Lester Young gave everyday English the words 'cool' and 'bread,' but his deeper legacy is a relaxed, airy tenor saxophone sound that defied the forceful style of Coleman Hawkins and Herschel Evans. This episode follows him from Woodville, Mississippi, and the Algiers neighborhood of New Orleans through the Young Family Band, his 1927 refusal to tour the Jim Crow South, and his arrival in Count Basie's Kansas City orchestra.

We explore his musical bond with Billie Holiday, who named him 'Pres' while he called her 'Lady Day,' the stolen clarinet he refused to replace for nearly twenty years, and the 1944 Army draft that sent him to Fort McClellan, Alabama, a court martial, and a year in detention barracks. Then we trace his postwar equipment changes, his fear of becoming a 'repeater pencil,' the 1957 Fine and Mellow performance on The Sound o ...