Billboard : 05/05/1956
Score of 72

Another re-issue on 12-inch $3.98 vinyl of two complete previously listed 10-inch LPs. The President, of course, is tenor saxman Lester Young, featured here in some of his best efforts of recent years. Everyone credits Young with the modern, “cool” tenor style, but they plunk their money down for the followers who have gone beyond the master. Sales should be moderate, tho Peterson‘s name will help. (The earlier 10-inchers were MGN-5 and 6.)

—–

Playboy Magazine : July, 1956

The president of the tenor saxophone, Lester Young, huffs and puffs a beautiful windstorm of wheaty, high-strung notes on The President Plays (Norgran MGN 1054), and promptly wins our vote for another term in office. In the background is the Oscar Peterson trio: blithe, self-supporting spirits if ever we heard any. The collaboration is particularly fruitful on Ad Lib Blues and the Gershwin–Vernon Duke oldie I Can’t Get Started…

—–

Liner Notes by Unknown

It’s been said that there’s hardly a tenor saxophone player today who can play an entire chorus without playing some Lester Young. Or, to put it another way, when a modern saxophone player hits upon a jazz idea, supposedly fresh and new, and sets out to express it – the odds are strong that the same idea belonged, years before, to Lester Willis Young.

This is, of course, a two-way tribute to Lester – for having the ideas in the first place and also – incredibly – for having ideas that remain freshly minted a generation or so later. There is a tendency in all of this to regard Lester “President” Young in antique terms and to forget that for all his roots in the era of King Oliver, Lester is still very much with us – and still swinging and still playing his dry, wheaty choruses in a style which may be described under the loose heading of “cool.”

Originally, of course, these laconically expressed choruses came to the fore in the old Count Basie band in the 1930s. (This occurred following the episode of Lester losing his char in the Fletcher Henderson band for not having the same full-bodied tone as the man he had replaced, Coleman Hawkins – akin to criticizing Rocky Marciano for not disposing of his opponent in precisely the same manner as Joe Louis.)

On these sides, Lester has no big band behind him, and this proves no severe lack at all since a swinging background is provided by the Oscar Peterson Trio (with Oscar on piano; Barney Kessel, guitar; Ray Brown, bass) and J.C. Heard, drums. Given musicians of this stature around him, President Lester (a title granted originally by Billie Holiday) finds full rein for expression and, as well, shows even the most casual listener just why he has remained in office – if you will – for so many terms.