Ken Burns Jazz

First coming to prominence with Count Basie's band in 1936, Lester Young defined a new way to play tenor saxophone, with a soft, airy sound and an understated beat. In the process, he was also creating a new way to play jazz, with a flowing, melodic inventiveness and a detachment that would influence the bop and cool schools to come. Young did much of his best work as a sideman in the first few years of his public career, and the first 13 tracks of this collection focus on his work up to 1940. Basie's hard-swinging big band was a terrific foil for Young's own novel blend of rhythmic invention and an almost languid sound, heard here on tunes like "Taxi War Dance" and the uptempo "Twelfth Street Rag." With Basie's smaller Kansas City Seven, Young created masterpieces like his signature "Lester Leaps In." Young and his friend Billie Holiday shared an uncanny musical empathy, represented by four tracks here. There's also a sampling of Young's later recordings, including his trio version of "I've Found a New Baby," with Nat Cole on piano and Buddy Rich on drums, and "Polka Dots and Moonbeams" from a 1957 reunion with Basie at the Newport Jazz Festival. --Stuart Broomer