Lester Young

Anything from 38-39 which he himself considered his best work.Get the CD of the Kansas City 5,6,7's (on the Classics label of France).His experience with racism durring war and heavy drinking could be to blame but maybe this was just his time.But that KC stuff maybe the most sublime jazz ever recorded.

Lester's recorded work falls into two fairly distinct periods: when he was a member of Count Basie's band, and when he was the leader of the Lester Young - Teddy Wilson quartet in the 1930's and into the 1940's; and the post-World War II period when his playing had deteriorated following his experiences in the military. Rather than give you a laundry list of recordings with my subjective evaluation, I suggest you take a look at AMG's music service which rates most of Lester's better recordings. Here is the link to AMG's page on Lester:
http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=B0ud7yl6jxpsb

The Lester Young Trio with Nat cole and Buddy Rich is fantastic as are the Complete Aladin recordings.

If you are an LP guy I recommend that you try to get him on LP rather than CD. I find those old jazz recordings sound much more alive on LP.
I'm not a huge lester young collector, but I really like the 'Lady Day and Pres 1937-1941'