Ken Burns Jazz

1	Oh, Lady Be Good 3:08
2	Every Tub 3:17
3	Honeysuckle Rose 3:00
4	Pagin' the Devil 2:59
5	A Sailboat in the Moonlight 2:51
6	He's Funny That Way 2:40
7	Getting Some Fun out of LIfe 3:03
8	If Dreams Come True 3:05
9	Taxi War Dance 2:52
10	Twelfth Street Rag 3:05
11	Clap Hands! Here Comes Charlie 2:30
12	Lester Leaps In 3:15
13	Tickle Toe 2:40
14	Sometimes I'm Happy 3:11
15	I've Found a New Baby 4:06
16	D.B. Blues 3:00
17	Jumpin' with Symphony Sid 3:11
18	This Year's Kisses 6:45
19	Polka Dots and Moonbeams 3:35

Barnes & Noble

His creed sounded so simple: "You've got to be original, man." Yet he rose in the ranks of the big bands during the age of jazz conformity. Lester Young was different. Born different. He heard differently, he spoke differently. And by the time he joined forces with Count Basie in Kansas City in 1936, he had his own language on the tenor saxophone. No matter how hot the Basie band blew, Young's fierce individualism, no less than his liquid tone, distinguished him from the ensemble as the essence of cool. He swung like mad, but he stayed cool. He went off on his own in the Forties, and over nearly twenty years his inimitable legato phrasing spawned hundreds of imitators. They spoke, in the early Fifties, of the Birth of the Cool: He was its daddy, Daddy.

All Music Guide

With cooperation from the Verve and Columbia Legacy catalogs, the Ken Burns Jazz series on CD individually spotlights the musical excellence of 22 jazz originators whose careers and influence are explored in Burns' PBS documentary Jazz. This disc highlights tenor saxophonist Lester Young, beginning with his membership in the Count Basie band during its historic prime from 1937 to 1939. In addition, Young's late-'30s participation in the Billie Holiday and Teddy Wilson orchestras is represented, and the CD also includes mid-'40s sides for Aladdin such as "D.B Blues" and "Jumpin' With Symphony Sid" (which proved wrong many critics who insisted that Young's abilities had deteriorated after his release from the military). Although Young initially left Basie in 1940, he occasionally rejoined the band, as evidenced by "Polka Dots and Moonbeams," this disc's concluding track from 1957. While it's impossible to sum up the history of Lester Young on a single disc, the highlights presented on Ken Burns Jazz should be enough to keep the novice jazz listener interested in searching out more material. There is nothing new for true Lester Young aficionados on this disc, however. Les Campbell