The cream of Lester Young's recording career (1936-49), with selections from Young as soloist with Count Basie's orchestra, and his own quartets and quintets. Included is work with singer Billie Holiday; swing musicians, like Benny Goodman, Buck Clayton, and Dickie Wells; and bopster Charlie Parker---the latter in two concluding jam sessions from Jazz at the Philharmonic concerts of 1949. Young's legato style, laconic and coolly detached, offers a lightness of sound and horizontal approach to improvisation---transforming melodies---which epitomizes modern jazz saxophone. Young, the musician's hip saint and "President" of jazzmen, is splendidly represented here, in this superbly annotated, boxed 4-CD set. Another bargain collection from Proper. (Andrew Clark, Editor, Riffs & Choruses: A New Jazz Anthology. Continuum Publishing.) 


Price:  £15.49