The American musician Lester Willis ("Prez") Young (1909-1959) was one of jazz's premier stylists, a startlingly innovative tenor saxophonist whose approach was marked by finesse and relaxation rather than power and passion.

On and off the bandstand, Lester "Prez" (for "President") Young was unique. His musical genius is well documented on recordings, but his eccentricities of speech and attire survive only in anecdotes and photographs and in the memory of those who knew him. Many jazz slang locutions, whose origins have since been obscured, were coined by Young (for example, "I feel a draft" for "I sense hostility"); his wide-brimmed porkpie hat was one of several sartorial trademarks, paralleled by such linguistic oddities as his habit of addressing everyone, man or woman, as "Lady"--followed by the person's last name. (Count Basie, then, would become "Lady Basie.") Unfortunately, this buoyant, creative genius was traumatized, and ultimately destroyed, by...