Pres

Pres gathers small-group sides Lester Young cut for Norman Granz across several separate rhythm-section dates rather than one continuous session, pairing him first with Hank Jones, Ray Brown and Buddy Rich and then, on the remaining tunes, with John Lewis, Gene Ramey, Jo Jones and the lesser-known Joe Shulman and Bill Clark. By the mid-1950s Young - the tenor saxophonist whose light, floating tone and behind-the-beat phrasing had rewritten the instrument's vocabulary during his years with Count Basie in the late 1930s - was deep into his postwar period with Granz's labels, revisiting popular standards and his own originals in intimate combo settings. The liner notes make a point of the literate lyricists behind several of the chosen standards, tying Young's famous insistence on knowing a song's words to the way he phrases the melody. The sessions catch an artist whose postwar sound had grown more weathered after a difficult wartime Army stint, yet whose lyrical, melancholic improvising remained utterly distinctive and hugely influential on the generation of tenor players that followed. Jazz historians have generally treated these Norgran/Verve small-group dates as a looser, more variable body of work than Young's celebrated 1930s Basie and Kansas City Six recordings, but essential nonetheless for documenting the singular sound of his later horn.