On this day in 1909, in Woodville, Mississippi, Lester Young was born into a family that made its living on the road. He came up in the family band, and the story goes he started on drums and gave them up partly because breaking down the kit took so long that everyone else was already out the door making friends. Every drummer I ever knew has nodded at that one.
What he did with the tenor was quieter than the fashion. When the room wanted weight, he played light. When the beat pushed, he leaned back off it and let the phrase arrive a hair late, the way you'd set a cup down on a table without a sound. Held the horn off to one side, too, which is one of those things that shouldn't matter and somehow tells you everything about how he heard it.
And then the sides with Billie Holiday, from the middle thirties on. "This Year's Kisses," say. He takes the first chorus, she takes the words, and the two of them sound like people finishing each other's sentences at a kitchen table at two in the morning. She called him Pres, he called her Lady Day, and the names stuck for good. In the photograph below, eyes shut, head tilted back toward the mic, that's the man at work.
Otis, the nicknames did better than the birth certificates — plenty of people who could hum "This Year's Kisses" would blink at Lester and Eleanora, but Pres and Lady Day they know cold. He shortened it from "the President", apparently, which is quite the compliment to hand a friend across a kitchen table.
Otis, he turns up on film too: the 1944 short Jammin' the Blues, where the cinematographer lit him like a cathedral, all smoke and shafts of light and that hat. Ten minutes long, and audiences in my house always went quiet the moment he came up out of the dark.