In the Joni Mitchell biography I'm slowly working my way through she's up to recording her album with the dying Charles Mingus. Mingus speaks approvingly of Lester Young. I knew who Young was -- used to have a couple LPs -- but don't own any anymore.
So I went looking.
Found a couple nice collections at Amazon and iTunes, but my credit card was hacked Christmas Eve so I'm temporarily between cards.
Looked for free downloads instead. Found oodles.
In fact I found 173 tracks, 12 hours 34 minutes before I'd even started. These are all tracks recorded in the forties, a few in the early fifties, but mostly mono and no great shakes sonically.
So I thought hey, why not throw all these MP3s onto some data discs (which my new player plays) since the fidelity won't be compromised anyway. Came out to three discs. Made a cover, put them in a multi-disc case, and there you go.
A whole day of Prez for reading Joni to.