My Favorite Jazz Holiday Story: Lester Young's Christmas Comeback
My Favorite Jazz Holiday Story: Lester Young's Christmas Comeback In a dim, windowless upstairs room on 13th Street in DC, a sax legend of the 1930s delivers a masterpiece in his final days Ted Gioia Everybody has their favorite holiday story. Some people opt for Love Actually or It’s a Wonderful Life , while others seek end-of-year catharsis in Die Hard or Bad Santa . Who am I to judge? But I’m a jazz fan, so I want to tell you about Lester Young’s last great album. It was a record that wasn’t even supposed to happen. This takes place in December 1956. The story of Lester Young’s last great album starts in an unexpected way. It begins with a pianist named Bill Potts—a name even most serious jazz fans won’t recognize. Potts was a workaday musician, bouncing around low-level gigs in the Washington, D.C. area over a period of many years. His biggest break came when United Artists hired him to make a big band recording of George Gershwin’s music—but the ...