Lester Young 1952

[medjuck]

I posted this to  a jazz research list serve and got no response.  Maybe someone here knows.

On a Jazz Club USA broadcast from (I believe) 1952 devoted to Arnett Cobb and Lester Young, Leonard Feather announces that Prez was recorded at Birdland and that his band consists of Jesse Drake, Earl Knight, Lee Abrams and Gene Ramey. However though all these players were in the band around the same period , neither of the 2 Prez discographies I own show them all in the band at the same time.

The numbers played on the broadcast are standard for Prez at that time: "Neenah", "Ghost of a Chance", "Lester Leaps in" and "Destination Moon".

Does anyone know when this performance took place and who the players were? (It is possible that the Jazz Club USA broadcast used numbers from more than one night, with different members of the band on separate nights.)

[Niko]

Mysterious! Looking at the discography (Evensmo), it seems that Destination Moon is the track that wasn't recorded often... and which points to 25 April 1952 where the other tracks were recorded as well. For this, the Evensmo-lineup is what you have but with Wynton Kelly, Aaron Bell and Jo Jones sitting in for Abrams on some tracks... Now it seems unlikely to me that this Jazz Club USA epsiode was forgotten in all the discographies... And even if the tracks came from different nights with different lineups, that wouldn't make Feather's announcement correct... So my tentative conclusion is 25 April 1952 and Feather was announcing a lineup he'd maybe received in advance.... Also possible that Feather is right about the lineup and discographies are wrong. The first step would be to compare the music from 25 April to the radio show...

[Big Beat Steve]

My Prez discography ("Lestorian Notes" by Piet Koster and Harm Mobach, published in 1998, so I don't know if this one or the one by Jan Evensmo is more up to date) lists the session of 25 April 1952 like this:

I then tried to narrow down the recordings to the line-up given by Feather, and according to the musician index Earl Knight only appeared once with Pres - on the session hereafter of 4 August 1951:

But Earl Knight and Lee Abrams together at one and the same session apparently never happened - at least not on any known recordings. So ...?

Like Niko said, the 25 April 1952 date is the most likely candidate, but the line-up announced by Feather then would be incorrect. 

If all this is what you already arrived at as well, Medjuck, then sorry - but I tried.  

Edited 10 hours ago by Big Beat Steve

[medjuck]

Thanks.  Those are the 2 discographies I was working with.  I'm pretty sure Feather wasn't present and I suspect that the cuts broadcast  are from  2 or three different dates. 

[Big Beat Steve]

So that settles it. (Or back to the starting grid? )
However, if all the names mentioned by Leonard Feather were in the lineup(s), though apparently never all of them at the same time, and if these weren't all the musicians present (according to your post he did not mention Wynton Kelly and Aaron Bell present on 25/04/52), then the "different dates" must include the one from 4 August 1951 because that is the only one that has Earl Knight in the lineup (with "Neenah" and "Lester Leaps In" recorded at both possible dates indicated above). And as you have seen in the "Lestorian Notes", several more Birdland Broadcasts exist from April/May 1952 with the same lineup as on 25/04/52. But none of the tunes recorded at these subsequent dates match those of 25/04/52.