Core Jazz: "Lester Leaps In"

On September 5, 1939, Count Basie's Kansas City Seven recorded "Lester Leaps In," featuring tenor saxophonist Lester Young.

Young based his composition on the chord changes to George and Ira Gershwin’s 1930 tune, "I Got Rhythm," which has provided the chord progressions for a number of jazz compositions, including Charlie Parker's "Moose the Mooche" and Ornette Coleman's "Chippie."

Young's recording with the Basie band consists of six choruses of 32 bars each:

Ensemble
Young
Young in stop time
Young and Basie trade fours
Young and the ensemble trade fours
Basie and the ensemble trade fours

The recording is interesting for a number of reasons.

First, as Alyn Shipton notes in A New History of Jazz, it shows Young's tendency to simplify: “far from employing the kind of substitute harmonies beloved of [Coleman] Hawkins, Young sought to simplify or reduce the harmonic material in a tune.... Young’s solo on ‘Lester Leaps In,’ with Count Basie’s Kansas City Seven, includes numerous examples of his tendency to simplify; although to counterbalance the most minimal aspects of the solo there are several neatly executed runs, arpeggios, and fills, in which he moves airily around the tenor."

Second, in spite of or in contrast to his tendency to simplify the harmonies, Young did revel in rhythmic variations. As Douglas Henry Daniels points out in his excellent biography, Lester Leaps In: The Life and Times of Lester "Pres" Young, "the climactic moments in his solos are drum patterns as much as they are melodies." Or as Alyn Shipton again notes in A New History of Jazz, Young “tackled rhythm in a distinctly different way from [Coleman] Hawkins. Whereas Hawkins tended to construct rising and falling patterns of eighth notes, relying on harmonic complexity to provide interest, Young’s solo on ‘Lester Leaps In’ abounds with rhythmic variation. Some phrases enter exactly on the beat; others are delayed by an eighth note, or a quarter note. When a motif is repeated, it is often placed differently over the accompanying beat on each repetition, sometimes using a minute delay of anticipation.”

Third, there is the famous collision between Young and Count Basie at the beginning of Young's second chorus. According to Dave Gelly in Being Prez: The Life and Music of Lester Young, "Lester carries doggedly on while Basie stops to get his bearings, and they're back on track eight bars later. A second take was recorded but Lester's solo was not so good, so the first was released, collision included." Gunther Schuller's analysis of the piece in The Swing Era: The Development of Jazz, 1930-1945 says much the same and suggests that Basie simply forgot about Young's second chorus.

There are several other noteworthy recordings of "Lester Leaps In," including the 1949 recording of a Jazz at the Philharmonic concert that includes some great solos by Charlie Parker — this was one of the few recordings of Parker with Young, his early mentor — as well as trumpeter Roy Eldridge (doing some nice interplay with Buddy Rich on drums) and tenor saxophonist Flip Phillips.