Klarinet Archive - Posting 000618.txt from 2005/06

From: Bob Davenport <bob@-----.uk>
Subj: Re: [kl] RE: Lester Young - sax holding position
Date: Thu, 30 Jun 2005 04:52:17 -0400

danyel wrote:

>The "Sound of Jazz" performance w/ Lady Day was in '58, shortly before his
>death. He is the only one seated (standing up just briefly for his one
>chorus), and takes part only in "Fine and Mellow", while Hawk and Ben
>Webster are also on other tracks. He must have been quite exhausted by then.
>
8 December 1957, to be pedantic; he died in March 1959. Whitney
Balliett, who was one of the advisers on 'The Sound of Jazz' says,
'[Young] was intractable on Sunday during the first of the two
run-throughs that preceded the television show. He refused to read his
parts, and he soloed poorly. He was removed from the big-band reed
section and was replaced by Ben Webster … ' Apparently Holiday was
almost not on the show: 'A week or so before, word of her difficulties
with drugs and the law had reached the upper levels at CBS, and it was
suggested that she be replaced by someone wholesome, like Ella
Fitzgerald. We refused and were backed by [the producer], and she
stayed' (Whitney Balliett, Collected Works: A Journal of Jazz 1954–2000
(New York: St Martin's Press, 2000), pp. 639–40).

Bob

'Anyone who doesn't play tenor like Lester Young is WRONG' (Brew Moore)

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