{This page is under construction and will probably be broken up into several sub pages}
Lester Willis Young, known as "Prez'" as in "The President", was the greatest jazz performer of the Swing Era, the precursor of both Charlie Parker and John Coltrane. Along with Coleman Hawkins and Coltrane, Prez wass one of the three decisive tenor saxophone players in Jazz. He is my favorite Jazz Musician, bar none. In this page I will provide a few links , my personal choice for which CDs by Lester are best to have, and some of my own accumulation of Lester lore.
Unlike Louis Armstrong--the greatest musical artist produced by the USA in any category--who has been returned to his rightful place by the work of Wynton Marsalis and other contemporary Jazz artists, or Charlie Parker whose work was revived after the recent Motion picture, Prez' is still chiefly known to the inner circle.
A good online biography of Lester Young is available at the All Music Guide's Lester Young Biography. This is part of AMG's comphrehensive section on Lester Young with a complete discography and other information. Be careful when you go through the discography. It lists all the records they can find that were recorded by Prez between 1936 and the present. Unfortunately, most of those records are out of print. When you look for music you might want to own, make sure to see if it has been currently available on CDs or tape.
BASIEISM discusses's Lester's greatest work , his collaboration with Count Basie and the Count Basie Orchestra
Billie and Lester, Prez' and Lady Day discusses one of the great collaborations in Jazz, Lester Young's collaboration with Billie Holiday.
A review with Sound files of Lester's Kansas City Sessions Two of Lester's greatest Sessions outside the Basie Band during his Basie years are his 1938 and 1944 "Kansas City" sessions recorded by Commodore Records. The recordings were not done in Kansas City, but the title emphasizes that the Kansas City Style of riff-based Jazz made most famous by Basie and Lester Young predominates here. Eddie Durham's guitar work on the 1938 recordings include some of the first, if not the first, electric standard guitar recordings in Jazz or any other form of music. (Earlier Jazz, Polynesian, Western Swing, and Blues recordings had featured electrified Hawaiian guitars played horizontally with a steel bar in an "open" or harmonized cord tuning, but that realy is a different instrument from the standard six string guitar.)