The Lester Young Buddy Rich Trio is a jazz trio album recorded in Hollywood, California in March and April 1946 by Lester Young, Nat King Cole and Buddy Rich.
Release history The first 4 tracks were originally released on Mercury Records as The Lester Young Trio.The Lester Young Trio (1951) Mercury MGC 104, re-issued as Clef MGC 104 The remaining 4 tracks were released on Norman Granz' Clef Records label as The Lester Young Trio No. 2The Lester Young Trio No. 2 (1953) Clef MGC 135 before all 8 tracks were combined and released by Granz' Norgran Records label as The Lester Young Buddy Rich Trio.The Lester Young Buddy Rich Trio (1955) Norgran MGN 1074, re-issued as Verve MGV 8164 Nat King Cole was under contract with a different record label at the time so was credited only as "Aye Guy" on the original Mercury / Clef / Norgran releases.
In 1994 Verve Records released a CD version of The Lester Young Trio which combined all 8 tracks from the 1946 Hollywood trio recordings, plus an alternate take of "I Cover the Waterfront" and an additional shortened version of "Back to the Land", with 4 additional tracks recorded earlier by a quintet with Nat King Cole (but without Lester Young or Buddy Rich).
Track listing LP Side A "Back to the Land" (Young) – 3:52 "I've Found a New Baby" (Palmer, Williams) – 4:04 "I Cover the Waterfront" (Green, Heyman) – 4:03 "Somebody Loves Me" (MacDonald, DeSylva, Gershwin) – 3:54 LP Side B "I Want to Be Happy" (Caesar, Youmans) – 3:56 "The Man I Love" (Gershwin, Gershwin) – 4:48 "Mean to Me" (Ahlert, Turk) – 4:09 "Peg O' My Heart"Young / Cole duo - no drums (Bryan, Fisher) – 4:02
Personnel Lester Young – tenor saxophone Buddy Rich – drums Nat King Cole (credited as "Aye Guy" on the original releases) – piano
References / notes
The Lester Young Buddy Rich Trio at jazzdisco.org