Young Lester Young

by Phil Schaap

The following article was originally published in the November 1987 OnAir Guide, as the first of two parts described by Phil Schaap as "an attempt to salvage details about the most distant and least documented period of [Prez's] life." It has been transcribed and re-edited for clarity.

Lester Willis Young was born in Woodville, Mississippi on Friday, August 27th, 1909. Many Jazz reference works list New Orleans as Lester’s birthplace. He did spend an important chunk of his childhood there and frequently referred to it as his hometown, so the mistake is understandable.

There has also been confusion concerning the birth year. Eddie Barefield— who was born December 12, 1909 and began his lifelong musical and personal friendship with Young in 1927—has always felt Lester was younger than he. Buddy Tate, another lifelong friend and sax section mate in the Basie band stresses that Lester Young was a year older than listed, and that the birthday party for Lester held at Birdland on August 27, 1958 was a celebration of Young’s 50th birthday; furthermore, Tate states that an ailing Lester Young told him that he had made fifty and that was as far as he would go, that he didn’t want to be old and feeble. But the firmest evidence is in Lester Young’s own words. In the legendary interview with François Postif (February 6,

1959) Lester Young announces that he was born in Woodville, Mississippi and that the year was 1909. (Note: Lester Young died at age 49 on March 15, 1959 in NYC.)

The date of Lester’s father’s birth is much vaguer. Willid Handy Young was born in Thibodaux, Louisiana, probably in the early 1870s. He was called Billy, and sometimes his name crops up as Willis, but apparently he had a brother William (as well as another, Jacob, and two sisters, Mary and Martha). Mr. Young was a product of a broad period of Black opportunity: Reconstruction. He majored in music at the Tuskegee Institute. He could play all the instruments, achieving notable proficiency on cornet and violin. Some family and friends believed Willis Young planned to become a music teacher, perhaps running a high school music program. Lee Young, Lester’s younger brother, asserts that his father was actually a high school principal in Thibodaux, but no local records exist to back this up. In any case, Plessy v. Ferguson, the infamous 1896 “separate-butequal” Supreme Court decision, eliminated most opportunities for a music teacher who was Black. So Billy Young spent his life as a performer. He persevered as a teacher, however, training countless musicians and working as a choir master in various towns, schools, and churches.

The Young family was apparently from Louisiana. Lester’s paternal grandmother ran a general store in Natalbany, Louisiana and is remembered as being quite religious. The grandfather was a blacksmith and Billy Young and his sister, Mary Young Hunter, owned land in Hammond, Louisiana less than 10 miles south of Natalbany, although the purchase(s) may not have been made until the early 1920s.

Lester’s father’s early career is particularly hard to trace. He played in the traveling circus of Heck & Beck & Wallis. Other Youngs played there with him. Eventually Billy Young organized a family band which backed minstrel shows, played carnivals and fairs, and toured the Black theatre circuit, known as T.O.B.A. Occasionally, the band would pull down a residency at a hotel or bathroom. Frequently, the ensemble contained a few non-family players to fill essential charts. Often, especially in winter, the Billy Young family would base itself in one town and work out of there.

Dates and sequences remain unclear. Lester’s father may not have become a bandleader until 1920, after years on the road and a relatively settled prior living near New Orleans in Algiers, Louisiana. The family arrangements are equally hard to establish. Apparently, Billy Young married Lizetta (maybe Lyzetta) Johnson around 1907. There’s no way to know how Lizetta and Billy came to meet and marry, though it’s tempting to speculate on a Louisiana connection.

Lizetta Johnson’s family also came from Louisiana; Lizetta’s sister and parents were born there. Mr. Johnson, Lester’s maternal grandfather, was a farmer who moved to Woodville, Mississippi (Woodville is in the southwest corner of Mississippi, less than 6 miles from the Louisiana border) where he worked or owned a farm. Lizetta, according to Lester, worked as a seamstress and schoolteacher, though it’s hard to determine where or when.

Lester Young was their first child and Lizetta was staying with her family in Woodville at the time of Lester’s birth. That birth may have been a difficult one for her—possibly alluded to by Lester in the 2/6/59 interview with Postif. If so, it might explain why the infant Lester Young was in Shreveport, Louisiana with his Aunt Martha (Billy Young’s sister) when the 1910 census was taken. The next child was Lester’s sister Irma, who steadfastly refuses to divulge her exact birthdate, but who states that it took place in her father’s hometown of Thibodaux. Irma Young is thought to have been born around 1912.

The next mystery is the move to Hammond, Louisiana. In 1913, it seems Lizetta Young took Lester (and presumably Irma) to this town, where the Young family may already have been landowners. Whether, when, and how much Billy Young or any other family members were with Lizetta and/or the children can’t be verified. Billy Young may have spent a great deal of time on the road. Shortly after his period in Hammond, the family resettled in Algiers, Louisiana, just across the Mississippi River from New Orleans, in what may have been an attempt to stabilize family life. But even during this stretch it is questionable whether Lizetta, Billy, and the children were always together.

During the Algiers-New Orleans stay, Billy Young worked in several prominent New Orleans bands. His best documented gig is in Algiers with Henry Allen’s Brass Band—Henry Sr., that is, Red’s father. Also notable was the birth of Lizetta and Billy’s third and last child, Lee Young, who was born in New Orleans, or possibly Algiers, on March 7, 1917. Despite these developments, things did not work out for Billy and Lizetta Young and they were divorced around 1919. Billy Young took the three children into his family band which included a new musician: Billy’s second wife, Sara. He maintained his musical organization until at least the early 1930s, when the family finally settled down in Los Angeles. Willis Handy Young was slowed by a stroke in late September 1936, but continued to make music at his church. He died on February 6, 1942.

After the divorce, not much is known of Lester’s mother, Lizetta Johnson Young. She is known to have been living in Woodville in the early 1930s; in fact, Lester visited her there. At some point she remarried and became Lizetta Gray. She also moved to Los Angeles around

1944. Leonard Feather spoke to her shortly after Lester’s death: at that time, Lizetta Gray made some perceptive comments about her son’s shyness and how it contributed to his early death. She also spoke of a little Lester, dutifully attending church but being a bit frightened by organized religion.

While there is no record of her death (or birth, for that matter), she’s undoubtedly deceased by now. As late as the early 1970s, Jo Jones used to speak of her in the present tense, though he always mistook her name for Mary.

As long as Lizetta and Willis Young’s family was still relatively intact and living in Algiers, Lester got his elementary school education in the New Orleans area. His formal schooling came to an end when his father took him and his siblings on the road circa 1919. Lester was probably in the 4th or 5th grade.

Another New Orleans area student of that time, Shelby Ballott, offers us a fascinating sketch of what a young Black child’s education was like in that time and place. Shelby Ballott was born in New Orleans on February 15, 1910. He went to school variously in New Orleans, Algiers, and near his father’s farm about 180 miles from New Orleans. He doesn’t specifically remember any child or classmate called Lester Young, but he draws a blank at any names of schoolmates. Ballot recalls at least three different schoolrooms, but can only describe one of them. His memories, nevertheless, add important first-hand information on what Young's schooling was like.

A Black person was a second class citizen in New Orleans; a Black child’s education was fifth rate, according to Shelby. The hierarchy of educational opportunity would have run like this: White private, 1st; White parochial, 2nd; White public, 3rd; Black parochial, 4th; Black public at the bottom.

Ballott describes a three-room schoolhouse, which had one room for all students in the 1st through 6th grades (7th and 8th graders would be high school-bound). The non-high schoolbound group would be small, he remarks, since if you weren’t going to high school, then you probably would already have dropped out before

7th grade. Good students and ambitious parents set their sights on entering one of the Catholic schools for Blacks or of hooking in one of the white parochial schools which offered Black students instruction. Shelby Ballott himself was so dissatisfied with his own public school education that he made sure to save money for his daughter’s tuition to a Catholic school.

Mr. Ballott remembers three teachers: one was a Cora whose last name escapes him, one was a Jenkins whose first name eludes, and one was a popular and curvaceous person known as Miss Crookshank, though that name might have been playful description of her shapeliness, not her actual name. One thing Ballott points out favorably is that the teachers used to routinely keep in contact with pupils’ parents. He also notes that classroom disruptions were rare, that discipline was high.

Of course we don’t know that Lester ever had the lovely Miss Crookshank talking to his mother, telling tales on him or praising some pedagogical process. Yet Ballott’s strokes are broad enough to give us a good picture of what Lester was getting—or missing—from his early schooling.

Whatever the appeals and disappointments of his regular school, the key aspect of Lester Young’s New Orleans childhood is the fortuitous placement of a musical genius in the birthplace of Jazz while that music was in its most creative period. Lester fell in love with hot music. Swinging rhythm thrilled him. The drums held a special attraction. Lester followed the New Orleans Black brass ensembles as they marched and played through the streets of the city. When a New Orleans band had a nighttime gig, they’d advertise it during the day: the band would play in a horse-drawn wagon going through the town while announcements concerning the evening work were passed out. Lester had the job of handing out flyers: he did this for the Henry Allen Brass Band and almost certainly for quite a few others, given the probability that his father played for more than one ensemble during the Algiers years. In this way, Lester doubtless heard every significant New Orleans Jazzman, including Baby Dodds, Paul Barbarin,

Freddie Keppard, King Oliver, Kid Cry, and the teenaged Louis Armstrong.

In this musical environment, Lester began to play the drums. When he left the Algiers-New Orleans area around 1920, he held the drum chair in his father’s band. In the early 1930s, Lester Young spoke of ongoing New Orleans contacts, among them Joe Robinchaux and Sidney Desdunes.

Given the difficulty of following Lester’s father’s career, no events can be fixed with certainty, but it is quite possible that the Billy Young family band was forged just around the time Lester became a musician. The Young band was aided in no small way by Willis’ second wife, Sara. Sara was from San Antonio, Texas, and she played many instruments, specializing in saxophones and the banjo. The Billy Young band and the family appear to have made Memphis their headquarters during the early 20s. The unit consisted of: Lester Young, drums; Irma Young, sax; Sara Young, sax and banjo; cousin Isaiah “Sport” Young, sax; his brother Austin “Boots” Young, sax, trombone, and other instruments; and Billy Young, cornet and violin. Everybody sang and danced as part of the show. During these years, the father continued music lessons for the children. Lester said his father taught him trumpet and violin in addition to drums, but since he concentrated on drums, for a time he got away without learning to read music.

According to Jo Jones, among others, Lester Young was an exceptional drummer for all musical styles, but especially for Blues and Jazz. Even so, when he reached adolescence he soured on drums because the time it took to pack them up was interfering with his postgig socializing— particularly with the ladies. He switched to the saxophone, garnering some rudiments with significant help from his sister, Irma. Soon he was featuring hot choruses as a part of the Billy Young band presentation.

Still, Lester couldn’t read music much. On that score, his father put him out of the band until he made himself a proficient reading musician. In the interim, the hot element became even more vital to the Young family’s music. That meant that when the prodigal son did return to the fold with his lessons learned, he got to reap a bit of revenge by outdoing the rest of them in technique and swing on the Jazz-dance feature numbers.

In late 1923, a show which featured the Billy Young troupe closed in Warren, Arkansas. The family decided to winter in Warren, and put on two shows each week in the town’s auditorium. Billy Young discovered several young musicians in that town whom he coached during that season’s stay. The family band left Warren in March 1924, and four of the young Arkansas musicians soon were part of the gang. They were: a trombonist named Otto “Pete” Jones, who later married Irma; Jesse “Ham” Hamilton, who played E-flat alto horn and peck horn; and two brothers, Clarence Philips on brass bass and Leonard “Phil” Philips, a cornettist who Mr. Young switched to trumpet, and who earned the second nickname, “Deak” during this tour.

Leonard “Phil” Phillips, born in Warren on September 4, 1907, was initially a clarinetist. Philips gave an extensive and extraordinary interview on the topic of Lester Young (conducted by Bryant Dupré for the Jazz Oral History Project housed at the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers; the interview took place over the span of January 26-April 8, 1983). His recollections when cross-referenced always speak the truth and he is to be trusted and thanked as he is the only surviving witness to the developing genius of Lester Young.

Mr. Philips joined the Billy Young outfit on April 15, 1924. He described their gigging in carnivals, at fairs, and in theaters, which seems to be the kind of work the Young family had across the early 20s. When Philips arrived, the Youngs were working a carnival tour. They played the Kentucky State Fair in Lexington, got as far north as Indianapolis, as far east as Roanoke, and ended this carnival tour in Palate, Florida in November 1924. A harrowing racial incident, dimly recalled by Lee Young, is more clearly remembered by Phil Philips. The Young carnival show arrived in Harlan, Kentucky. Apparently many were not expecting the performers to be Black, and coupled with a perennial local violent racist element, a lynch-like attack on the Young group sent them scurrying. Lee Young claims it scarred his brother.

In Palatka, Willis Young began rehearsing the unit for a T.O.B.A theatre tour (T.O.B.A stood for Theatre Owners Booking Association, and they were very tough on Black artists). In late November or December 1925, Young took his band to the legendary 81 Theatre in Atlanta, and weeklong engagements followed in theaters in Greenville, South Carolina; Pensacola, Florida; Columbus, Georgia; Tampa, and then Lakeland, Florida. Next, Mr. Young formed a minstrel show that toured from Lakeland, Florida to Mobile, Alabama, where it folded. At this time (February 1925), Mr. Philips took a better offer with Sidney DeParis, Sr. and was replaced in the Young family orchestra by none other than Cootie Williams.

Performances by Billy Young’s ensemble were already highly charged with Jazz, and Lester Young was already the standout practitioner. It should be noted that everyone, including Lester, remembers the elder Young as being quite with it, someone who could swing on trumpet.

During Phil Phillips’ first tour with the band in 1924 and 1925, Lester played alto saxophone. His bandmate asserts that he could double on other reeds, but that he only did so infrequently. Phillips can hear Lester in his mind’s ear soloing on “How Come You Do Me Like You Do?,” “Margie,” “Bugle Blues,” and “Way Down Yonder in New Orleans.” On “Yes Sir, That’s My Baby,” Lester employed the then in vogue slap-tongue technique. A march tune, “Shouting Liza,” was converted by the Young group into a Jazz vehicle, which was also a vehicle for younger Young to really “get off.” Phillips recalls Lester taking a lengthy alto solo, displaying his technique on this tune. From time to time, after the band completed a performance of “Shouting Liza,” Lester’s father would comment on the showingoff by threatening to slow his son down by putting him on tenor. But the enforced switch didn’t happen.

The Young show as a whole also takes shape through Phil Philips's memories. Lester, Irma, and Lee approved in a singing and dancing trio.

Lee was already playing some drums in the band, although he had not yet reached the age of 8. Little by little, Lee inherited Lester’s percussion chair and ultimately had a successful career as a jazz drummer. A final point on the band of this period from Mr. Philips: Willis Young kept his charges well supplied with good instruments. Silver plated ones were used on the carnival tours and gold plated in the theaters.

During the years of 1923-26, Lester Young made sure he got to check out all sorts of bands and musicians in live performance. He caught the name bands of Paul Whiteman, Vincent Lopez, Ted Lewis, Fletcher Henderson (perhaps during the summer of 1925 when Satchmo was in the brass), and Coon-Sanders, all in person.

During 1925 or 1926, Billy Young was able to expand his music productions. Two units now existed, one playing under Sara Young’s leadership and the other under Mr. Young’s. In the fall of ’26, Willis Young changed his operations. He gave up the band he was leading and consolidated the two bands into one unit, which worked the shows booked for Sara’s band. They played from Carbondale, Illinois to El Reno, Oklahoma, where the tour ended in November 1926.

Then a most important development occurred. Willis Young reforged his ensemble into an 11-piece Jazz-dance band. They rehearsed extensively while working in El Reno and perhaps in Texas too. Mr. Young had arranged for this new unit to move to Minneapolis, Minnesota. The family may have been or lived up there before (or was it Minneapolis, Kansas? Or both?) A big house was rented and all band members would be living in it. The band was billed as the Billy Young Jazz Band and also the New Orleans Strutters. It was a major break away from the march band repertoire and the minstrel-carnival network (not to mention the racist South).

Lester Young was to be the new band’s essential ‘hot man,’ but he almost blew the gig. Then 17, he had taken up with a woman named Clara. His father was determinedly against this union and, in anger, slapped his son. Lester reacted by running off with Clara, if not far, as he was found to be still in El Reno. Mr. Young apologized for hitting his son and Lester rejoined the band on its last gig in El Reno on the eve of departure for Minneapolis.

The Billy Young Jazz Band, a.k.a the New Orleans Strutters, worked in Minneapolis, Minnesota from December 1926 to January 1928. Their first gig was a dance, apparently on December 1, 1926. They worked residencies at the Radisson and St. Paul Hotels. There were many engagements at the South Side ballroom. The personnel included: Arthur Williams, Phil Philips, trumpet; Otto “Pete” Jones, trombone; Lester Young, alto sax, some X-melody and clarinet, occasional solos on soprano sax; Clyde Turrentine (it is most unlikely that he is related to the famous Jazz Turrentine family), tenor sax & soprano sax; Ben Wilkerson, reeds; Gurus Oliver, piano; Billy Young, tuba; Ray Jones (?), bass; and another Ben, who might have also been named Wilkerson but who definitely was not related to the reed man, was on drums. The 11th piece might have been a second trombone.

At this juncture came the first major influences on Lester Young since drums and hot New Orleans music had first enamored him: the sound of Frank Trumbauer’s C-melody saxophone, the lines of Big Beiderbecke’s cornet improvisations, and the music of those two men in tandem, especially the creation of the Jazz ballad. All these revelations came to Lester from the ultimate Jazz teaching tool: the phonograph record. Earlier in the ‘20s, records had inspired Lester with profound indifference. There wasn’t much he found on them that impressed him in terms of Jazz: not much Jazz was on record in the early ‘20s. Young found much more out by checking out the musicians and bands in the towns the Willis Young troupe visited. By December 1926, that record gap was closing.

Lester began his disc acquisitions after the move to Minneapolis. Once there with a firm base, there was less traveling, which also meant less bands to hear. Records had become a more important resource. Moreover, by that time, the winter of 26-27, a lot more Jazz was making it onto 78 RPM discs which were newly outlying microphones, rendering a better sound. At home in Minneapolis, the trio of Pete Jones, Phil Phillips, and Lester Young would make their way to the record shop almost daily; in those days, you could preview a disc in store before purchasing. The three would buy a few records each time, so they built up quite a collection, which in early 1927 included many Armstrong Hot Fives (Lester learned Louis’ solos and played them on his alto), various Red Nichols issues, Ben Burnie (Lester would hear Jack Pettit solos), and Jean Goldkette Victors. These last offered a glimpse of Bix and Tram, but their names were not on the label.

Later in 1927, the Billy Young Jazz Band moved on to North Dakota, making their headquarters in Bismarck and staying at the Spencer hotel. The Spencer had a music policy and the house unit was a five piece group led by Clarence Johnson.

The ‘hot’ man in this band was a seventeen year old saxophonist named Eddie Barefield. Barefield, from the Des Moines, Iowa region, had turned to mail order records as early as 1923 to find out about saxophone and hot music, and he already knew about Big and Tram. In his collection was a red-label Okeh 78 #40772, which featured two sides from Frank Trumbauer’s first record date as a leader, February 4, 1927, with Bix as featured soloist. The coupling was “Clarinet Marmalade” with “Singin’ The Blues,” the first true ballad recording in Jazz by virtue of Bix and Tram’s solos.

Eddie Barefield (and presumably the trio of Phil Phillips, Pete Jones, and Lester Young) whiled away much of their time listening to Jazz records in their rooms at the Spencer Hotel. One day, Eddie was listening to “Singin’ the Blues” when a knock came at his door. Barefield opened it and came face-to-face with a fellow his own age. He introduced himself as Lester Young, son of the bandleader Billy Young and alto saxophonist in that band. Lester said that he didn’t mean to bother him but he had to know who the saxophonist was on the disc. Eddie Barefield called out Frankie Trumbauer and played the whole side for Lester Young. The next three minutes were the most important in Lester Young’s stylistic development.

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