The Lester Young/Jimmy Dorsey/Frank Trumbauer connection
Submitted by Jazz Suite
We’re fast approaching Lester Young’s 100th birthday, and WAMU’s Rob Bamberger used his excellent Hot Jazz Saturday Night program to pay tribute. You’ll be able to listen to it online in a few days here.
One of the interesting things he touched on was how Young, early in his career, listened to an emulated the recordings of Jimmy Dorsey and Frank Trumbauer.
“I had a decision to make between Frankie Trumbauer and Jimmy Dorsey, you dig, and I wasn’t sure which way I wanted to go. I’d buy me all those records and I’d play one by Jimmy and one by Trumbauer, you dig? I didn’t know nothing about Hawk then, and they were the only ones telling a story I liked to hear. I had both of them made… I developed my tenor sound like an alto, to sound like a tenor, to sound like a bass, and I’m not through with it yet. That’s why they get all trapped up , they say, ‘Goddam, I never heard Prez play like this.’ That’s the way I want them to hear. That’s modern, dig? Not what you played back in ‘49—it’s what you play today, dig? A lot them got lost and walked out.”
—Lester Young, in a 1959 interview with Francois Postif, from Jazz Panorama: From the Pages of The Jazz Review.
Dues to JazzWax for the quote.
Now that’s old hat to jazz aficionados, but to newbies who may be more schooled on Lester’s influence on guys like Charlie Parker, Dexter Gordon, and the “Four Brothers,” here is an opportunity to dig back into the past and listen to the C-Melody master and a guy you might have only thought of as the leader of a Big Band.
Lady Be Good - Jones-Smith Inc.
Trumbology - Bix Beiderbecke With Frankie Trumbauer & Orchestra
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