Sidney Bechet

Sidney Bechet

Sidney Bechet (May 14, 1897 – May 14, 1959) was an American jazz saxophonist, clarinetist, and composer.

He was one of the first important soloists in jazz (beating cornetist and trumpeter Louis Armstrong to the recording studio by several months and later playing duets with Armstrong), and was perhaps the first notable jazz saxophonist. Forceful delivery, well-constructed improvisations, and a distinctive, wide vibrato characterized Bechet's playing.

Bechet's mercurial temperament hampered his career, however, and not until the late 1940s did he earn wide acclaim.

Biography

Bechet's childhood home in the 7th Ward of New Orleans.

Bechet (pronounced BAH-shay by the family, most commonly pronounced buh-SHAY) was born in New Orleans to a wealthy Creole family. "Discovered" at the age of six, Sidney Bechet quickly learned the clarinet by picking up his brother's horn and teaching himself. At a family birthday party, Bechet debuted his newly acquired talents. Later in his youth, Bechet studied with such renowned Creole clarinetists as Lorenzo Tio, "Big Eye" Louis Nelson, and George Baquet. Soon after, Bechet would be found playing in many New Orleans ensembles, improvising with what was "acceptable" for jazz at that time (obbligatos, with scales and arpeggios). These ensembles included parade work with Henry Allen's celebrated Brass Band, the Olympia Orchestra, and John Robichaux's "genteel" dance orchestra. In 1911-1912, he performed with Bunk Johnson in the Eagle Band of New Orleans, and in 1913-1914, with King Oliver in the Olympia Band.

Although Bechet spent his childhood and adolescence in New Orleans, from 1914-1917 he was touring and traveling, going as far north as Chicago, and frequently teaming up with another famous Creole musician, Freddie Keppard. In the spring of 1919, he traveled to New York, where he joined Will Marion Cook's Syncopated Orchestra. Soon after, the orchestra journeyed to Europe where, almost immediately upon arrival, they performed at the Royal Philharmonic Hall. The group was warmly received, and Bechet was especially popular, attracting attention near and far.

Bechet was jailed in Paris, France, when a female passer-by was wounded during a shoot-out. After serving jail time, Bechet was deported. The most common version of the story, as related in Ken Burns' jazz documentary, reports that the initial shoot-out started when another musician/producer told Bechet that he was playing the wrong chord. Bechet challenged the man to a duel; critics assert, however, that Bechet was essentially ambushed by a rival musician.

While in London, Bechet discovered the straight soprano saxophone, and quickly developed a style quite unlike his warm, reedy clarinet tone. His saxophone sound could be described as "emotional", "reckless", and "large". He would often use a very broad vibrato, similar to what was common for some New Orleans clarinetists at the time.

Bechet returned to New York from Europe in 1922, and on July 30, 1923, began recording some of his earliest surviving studio work. The session was led by Clarence Williams, a pianist and songwriter, better known at that time for his music publishing and record producing. Bechet recorded the "Wild Cat Blues" and "Kansas City Man Blues". "Wild Cat Blues" is in a multi-thematic ragtime tradition, with four themes, at sixteen bars each, and "Kansas City Man Blues" is a genuine 12-bar blues. Bechet interpreted and played each uniquely and with outstanding creativity and innovation for the time.

He continued recording and touring, although his success was intermittent.

Bechet relocated to France in 1950. He recorded many hit tunes, including "Les Oignons," "Promenade aux Champ Elysees," and the international hit, "Petite Fleur." He also composed a classical ballet score in the late Romantic style of Tchaikovsky, called "La Nuit est sorciere" ("The Night Is a Witch"). He married Elisabeth Ziegler in Antibes, France in 1951. Existentialists in France called him "le dieu".

Shortly before his death in Paris, Sidney dictated his poetic autobiography, Treat It Gentle. He died from lung cancer on his sixty-second birthday.

Career highlights

Bechet successfully composed in jazz, pop-tune, and extended concert work forms. He knew how to read music, but chose not to due to his highly developed inner ear, he developed his own fingering system and he never played section parts in a big band or swing-style combo. His recordings often have been reissued.

Some of the highlights of his career include 1923 sides with Louis Armstrong in "Clarence Williams Blue Five"; the 1932, 1940, 1941 "New Orleans Feetwarmers" sides; a 1938 "Tommy Ladnier Orchestra" session "Weary Blues", "Really the Blues"); a hit 1938 recording of "Summertime"; and various versions of his own composition, "Petite Fleur".

Among Bechet's most memorable sides with the Feetwarmers are his duel with trumpeter Tommy Ladnier on "I Found a New Baby"; a mellow solo seemingly in tribute to Earl Hines' memorable piano intro to "Blues in Thirds"; a characteristically straightforward reading of the Victor Herbert tune, "Indian Summer"; and one of Bechet's most stunning virtuoso clarinet performances on Scott Joplin's "Maple Leaf Rag." Of his later work, the long, extended variations on Bechet's own composition, "Blue Horizon," is one of the most representative examples of the full range of registers Bechet could command on the clarinet. Finally, the elegiac "Bechet's Creole Blues" is one of Bechet's most powerful compositions on the soprano sax. Jazz critic, Whitney Balliet's comments on Bechet, that he did not so much vary a tune as embellish it, captures the essence of Bechet's ability to cross jazz and pop fields, evident in his later career in France, where he played mainly pop tunes in a fairly straightforward manner, a style already evident in an early Feetwarmers recording such as "Indian Summer," mentioned above. Bechet's later genius was to evoke the essence of the artistry of jazz even as he played pop tunes (many written by himself) in a straightforward style.

In 1939, Bechet co-led a group with pianist Willie "The Lion" Smith that recorded several early versions of what was later called "Latin Jazz", adapting traditional Meringue, Rhumba and Haitian songs to the jazz idiom.

Bechet in New York in 1947

On July 28, 1940, Sidney Bechet made a guest appearance on NBC Radio's The Chamber Music Society of Lower Basin Street show, playing two of his show-pieces ("Shake It and Break It" and "St. Louis Blues") with Henry Levine's dixieland band. Levine invited Bechet into the RCA Victor recording studio (on 24th Street in New York City), where Bechet lent his soprano sax to Levine's traditional arrangement of "Muskrat Ramble." On April 18, 1941, as an early experiment in overdubbing at Victor, Bechet recorded a version of the pop song "The Sheik of Araby", playing six different instruments: clarinet, soprano saxophone, tenor saxophone, piano, bass, and drums. A theretofore unissued master of this recording was included in the 1965 LP Bechet of New Orleans, issued by RCA Victor as LPV-510. On the liner notes, George Hoeffer quotes Sidney as follows: "I started by playing The Sheik on piano, and played the drums while listening to the piano. I meant to play all the rhythm instruments, but got all mixed up and grabbed my soprano, then the bass, then the tenor saxophone, and finally finished up with the clarinet."

In 1944, 1946, and 1953 he recorded and performed in concert with Chicago Jazz Pianist and Vibraphonist Max Miller, private recordings which are part of the Max Miller archive and have never been released. These concerts and recordings are covered completely in John Chilton's great book on Bechet.

Bechet was an important influence on alto saxophonist Johnny Hodges, who studied with Bechet as a teenager.

In 1968, Bechet was inducted into the Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame.

The New York Times music writer Robert Palmer wrote of Bechet that, "by combining the 'cry' of the blues players and the finesse of the Creoles into his 'own way,' Sidney Bechet created a style which moved the emotions even as it dazzled the mind."

Tributes

In 1919, Swiss concert conductor, Ernst Ansermet, wrote one of the earliest (if not the first) tributes to a jazz musician from the classical field of music, even linking Bechet's music with that of Bach.

Renowned blues harmonica player, Sugar Blue, took his name from the Bechet recording "Sugar Blues". The former has stated "I needed a nickname ... all the good ones were taken! You know 'Muddy Waters', 'Blind Lemon', 'Sonny Boy' ... until one night a friend and I were leaving a concert — a Doc Watson concert — when somebody threw out of the window a box full of old 78s: I picked one up and it said "Sugar Blues" by Sidney Bechet ... That's it! I thought it was perfect ... so here I am".

Philip Larkin wrote an ode to Bechet in The Whitsun Weddings.

Bechet is said to have served as a prototype for the saxophonist "Pablo" in the novel Steppenwolf, since it was almost certainly through listening to his playing in Europe in the 1920s that Hermann Hesse became acquainted with the world of jazz music.

Bechet to me was the very epitome of jazz ... everything he played in his whole life was completely original. I honestly think he was the most unique man to ever be in this music. — Duke Ellington.

In the 1997 documentary Wild Man Blues, film maker and clarinet aficionado Woody Allen repeatedly referred to Bechet. One of his adopted children with Soon-Yi Previn also is named Bechet.

Bechet, portrayed by Jeffrey Wright appeared as a character in two episodes of the television series The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles.

Bechet performs at an underground Paris jazz club in the novel Replay by Ken Grimwood. This appearance is slightly anachronistic, as the scene takes place in 1963 even though Bechet died in 1959.

Bob Dorough, who played with Bechet, recorded a tribute song, called "Something for Sydney," on his "Right On My Way Home" album.

Discography

Singles

• "Texas Moaner Blues" (recorded with Louis Armstrong) - 1924

• "Cake Walkin' Babies from Home" (with Red Onion Jazz Babies) - 1925

References

• Treat It Gentle by Sidney Bechet (Twayne 1960, Da Capo 1978)
• Sidney Bechet the Wizard of Jazz by John Chilton (Macmillan 1987)
• American Peoples Encyclopedia Yearbook for 1953, page 542
• Metronome Magazine, Dec 1946, Article by George Hoefer
• Best of New Orleans

External links

• The Sidney Bechet Society, Ltd.
• Sidney Bechet on redhotjazz.com
• Profile with pictures
• Profile of Sidney Bechet from the Association for Cultural Equity
• A Bechet discography
• Sidney Bechet at Find a Grave