Being Prez - The Life and Music of Lester Young - Dave Gelly

Being Prez - The Life and Music of Lester Young - Dave Gelly

‘I just loved that music’

Being Prez - The Life and Music of Lester Young - Dave Gelly

Dave Gelly [+-]
Writer and Journalist
Dave Gelly writes about jazz in The Observer and other newspapers and journals. He has written and presented many features for BBC radio and hosted a weekly Radio Two show. He was a leading writer on the Sony Award-winning ten-part BBC radio series Sinatra: Voice of the Century and is the author of several books, including Masters of the Jazz Saxophone (Miller Freeman, 2000) and Stan Getz: Nobody Else but Me (Backbeat 2002). He was named Jazz Writer of the Year in the 1999 British Jazz Awards. Dave Gelly was appointed MBE in the 2005 New Years Honours.

Description

Woodville, in Wilkinson County, Mississippi, is the birthplace of two famous Americans – Jefferson Davis (1808–89), President of the Confederacy, and Lester Young (1909–1959), saxophonist. Apart from their place of birth, they seem to have had only one thing in common, namely that they both served time in jail. In the year in which Lester Young was born, Woodville and its environs boasted a population of 2,500, with blacks outnumbering whites by almost two to one. Racial segregation was rigidly enforced, disputes might be settled with a bullet, and lynchings were not unknown. At around the time of Lester’s birth, on 27 August 1909, a local election was held, during which the National Guard were called in to quell a riot. In other words, just another quiet, hospitable Southern town.

Notify A Colleague

Citation

Gelly, Dave. ‘I just loved that music’. Being Prez - The Life and Music of Lester Young. Equinox eBooks Publishing, United Kingdom. p. 1 - 16 Jul 2007. ISBN 9781845536046. https://www.equinoxpub.com/home/view-chapter/?id=18906. Date accessed: 25 Apr 2024 doi: 10.1558/equinox.18906. Jul 2007

Dublin Core Metadata