{"id":3377,"date":"2012-02-20T18:20:23","date_gmt":"2012-02-21T02:20:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/?p=3377"},"modified":"2012-02-20T22:49:09","modified_gmt":"2012-02-21T06:49:09","slug":"prez-on-presidents-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/2012\/02\/prez-on-presidents-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Prez On Presidents Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today is Presidents Day in the United States. It falls between the birthdays of two of our greatest presidents, Abraham Lincoln (February 12) and George Washington (February 22). Many years ago, there was a movement in the Congress to consolidate the two observances into one holiday that would honor all US presidents. The effort never resulted in an official national holiday, but department stores and automobile dealerships liked the idea so much that they declared it a holiday and celebrate it by having huge sales to increase their profits and buy advertising that results in Sunday newspapers weighing five pounds. To read the confused history of Presidents Day, go here<\/a>.
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\nAmong jazz blogs and websites, it has become a clich\u00c3\u00a9 to take advantage of Presidents Day as a reason to mention Lester Young. Clich\u00c3\u00a9s get to be clich\u00c3\u00a9s because they strike a chord and are repeated so often that they become a part of the collective consciousness. When Billie Holiday declared that Lester Young was the president of the tenor saxophonists, she planted the seed of a clich\u00c3\u00a9 that I am happy to perpetuate. Ladies and gentlemen—on Presidents Day we present Lester Young in one of his greatest recordings. This was 1943. Prez with Johnny Guarnieri, Slam Stewart and Sid Catlett.<\/p>\n