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On the web since 1999
Brushed cymbal slide solo opens.
Nuanced walking bass lines follow.
As a deft piano right hand
Complements a chorded left
To raise a tempo garnish
For a swing invitation.
January 8th, 2026
On the origins of cool, and the influence (and greatness) of Lester Young.
...September 25th, 2025
thick as soup
the summer air
and the music
rolling from nearby window
Mingus’s big band
in wild abandon
March 27th, 2025
Throughout his career, this saxophonist was known as the “Vice Prez” because he sounded so similar to “Prez,” Lester Young. Who was he?
...March 6th, 2025
At the bar of the
Towne Tavern, once
Toronto’s finest jazz club,
stage facing me,
sipping my one beer,
knowing even then
in my twenty-third year
I was witness to
a never forgotten gig.
April 13th, 2024
Takes on love and loss, and memories of Lady Day, Prez, Monk, Dolphy and others…
...January 10th, 2024
. . Lester Young, 1946 . . Solace I relish the cultivation of my Lester afternoons an endeavor still absorbing at my age captive in that garden of ambient sound …………………that Young tenor breath ………………………….a zephyr expulsion stirring atmosphere rare these days for this climate caressing time & movement with a tone to stream still … Continue reading ““Solace” – a poem by Terrance Underwood”
...July 18th, 2023
Lester Young was the “Pres.” Who became known as the “Vice Pres?”
Paul Quinichette
Dexter Gordon
Hank Crawford
Paul Gonsalves
Don Byas
Johnny Griffin
Arnett Cobb
Lou Donaldson
...February 3rd, 2014
In cooperation with Frank Driggs and Chuck Haddix, authors of Kansas City Jazz: From Ragtime to Bebop — a look at the fascinating historyof Kansas City’s golden age through book excerpts, photos and music
...April 15th, 2013
Excerpted from Lester Leaps In: The Life and Times of Lester “Pres” Young, by Douglas Henry Daniels
(Lester) Young earned recognition for being not only a stylist but a saxophone “freak” – not a pejorative term at all but rather a comment on his unparalleled virtuosity. He “could make a note anywhere” on his instrument. Certain notes were usually produced by depressing specific keys or combinations of keys on the saxophone (or valves on the trumpet and cornet), but “freaks” found ways to defy convention and orthodoxy by means of “false fingerings” and adjustments of the mouth and lips, or embouchure. The trombonist-guitarist Eddie Durham explained that “Coleman Hawkins and Chu Berry and those guys, they fingered it correctly with what they were doing.
...March 29th, 2004
More than four decades after her death, Billie Holiday remains one of the most gifted artists of our time, and also one of the most elusive. Because of who she was and how she chose to live her life, Holiday has been the subject of both intense adoration and wildly distorted legends.
...June 24th, 2002
ester Young was jazz music’s first hipster. He performed onstage in sunglasses and coined and popularized the enigmatic slang “that’s cool” and “you dig?” He was a snazzy dresser who always wore a suit and his trademark porkpie hat. He influenced everyone from B. B. King to Stan Getz to Allen Ginsberg. When he died, he was the subject of musical tributes by Charles Mingus (“Goodbye Pork Pie Hat”) and Wayne Shorter (“Lester Left Town”), and incidents from his life were featured in the movie ‘Round Midnight.
...February 14th, 2002
Click here to read about plans for the future of Jerry Jazz Musician.
”Pyramids” by John Menaghan
The Sunday Poem is published weekly, and strives to include the poet reading their work...
John Menaghan reads his poem at its conclusion
Click here to read previous editions of The Sunday Poem
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