The Jazz Giants '56

Artist: Lester Young With Roy Eldridge
Label: Polygram Records
Category: Music

Average customer rating:

Media: Audio CD
Number Of Discs: 1

UPC: 042282567222
EAN: 0042282567222
ASIN: B0000046XA

Release Date: 1991-07-01

Related Categories:

Cool Jazz

| Jazz | Styles | Music

General

| Jazz | Styles | Music

Swing General

| Swing Jazz | Jazz | Styles | Music

General

| Pop | Styles | Music

Listmania:

PRES GETS IT: A LESTER YOUNG COMPENDIUM.
Swing-Jazz Gems read my reviews on the page for each item
My Favorite Diz,Bird,Pres @ E E E(non box)
The Jazz list
25 Drummers

Tracks:

I Guess I'll Have To Change My Plan
I Didn't Know What Time It Was
Gigantic Blues
This Year's Kisses
You Can Depend On Me

Similar Items:

Pres and Teddy
With the Oscar Peterson Trio
Lester Young Trio
Gerry Mulligan Meets Ben Webster
The Complete Aladdin Recordings

Customer Reviews:

One of the best Pres albums.......2005-02-11

This is one of the best later-Pres albums out there. People who say that the Pres of the 50's was just a shell of the Pres of the 30's and early 40's with Basie are proven wrong by this recording and many others. Pres has rarely sounded better and the fire that he plays with on "Gigantic Blues" and the soul that he puts into songs like "I Didn't Know What Time It Was" is simply awesome.
This is Pres at his best. Highly recommended.

The best Jazz album ever made.......2004-08-20

This is simply the best jazz album ever made..
If you dig the style of Lester in the best shape since 1943 and add the unsurpassed efforts by Vic Dicenson, Roy Eldridge, Teddy Wilson and Jo Jones. Besides Lester the group plays the best they ever did. Wilson has never svung as hard, Roy has never been so precise and hard svung "in control" as here. You will never hear harder swing as in Gigantic Blues or as beautifull and hartbreaking as I didn't know what time is was.
If I only had one album this would be it..

Wonderful and Perfect.......2004-02-17

There are not many cuts on this CD, but this is worth it. It is a rare occaision, a group of contest winners, who happen to jibe together as a real functing band who work well together because their past experience of working together and current styles mesh. They create some great music like a band that had practiced together for years.

About 20 years ago a friend of mine found the LP version of this in a thrift store in Los Angeles. When I visited and he played the opening selection I think I'm going to Change My plans, it was one of the most beautiful tasteful and wonderful things I have ever heard. I still go by that. There is something magnificent about that cut that makes me wonder why I don't just play it all day every day, something I did do, once I got a CD player about 12 years ago and got this CD. It is that good.

What works here is that Lester is recorded with a set of SWING musicians who have the same approach to time and variation that he had, although Lester is obviously the master here. In fact, this recording was always one that people like Buck Clayton and other Old Testament Basie survivors pointed to as proof that none of Lester's skills had declined in the 1950s, he just needed a rhythm section like the one here composed of Teddy Wilson (with whom he recorded scores of records for Billie Holiday in the 30s, and his former Basie band mates Freddie Greene and Jo Jones and Gene Ramey who is of the same generation of Southwestern Swing as Lester and Basie.

Vic Dickenson really shines here. Smooth and cremey hot and swinging. It is unfortunate that very few people these days understand the greatness of Little Jazz, Mr. Roy Eldrige whose trumpet provides the necessary contrast to Lester's great sax playing. By 1956 Roy had been appearing with Lester and sometimes with Dickenson for years in Jazz at the Philharmonic's great jams. Listening to these cuts will help you want to hear more of him.

Lester, "Pres" for the friends.......2001-08-23

Lester Young.What more can I say ? He was the most incredible jazz player of all times. The king of tenor saxophone.He recorded this session in 1956,three years before his death,with some outstanding companions : Teddy Wilson,Vic Dickenson,Roy Eldridge,Freddie Greene,Gene Ramey and Jo Jones.What a hall of fame!!Just listen to the magnificent version of "I'll guess I'll have to change my plan",a tune rarely recorded.This is some of the greatest Lester, a real masterpiece; for Lester's playing,but also for Teddy Wilson,Jo Jones,and for an amazing Roy Eldridge.I guess you'll play this tune for hours.Roy 's solo on this tune ranks among the greatest things ever done on a trumpet.The four other tunes are very great moments of music too: Lester's improvisations on "I didn't know what time it was" or "this year's kisses",a tune he recorded with Billie Holiday some 20 years before.The Jazz Giants is a good title: noone will ever play that way.

Straight ahead Ballads and Blues w/ seriously mellow groove!.......2000-09-20

You can't go wrong with this CD. With Lester Young, the listener always knows what he/she is getting: soft, silky yet full bodied sax with a heavy groove. It is one of THE classic, late night mellow mood pieces. Many of the songs contain wonderful trumpet and piano solos, adding a truly majestic depth to the music. This is a great place to start a jazz collection; also consider Stan Getz (or Lester Young) with the Oscar Peterson trio. Finally, if you want to get addicted to jazz, please consider the all time classic by Zoot Simms and Joe Pass: "Blues For Two".

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