The critic Norman Granz called tenor saxophonist Lester Young "the greatest musician I have heard on the instrument." John Hammond called him "the most creative saxophonist America has ever produced." Douglas Ramsey speaks of Young as "the gentle, bedevilled genius whose vision of beauty found expression even though he was hounded throughout his life by nearly every demon the twentieth century had managed to spawn."

Born in 1909, Lester Young played tenor saxophone with Count Basie's orchestra in the late 1930s and accompanied Billie Holiday, who gave Lester his nickname "Pres" because of his gentle but fierce command of the sax. Other jazz greats that Young both worked with an inspired included Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Stan Getz, Dexter Gordon and Sonny Rollins.

Young made his mark on jazz with a style characterised by an active imagination and a musical sound that was clear and light and controlled - a style unheard of at the time he began playing which was only recognised and picked up on years later.

His music brought him riches and worldwide admiration, and he was copied by an entire generation of musicians. But, as Luc Delannoy writes in this moving study of a giant in the jazz world, "Lester was worn out. Recognition had taken too long. He didn't have the strength to wait for it. It stretched before him like a shadow. And while this shadow would attend his music until the end, it also covered him. Pres was taking his leave…" Lester Young died in New York in 1959 at the age of forty-nine.

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