Lester Young speaks

The tenor saxophonist Lester Young was an inventive user of words. From Playback with Lewis Porter!, two television clips of Young speaking, featuring “Ivey-Divey” and “Little Tinky Boom? One stick, you dig?” Listen for the difference the sticks make.

From Whitney Balliett’s New York Notes: A Journal of Jazz in the Seventies (1976), a few more examples of Lester Young’s language, as recalled by the pianist Jimmy Rowles:

“Lester was the coolest man I ever met. He had his own language. He wasn’t Pres to us, but Bubba, after some nephews who called him Uncle Bubba. He’d turn to me on the bandstand and say, ‘Startled doe. Two o’clock,’ which meant if you looked into the audience at where two o’clock was you’d see this pretty chick with big eyes. ‘Bob Crosby’s in the house’ meant a cop had just come in, and ‘Bing and Bob’ meant the fuzz were all over the place. When I first knew him, he said, ‘There’s a gray boy at the bar who is looking for you.’ ‘What’s a gray boy?’ I said. ‘Man, you’re a gray boy,’ he said, smiling with those green teeth he had then, ‘and I’m an Oxford gray.’

“And everything that was good was ‘bulging.’ It was a telescoping of a phrase that had started out ‘I’ve got eyes for that,’ which meant ‘I like that,’ and became ‘I’ve got great big eyes for that,’ and then ‘I’ve got bulging eyes for that.’ But if he didn’t like something or somebody, all he did was puff out his cheeks — no words at all, just balloon cheeks.“

Another sampling, from Balliett’s American Musicians: Fifty-Six Portraits in Jazz (1986):

Much of Young’s language has vanished, but here is a sampling: “Bing and Bob” were the police. A “hat” was a woman, and a “homburg” and a “Mexican hat” were types of women. An attractive young girl was a “poundcake.” A “gray boy” was a white man, and Young himself, who was light-skinned, was an “oxford gray.” “I’ve got bulging eyes” for this or that meant he approved of something, and “Catalina eyes” and “Watts eyes” expressed high admiration. “Left people” were the fingers of a pianist’s left hand. “I feel a draft” meant he sensed a bigot nearby. “Have another helping,” said to a colleague on the bandstand, meant “Take another chorus,” and “one long” or “two long” meant one chorus or two choruses. People “whispering on” or “buzzing on” him were talking behind his back. Getting his “little claps” meant being applauded. A “zoomer” was a sponger, and a “needle dancer” was a heroin addict. “To be bruised” was to fail. A “tribe” was a band, and a “molly trolley” was a rehearsal. “Can Madam burn?” meant “Can your wife cook?” “Those people will be here in December” meant that his second child was due in December.

[Young had two children, Lester Young Jr. and Yvette Young. Lester Young Jr. is the Chancellor of the New York State Board of Regents.]