Lester Young—”Mean To Me” (1958)

On Thursdays in 1958, Art Ford’s “Jazz Party” could be seen on New York’s WNTA-TV from May 8, 1958 to December 25. Episode #1.20 was aired on September 25, 1958. It had brought a variety of top jazz musicians to the New Jersey recording studio: Charlie Shavers and Henry Red Allen-trumpets; J.C. Higgenbotham and Dicky Wells-trombones; Pee Wee Russell and Buster Bailey-clarinets; Willie the Lion Smith-piano; Dick Thompson-guitar; Vinnie Burke-double bass; Sonny Greer-drums and tenors Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young, with the latter featuring in “Mean To Me.”

Born to a musical family in Mississippi, Lester Young (1909-1959) trained as a youth on drums, trumpet and violin. When Lester turned to the alto saxophone, he became a child star. Later, he switched to the tenor sax, doubling on clarinet.

Lester Young was an extraordinary man, in sound as well as in appearance. He wore his pork-pie hat indoors and out, sunglasses at night on the bandstand, high-draped pants, suede shoes to match the shades of his suits, cuff links engraved with Egyptian hieroglyphs, a gold ring, and carried a liquor flask. He blew his horn at a bizarre sideways Z angle, and spoke in slang that musicians alone may grasp. He soaked in music, kept the radio on through his sleep, sometimes playing symphonic music.

His biographer Douglas Henry Daniels makes clear in “The Life and Times of Lester ‘Pres’ Young” that Lester hated the cutting contests, horns squealing and pandemonium blaring in Norman Granz’s postwar Jazz at the Philharmonic road shows, which featured Pres with some big brassy honkers and stratospheric trumpets. Said Pres: “I’m tired of all this noise. I like to play cool.”

And cool he played Fred Ahlert’s 1929 composition “Mean To Me.”