Today in class, I heard myself saying something about Walt Whitman, then heard it turning into teacherly blabber. “Oh, shut up,” I said. The class laughed, but some students looked at me like I was odd. I explained: “I’ve always wanted to tell a teacher to shut up, teachers who blabber like that. And now I can, because I am the teacher.”

This week’s Music Friday has nothing to do with that little story. It is the great saxophonist Lester Young. I learned in this week’s Gambit, in a story by Jason Berry — Chin Music Press fans will know about Mr. Berry — that Lester Young spent his first eleven years in New Orleans, beginning in 1909.

Perhaps he imbibed this city’s jazz roots; perhaps he breathed it in as a child without knowing what importance it would have for his art. Perhaps simply being in New Orleans at that age can give one a taste for the music.

Perhaps not.

Either way, here he is behind the cut: Lester Young, “Jamming the Blues." (Note an interesting comment below the video: The guitar player is not quite visible so as to avoid showing an integrated group in 1944.)