amazing creator with a uniquely wicked sense of humor, and this book captures it all."
—Quincy Jones

"Twenty years in the making, this is the most thorough and penetrating book on the President of the Tenor Saxophone to date."
—Publishers Weekly

"A provocative book, presenting Lester Young in a novel, even controversial light while opening new avenues of possible investigation into one of the most tantalizingly enigmatic of all historic jazz figures."
—Richard Sudhalter, Los Angeles Times

"The lessons learned from Pres' painful life tell us a lot about ourselves and the horrible consequences of racism in America."
—T. Michael Crowell, San Diego Union-Tribune
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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Saxophonist Young dodged most everyone and made a sport of eluding interviewers and outsiders with his brand of elliptical jazz slang (one club owner cranked up a fan after Young said, "You're smotherin' me"). As a writer for Jet wrote just after Young's death in 1959: "No one really knew the true Lester." This makes Daniels's book all the more impressive. By interviewing for the first time many of Young's relatives, friends and band mates, while also examining and challenging virtually everything written about the man, Daniels (Pioneer Urbanites: A Social and Cultural History of Black San Francisco) adds a layer of understanding to an enigmatic figure. Throughout, the author, a professor of black studies and history at the University of California, Santa Barbara, offers a balanced portrait of a shy, sensitive man whose relaxed onstage persona masked an uneasy loner. The first two-thirds of the book focuses on Young's rise, beginning with his strict musical training and upbringing in his father's traveling minstrel show to his mythic duel against heavyweight Coleman Hawkins in a Kansas City nightclub and landing the lead tenor spot in Count Basie's Orchestra. The remainder is dedicated to Young's life post-1945, the year in which he was dishonorably discharged from the army for marijuana possession. While many critics nail this as the turning point in Young's career, Daniels encourages the reader to revisit the later works, which kept changing and drawing more fans until his death, at age 49, from drinking. This is a wonderful writing of his life. (Feb.) Forecast: Twenty years in the making, this is the most thorough and penetrating book on the President of the Tenor Saxophone to date.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

This biography of one of jazz's major innovators and iconoclasts places Young's music in the context of African American culture. While both Lewis Porter's Lester Young (o.p.) and Frank Buchman-Moller's You Just Fight for Your Life (1990) offer fine overviews of the tenor saxophonist's life, Daniels (history and black studies, Univ. of California, Santa Barbara) delves deeply into the mores and culture surrounding his subject as a child in Louisiana and then his stretch playing for his father's musical entourage. He then attacks the thorny issues of Young's desire to provide for his family while contending with strong urges to travel and play. Young's contradictory actions reveal a sensitive observer of life bedeviled by various personal and social problems, including chronic alcoholism and a hypersensitivity to racism. Daniels also shows that Young's music didn't deteriorate after his disastrous World War II army experiences but rather continued in fresh, invigorating ways. Although the author sometimes makes claims about Young's thoughts and feelings with little supporting evidence, this is nonetheless a worthwhile purchase for music, academic, and large public libraries. William G. Kenz, Minnesota State Univ., Moorhead

Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Beacon Pr (January 1, 2002)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 524 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0807071021
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0807071021
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.05 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.5 x 1.75 x 9.5 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 27 ratings

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Douglas Henry Daniels
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4.4 out of 5 stars
27 global ratings

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Top reviews from the United States

  • Reviewed in the United States on February 3, 2017
    Great book
  • Reviewed in the United States on June 10, 2016
    Wonderful music .
  • Reviewed in the United States on September 15, 2014
    This is a marvelous work of scholarship that makes multiple contributions to diverse fields, including Music History; African-American History; Cultural Studies--and more.

    It is based upon meticulous scholarship and deep insight when it comes to both the music known as "Jazz" and, notably, African American Studies.

    I particularly appreciated his excavation of how Young influenced broader cultural trends through his language, his dress--and, most of all, his fantastic music. The pictures alone are worth the price of the book. Indeed, the best way to appreciate this fantastic biography is to play Young's music in the background when reading.

    Of all the works in Jazz Studies that have been pouring forth in recent years, this one stands head and shoulders above the rest.

    Gerald Horne
    3 people found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on January 24, 2017
    Puts the life of a person that broke ground in American life in more ways than through his music in to context and perspective.
  • Reviewed in the United States on February 12, 2002
    First, let me state, I am a huge Lester Young Fan. As a sax player, myself, he is my musical idol. This book is so vague, it hardly covers the man at all. The author is more concerned with the racism and segregated history of jazz. This is o.k. but should be in a different book. We want more on the man. Also, there are errors in the telling. Just two come to mind. Jefferson Davis was born in Kentucky not Mississippi and Lionel Barrymore was not an alcoholic, his brother, John was. Don't get me wrong, this book is a huge undertaking for the story it tells but alot of it is "probably", "maybe", "people think." It's way too vague on the facts. It is , however, worth a look because there is alot of jazz history worth reading about. I've read the author's other works and they are much better.
    14 people found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on July 8, 2009
    In a refreshing approach, Daniels treats Lester Young's story in the context of Black Studies.

    Daniels is not a musician, and his book, while very good, could only have been improved by editorial oversight by a musician or musician/scholars like Lewis Porter or Loren Schoenberg.

    Quibbles aren't important. What is important is how Daniels's book is based on twenty years of unique interviews he did with Young's relations and fellow musicians. He thinks that Young's community has had its ups and downs with the world of white jazz criticism, and in this Daniels can only be right. Daniels supplies amazing information about how the white-run publications DownBeat and Metronome ripped Young to shreds for the last fifteen years of his life while Young was revered as a cultural hero in contemporary black press like the Chicago Defender and the New York Amsterdam News. (Around the same time George T. Simon -- Glenn Miller's drummer and biographer -- reviewed a Young performance in Melody Maker saying that Lester Young couldn't play on the changes of the simple standard "A Foggy Day," Ebony published an pictorial on Young called, "How to Make a Porkpie Hat.") Even today, when I talk to older black musicians, they give Young an iconic, heroic status that is as related to what he represented as to what he played. Young is the perfect subject for a Black Studies approach.

    At any rate, the entry of black writers into jazz should be celebrated, whether they are musicians or not. They are a much-needed voice in the choir. I'm appalled at the defamatory one and two star reviews on here on Amazon. (They have prompted this, my first Amazon review.) Daniels is certainly not "militant" or "neo-conservative." He's not racist, either, being appropriately careful to document Young's lifelong love of Bix Beiderbecke, Frankie Trumbauer, and Jimmy Dorsey. (A love that has been the sorest sticking point to black-centric musicians and critics in jazz history!) Daniels talks to white sidemen like Barney Kessel too.

    The story of Young's upbringing and family is told nowhere else in such detail than in Lester Leaps In. I don't think a white jazz critic would have downplayed this information if they could have gotten it, but that's the point: only Daniels could have gotten it. This is the most recent major book on Lester Young, and future writers will be indebted to Daniels for sharing some of this inside material.
    23 people found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on March 28, 2002
    It was so refreshing to read a biography on one of America's greatest musicians from the perspective of an African American historian who had access to Pres' former colleagues and family members relative to what Pres was really like and what made him tick. What intimate family and peer relationships during his childhood, teenage years and adult years contributed to how he expressed himself through his music can only be told by a family member or a very, very close friend. Only African American colleagues of Pres can give us some insight as to how he really felt about America's Jim Crow practices which were actually sanctioned by the US Governmentprior to the Civil Rights Acts of 1954 & 1964) and how these Jim Crow practices may have influenced his mindset.
    The Life and Times of Lester "Pres" Young is not for the faint hearted. It is a scholarly work! It is not "Lester Young Goes To Disneyland." Art forms depict what the artist sees as reality. Despite Jim Crow - the Pres was able to deliver. This book tells us about the character of the Man by the people that really knew him. Daniels has provided society with something we didn't have before - a look at Pres through the eyes of the people closest to him who "opened up" to an African American historian over a period of twenty years because they trusted him and believed that he understood the cultural nuances that exist in African American families that are different from many non African American families.
    7 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

  • Eldon Pethybridge
    4.0 out of 5 stars Key tracks from the first half of Lester’s career
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 6, 2019
    Top tracks from the first half of his career. The quality of tracks later on, when his style and objectives matured, is debatable. But what is provided in this CD is good and well chosen.