"Pres" Is Blue

"Pres" Is Blue documents Lester Young's working club band caught live at the Savoy Ballroom in New York in 1950, captured not by a record label but by an audience member with a portable tape recorder who happened to be present on several nights. Young, the tenor saxophonist whose light, floating tone and rhythmic innovation had reshaped jazz phrasing in the Count Basie band of the late 1930s, was by 1950 a few years past his wartime military ordeal and the personal decline that followed it, yet still capable of the melodic invention and behind-the-beat swing that made him one of the music's most influential stylists. The band here-trumpeter Jesse Drakes, pianist Kenny Drew, bassist Aaron Bell and drummer Jo Jones-was Young's regular working unit of the period, and the relaxed, dance-hall setting gives the performances an informality absent from his studio dates. The liner notes make clear the tapes were never intended for release: they were acquired years later from the fan who made them, then cleaned up and re-recorded at RCA Victor's New York studios in April 1962 before Charlie Parker Records issued them. Critically the album has always been valued less for fidelity than for content, prized by Young specialists and completists as a rare document of his in-person sound away from the recording studio, offering warm, spacious readings of standards like "Stardust" and "Pennies From Heaven" that reveal a side of his artistry the formal sessions rarely captured. It stands as a footnote but a cherished one in the Lester Young discography, evidence of a still-vital player working a dance floor rather than a control booth.