” Lester’s gambit of usurping the pianist’s introductory role was something quite different in character from Louis Armstrong’s incredible exhibition of virtuosity in his curtain-raiser to ‘West End Blues’ or Benny Goodman’s occasional static solo introductions with the trios and quartets of the period.
In his four-bar introduction to the Wilson-Holiday ‘I Can’t Get Started’, Lester shows a remarkable sense of harmonic mood, improvising on what seems today a commonplace harmonic sequence, but weaving what was for the times a brilliantly original melodic line subtly related to the line of the melody to come. Later in the same recording Lester improvises for sixteen bars, and it is difficult to believe that this is 1937, two years
before Hawkins finally wrapped up ‘Body And Soul’ for posterity.
In Lester’s solo, passion has been replaced by deliberation, as he threads a new strange path through the intricacies of the harmonies with a dexterous evasion of the obvious sorely tempting one to the use of the most abused and overworked noun in jazz criticism – genius.”
– Benny Green, Such Sweet Thunder