MOSAIC RECORDS BOOKLET

Loren Schoenberg is simply one of the great writers of jazz. His passion and first hand knowledge in many cases, are continually on display in the lavish booklets Mosaic includes with each boxed set. Being a tenor saxophonist himself, he goes above and beyond the call with the notes for the Lester Young set as he did with the neglected work of Chu Berry. Like we've said before, you may know this music but you'll be listening to it with new ears once you read and absorb what Loren has to say about it.

SOUND QUALITY

The superior sound restoration of these historic sessions begins with transfers of from the original metal parts and lacquers found in the Sony vaults. Meticulously transferred by Andreas Meyer and Matt Cavaluzzo and crisply mastered by Malcolm Addey, these classic sessions have never sounded better. In Loren Schoenberg's notes to this set he continues to remark how for the first time one is able to truly hear one of the great rhythm sections of all time: the "All-American rhythm section" as it was known and led by Basie, Freddie Green, Walter Page and especially the great drumming of Jo Jones whose cymbal work is truly heard to great advantage.

PHOTOGRAPHY

Photo Copyright © 2008
Lester Young
Our photographs came from a number of sources, but the most thrilling are six original photos from the Frank Driggs collection of the Benny Goodman session that initially went unreleased. Great shots of Pres, Buck Clayton, BG, Basie, Charlie Christian, Jo Jones and Walter Page. Other rare images come from the The World's Fair in San Francisco in October of 1939 and photos from the original March 19 and 20th 1940 session and the Ocotober 28, 1940 session.

SAMPLE RECORDING SESSION

(J) September 5, 1939

It may have been the success of the Commodore Kansas City Five and Six recordings that led Basie to assemble the Kansas City Seven. This is their only record session during Young’s tenure and it has long been accorded classic status. The two tunes are essentially jams with just a dab of organization. Dickie’s Dream written by Young, was originally called Conversation Piece. At the root of its conception is an intriguing chord known as a minor sixth. This is the chord that Thelonious Monk turned Dizzy Gillespie on to and which partly inspired him to compose A Night In Tunisia Lester heard it differently, however. It was more static, whereas in Monk's world it was a chord that was always on the go. Through the use of a note associated with a major tonality, Young gave this minor chord a major inflection. It’s related to what Cole Porter once referred to in Everytime We Say Goodbye as "how strange the change from major to minor” and the alternation of melodic and harmonic minor scales, which Bela Bartok in his Harvard lectures called bi-modality. This ambiguity may be what inspired Wells to slide into an E natural over the tune's C minor tonality -- what would have been harmonic awkwardness in lesser hands becomes a stroke of genius in his. Lester folds this ambiguity into the center of his solo, with some descending arpeggios and a smooth elision into the bridge, the site of another of those amazing Basie/Young convergences.

The approach to Basie's own bridge shows his absolute freedom with meter. The alternate takes seem to have started with the slow breakdown, which is aborted when Hammond announces over the studio loudspeaker that “it’s too long, Basie.” The next take is faster, finds Young in a relatively prolix mood, and omits the piano solo. The issued take is even brighter, which allows for the insertion of Basie’s chorus. All the takes find Basie comping in similar fashion to the Jones-Smith Evenin’.

Lester Leaps In became the saxophonist's own signature number for the remaining two decades of his life. It is based on I Got Rhythm a composition that he had already long used as a showcase. Here we get a glimmer of what John Hammond was referring to when he wrote: "[Young] would launch himself into improvisations with which each new chorus renewed themselves as if by magic; it was as though his energy and originality knew no bounds. Lester could improvise on the same theme for an hour at a stretch, without once giving the impression that he might be running out of ideas. And there was not the slightest touch of exhibitionism about it. His features evinced not the slightest emotion and his whole being was concentrated in the music." During his solo he introduces many devices, including pentatonic scales, that George Russell, Miles Davis, Gil Evans and others would later expand upon. Basie plays a boogie-woogie figure for just a moment early in Lester's solo. A second later the trigger-quick Young has turned it into a slightly amended blues figure. They were a perfect match, and never played again as well as they did together.

One of the best of their later recordings is Lester Leaps Again, recorded in 1944 for Keynote, notable for a series of blues choruses where the two trade phrases as though they could read each other’s minds. As this tune demonstrates, Young loved breaks, and here he gets several. A comparison between the issued and the alternate take reveal that he had a basic pattern in mind but could express it in any number of ways. The breaks are cleaner on the alternate, but Young seems to have a slight problem with his horn and some of his ideas are undeveloped in a fashion to which we are unaccustomed. On both tunes, Young plays the melody with Wells on a harmony part below and with Clayton above him. Strange. Of all the music in this collection, Lester Leaps In brings us the closest to the prodigious, non-stop improviser that Young was before he left the Basie band. Leonard Phillips recalled a 1937 reunion in Washington when Young came to town with Basie and was challenged by a local tenor man at a jam session. After everyone in the band had soloed at length: “Prez fell in and he tored I Got Rhythm all up in pieces. He went through everything in it…when Prez came in he started swinging, and then he started to tell the cats to give him some four [bar] breaks, and then he played two or three choruses making breaks. That should have been recorded!”