Lester’s Blues – Red Label: Hommage to Lester Young & the Basie​-​Ites

Issued on CD as well as pure analog vinyl with liner notes by Tom Callens, ‘Red Label: Hommage to Lester Young & the Basie-Ites’ was recorded entirely live in one room with a multitrack setup (using multiple microphones as opposed to one central microphone), mixed live on the fly to two-track analog tape and without use of any computer. The vinyl was mastered and cut from tape in Dublin using a fully analog signal path, the process that was used before the coming of digital audio.

The fourteen tracks are a selection of tunes that are related to Lester Young and the Count Basie groups, such as the first ever track that Lester recorded at the age of 27, ‘Shoe Shine Boy’, or his own compositions ‘Tickle Toe’, ‘Lester’s Be-Bop Boogie’ and ‘Ad-Lib Blues’; the famous Fletcher Henderson arrangement of ‘King Porter Stomp’ that every big band like the Count Basie Orchestra or the Benny Goodman Orchestra had to play; the famous Basie hit ‘One O’Clock Jump’ and the songs we know from Billie Holiday ‘Easy Living’ and ‘My Man’ sung on this record by guest vocalist Delphine Gardin.

Since its appearance in 2018 it sold to an international audience of jazz lovers and dancers, met with positive reviews and is sometimes used in international dance battles, teachings and choreographies.