You’re mean to me
Why must you be mean to me?
Gee, baby, it seems to me
You’d love to see me cryin'
I don’t know why I stay home
Each night when you say that you’ll phone
You don’t, and I’m left alone
Singin' the blues 'n' cryin'
You treat me coldly each day in the year
You always scold me whenever somebody is near
It must be
Great fun to be mean to me
You shouldn’t 'cause can’t you see what you mean to me?
You treat me coldly every day in the year
And you always scold me whenever somebody is near
Gee, it must be
Great fun to be mean to me
You shouldn’t 'cause can’t you see what you mean to me?
Lester was one of the fathers of modern slang! He was responsible for coining many phrases we've used over the years("you dig/ you understand" & "bread/money")! At 1:04 & 1:08 he was saying to the drummer, "A little TINKTY-BOOM" to get him(the drummer) to swing more! Just say "tinkty-boom" repeatedly along with the track & you'll see what I mean! Prez not only had the right notes but the right picturesque slang to desciribe what was going on and/or was needed to set things off!!
His proverbial sense of time, his interaction with the rhythm section, his way of "talking" through the horn. Jazz is a conversation. Many current musicians may be technically impeccable, but they miss this crucial point. Lester's about burning fire, not fireworks!
once he gets the drummer to find the damn pocket...Pres just swings right up the mountainside and over the top...and around 2:50...if had to define "swing", I would play that last series of riffs for the unenlightened...a few moments of rare beauty, power, and sly mastery caught forever...says there are 263,148 views at this time...and about 1000 of them are ME...thanks!
Lester Young wasn't only an amazing musician, he lit the rockets of the 20th Century US counterculture when he turned on Kerouac all the way back in 1943.
Amazing. Had never seen this before. I am surprised he played this strong in 1958. On the "Sound of Jazz" show he looked so frail.
Gives us a feeling of what it must have been like hearing him on a club date with Count Basie with Lester's tenor soaring over one of the best bands there ever was.
