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Until the late sixties, when the guitar and electronic instruments came into the foreground, the sound of modern jazz was - to use a favorite term of arranger Bill Russo - "tenorized." The man who tenorized it was Lester Young.

With Lester "Pres" (President) Young cool jazz, the jazz of the fifties, began long before there was bebop, the jazz of the forties. It began with the solos played by Lester in the old Count Basie band: "Song of the Islands" and "Clap Hands, Here Comes Charlie," recorded in 1939 - or "Lady Be Good," recorded by a Count Basie combo in 1936 - or even earlier, when Lester Young became a member of Fletcher Henderson's band in 1934. "The whole band was buzzing on me," Lester reminisced, "because I had taken Hawk's place. I didn't have the same kind of sound he had. I was rooming at the Henderson's house, and Leora Henderson would wake me early in the morning and play Hawkin's records for me so I could play like he did. I wanted to play my own way, but I just listened. I didn't want to hurt her feelings."

________ Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young - these two names designate two great eras of jazz. Since "Bean" and "Pres" both played tenor, and since each of them holds approximately the same position in the phase of jazz he represents, no two other personalities could show more clearly how wide the scale of being and meaning in jazz really is.

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