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Sidney Bechet and His Long Song*
BY LEWIS PORTER AND MICHAEL ULLMAN
IN
1923, clarinetist and soprano-saxophonist Sidney Bechet
(1897-1959) was arguably the greatest soloist in jazz, although
soon afterwards he was overtaken by his lifelong rival, Louis
Armstrong (1901-1971).1 In the early twenties Bechet played with
a rhythmic drive and technical skill then unparalleled, and he
improvised more freely than most other jazz musicians. In 1923,
jazz players tended to think of the solo as a set piece, an original
composition to be worked on and polished in private, and to be
played in roughly the same way at each performance. Bechet and
Armstrong, however, improvised their solos to the fullest extent,
and influenced others to follow their direction in what turned out
to be the way of the future, although the difference may best be
seen as a change in emphasis rather than a complete break with the
past.
We know more about Bechet than about most of his contemporaries, for fortunately he left behind an autobiography, Treat It
Gentle (published posthumously in 1960), which serves as a primary
source of documentation.2 All references to, and comment by Bechet in the present article are based on the autobiography unless
otherwise indicated.
Bechet was "discovered" when he was about six years old. He
started as a clarinetist by surreptitiously picking up his brother's
clarinet, and teaching himself to play. According to legend and to
his own testimony, the first tune he learned was the prophetic "I
don't know where I'm going but I'm on my way." Within a relatively short time he gained some measure of competence and soon
found an occasion to demonstrate it. His mother had planned a
birthday party for brother Leonard, an amateur trombone player
who was studying to be a dentist, and had hired Freddie Keppard's
jazz band to provide the music. But the clarinetist, George Baquet,
failed to show up. Consequently, the assembled guests were startled
to hear, softly in the background, the sound of a clarinet sweetly
improvising. After searching through the house, they finally came
into the office area, and there, sitting in the dark in a dentist chair,
* Much of this materialwill
appear in a forthcominghistory of jazz by the
present authors,to be publishedby Prentice-Hall,Inc. Some of its material
previously appeared in a liner essay written by Lewis Porter for the LP
reissue Smithsonian R026, LouisArmstrong
and SidneyBechetin New York.
I
136
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SIDNEY BECHET
137
young Bechet was blowing softly into his instrument (Bechet, 71).
From that time on, however, he was rarely willing to play in the
background. In the New Orleans ensembles that nurtured Bechet
and Armstrong, the cornetist was constrained to paraphrasing the
melody and, often at the same time, selecting appropriate ornamental notes. The trombonist created a slower countermelody
based on chord progressions, while the clarinetist, the least concerned with the written melody, played florid obbligatos, using
scales and arpeggios. But Bechet was unwilling to accept this traditional supportive role of the clarinet.
The New Orleans clarinetists tended to play with an incredibly
rich, packed, woody sound, and Bechet would retain this sound
throughout his lifetime. Sometimes the sound was achieved at the
sacrifice of some fluency, but the New Orleans clarinetists valued
speed and grace. The most famous clarinet solo in their tradition,
the chorus on "High Society," actually is a piccolo solo from a
Robert Recker arrangement. It was first adapted for clarinet by
Alphonse Picou, and then memorized by generations of New Orleans clarinetists. "High Society" was first recorded on 22 June
1923 by the King Oliver band with Johnny Dodds on clarinet. A
thirty-two bar, A B A C form, it allows ample room for Dodds to
display his improvisational skills. The first half of the clarinet
chorus is transcribed in Example 1.3
What one hears in Sidney Bechet's early work is a virtuosic
extension of this New Orleans clarinet tradition. As a boy Bechet
was immersed in that tradition: he studied with creole clarinetists
Lorenzo Tio, "Big Eye" Louis Nelson, and George Baquet. He did
parade work with Henry Allen's (Sr.) celebrated Brass Band, and
played with the Olympia Orchestra, the Eagle, and with John
Robichaux's "genteel" dance orchestra. He played all this music
mainly by ear! Bechet never became a good reader, and in his
maturity was sensitive about this failing, but he seemed able to pick
up any tune immediately.
The precocious youth's apprenticeship in New Orleans was
both basic and thorough. In 1911 or 1912, he played with cornetist
Bunk Johnson in the Eagle Band of New Orleans, and in 1913 or
1914 he performed with King Oliver in the Olympia Band. At
some time in 1915 he was with Kid Ory's band, and in 1915-1916
was again with Oliver, who by that time had his own group.
In addition to his work in New Orleans, Bechet led an itinerant
life from 1914 to 1917, touring in shows, and going as far north as
Chicago, where he frequently teamed with a third New Orleans
cornetist, the great Freddie Keppard. A clannish, difficult man,
Keppard and the prickly Bechet got on perfectly together. Also in
Chicago, Bechet performed in a duo with another New Orleans
native, Tony Jackson, one of Jelly Roll Morton's favorite pianists
and the composer of "Pretty Baby."
138
THE BLACK PERSPECTIVE IN MUSIC
Will Marion Cook was on tour in 1919 with his New York
Syncopated Orchestra, when he heard Bechet play during the
orchestra's stop at Chicago in February and persuaded the
clarinetist to join the orchestra as a soloist. Cook had a versatile
organization that used jazz as only one of its styles-he auditioned
Bechet by having him play a cadenza from the Poet and Peasant
Overture. Cook would feature Bechet playing the blues in programs that included everything from spiritual arrangements, such
as "Joshua fit the battle of Jericho," to transcriptions of Brahms's
Hungarian Dances.
Finally, in the spring of 1919, Bechet arrived in New York,
where he joined Cook and soon after sailed to England with the
orchestra. They arrived at London in June 1919, and immediately
began an engagement at the Royal Philharmonic Hall. Cook's
group was warmly received by the critics and the public, and
Bechet especially attracted wide attention. His performance
brought forth a prescient review from the Swiss conductor, Ernest
Ansermet, who, after hearing Bechet play his featured "Characteristic Blues," wrote:
There is in the Southern SyncopatedOrchestraan extraordinaryclarinet
virtuoso who is, so it seems, the firstof his race to have composed perfectly
formed blues on the clarinet. I've heard two of them which he had elaborated at great length, then played to his companions so that they are
equally admirable for their richness of invention, force of accent, and
daring in novelty and the unexpected. Already, they gave the idea of a
style, and their form was gripping, abrupt, harsh, with a brusque and
pitilessending like that of Bach'ssecond BrandenburgConcerto. I wish to
set down the name of this artistof genuis; as for myself, I shall never forget
it-it is Sidney Bechet.
Ansermet concluded that Bechet's way "is perhaps the highway the
whole world will swing along tomorrow."4
While in London, Bechet picked up a straight soprano
saxophone and soon developed on this difficult instrument one of
the most extravagant, and least polite, sounds in jazz-a broad,
wailing cry, openly and sometimes throbbingly emotional. Bechet's
clarinet playing was warm, woody, and intimate, despite his use of
the broad vibrato that was typical of some New Orleans reed
players. His tone on soprano was larger, smoother, and more
romantic than on the clarinet. He mused on the clarinet; on the
soprano he soared recklessly.
Bechet tended to overwhelm any ensemble he played with. He
would start a chorus by hitting a high, throbbing note with a vibrato
so broad it sounded like a trill, descend with a
whinnying stutter,
grumble in the lower register, twirl around with little triplet
figures, and rip upwards again, traversing over an octave in a
single, dramatic rush. To emphasize a high note, he might add a
SIDNEY BECHET
139
grace note an octave below. As early as 1923, he had a practice on
fast numbers of hanging a few daringly lazy notes tantalizingly over
the rhythm. Just when he seemed ready to stumble, he would pick
himself up with several rapidly executed staccato figures that returned him squarely to the beat.
Bechet liked to talk about music as if it had a will of its own; the
job of a musician was to find out where the music wanted to go. But
in his own playing he typically seemed to drive the music before
him, especially in his last choruses. His performance on the marvelous "Maple Leaf Rag" of 1932 ends with several choruses of
roof-raising fervor that seemed to surprise all the players except
Bechet himself. He knew how to build a performance, chorus by
chorus, so that he always made a splash at the end. He loved
melodies, including some that seem corny today; by the fifties, "La
Vie en Rose," "Dear Old Southland," "Song of Songs," and even
"Swanee River" were a regular part of his repertoire.5
Bechet returned to New York from Europe late in 1922. On 30
July 1923, he went into the studios to make his earliest surviving
recordings.6 (An earlier session with Bessie Smith has been lost.)
The sessions were led by Clarence Williams (c1893-1965), a pianist
and songwriter, who was more important in the music world as a
music publisher and record producer. Bechet dominates the "Wild
Cat Blues" and "Kansas City Man Blues," overshadowing the more
reticent cornetist, Thomas Morris. "Wild Cat Blues" is not a blues,
neither in form nor mood. Following in the multi-thematic ragtime
tradition, it has four themes, each sixteen bars long, which appear
in the following order: (four-bar intro) A B A C D C D C (coda
based on D). Bechet's handling of the breaks in the minor-key D
sections is particularly revealing. For the most part, he simply
arpeggiates chords, albeit with great precision. But his second
break in the second D section is more rhythmically creative: with its
long, initial high note and syncopated accent on the fourth beat, it
anticipates Armstrong's confident breaks of a few years later.
Example 2. Bechet's break from "Wild Cat Blues."
/=intense
vibrato
Bechet states the theme of the "Kansas City Man Blues," a
genuine, twelve-bar blues, in vibrant long tones and sharp yips. He
plays his soprano saxophone with such vigor that it is clear from the
beginning he will not be bound by the restraints of the usual
accompanying role of the clarinetist. Morris is overwhelmed by
Bechet's wonderfully vocalistic approach to blues-vocalistic
especially in its rhythmic freedom. In measure 4 of the first and second
140
THE BLACK PERSPECTIVE IN MUSIC
choruses, Bechet plays a characteristic descending formula, which
will reappear in later solos.
Example 3. Bechet's formula from "Kansas City Man Blues."
= 88
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Bechet's blues solos are full of heavy blues inflections, but he
often ends a chorus, as he does on "New Orleans Hop Scop Blues"
(recorded in October 1923), with a major third, which helps to
resolve the tension created by the preceding "blue" thirds. This
strategy is used also on later records; it appears twice, for example,
during the first chorus of his "Blue Horizon" recording of 1944.7
Example 4. Bechet's blues formula.
The "New Orleans Hop Scop Blues" is another genuine blues;
from the third chorus on it has a strong boogie-woogie feeling. In
an example of long-range planning that was rare in 1923, Bechet
develops in the final chorus a distinctive idea he has introduced in
the fourth chorus. The idea forms the basis of his final chorus.
Example 5. Motive in Bechet's solo on "Hop Scop Blues" chorus 4, mm. 4-6.
3
In October 1924 Bechet joined Louis Armstrong for a recording session, directed by Clarence Williams, that produced "Texas
Moaner Blues." One is immediately struck by the equality of the
three lead voices: Armstrong on cornet, Bechet on clarinet, and
Charles Irvis on trombone. (Perhaps they are too independent; the
ensemble does not have an ideal coherent sound.) Armstrong's solo
is notable for its rhythmic variety, and because it has some of the
freedom from the beat that characterizes Bechet's early work. It is
not technically polished, however, and Armstrong does not utilize
space with the sublime control of later recordings. Bechet switches
to soprano sax for his urgent solo, with its powerful vibrato, throat
growls, and wailing blue notes.
Bechet would record with Armstrong again on 17 December
1924, but the masterpiece of their collaboration, and one of the
SIDNEY BECHET
141
most glorious three minutes in all of jazz, was made 8 January
1925. The unlikely vehicle was the Clarence Williams song "Cake
Walkin' Babies from Home." It was sung on this date by Williams's
wife, Eva Taylor. While her sprightly voice lights up this pop-style
song, the joy of the performance comes with its last two ensemble
choruses, during which the intensely competive Bechet and
Armstrong push and prod each other in a kind of incandescent
free-for-all.
It is a masterpiece of what we might call the "new" New Orleans
style. After a couple of stunning Bechet breaks, Armstrong suddenly explodes with several repeated notes, higher and louder than
anything he had played before, that sound like a wake-up call to the
jazz age. He seems to be inventing a new, harder kind of swing by
an act of sheer will. Later, Bechet would talk, from his unique
perspective, about what made these sessions so valuable:
We were working together. Each person, he was the other person'smusic;
you could feel that really running through the band, making itself up and
coming out so new and strong (Bechet, 176)
The period of Bechet's greatest fame in the United States came
in the thirties after he began recording under his own name for
Victor and for Blue Note. In 1932 he assembled a band with his
friend, trumpeter Tommy Ladnier, also a native of New Orleans,
and recorded six numbers for Victor.8 Among them were "Maple
Leaf Rag;" an intense, skittish version of "I've found a new baby";
and a sunny rendition of a novelty number, "Lay Your Racket"-all
presided over by Bechet's graceful soprano figures.
After a six-year gap, Bechet again recorded with Ladnier. Their
"Really the Blues," written by the second clarinetist on the date,
Milton "Mezz" Mezzrow, became something of a hit. During 1939
and 1940, Bechet recorded regularly with a quartet that included
the young Kenny Clarke, soon to become a formative drummer of
modern jazz. These titles include some rare Bechet vocals, among
them, the relaxed and informal "Sidney's Blues," which has him
singing about a cat who stood up "and talked like a natural man."
Bechet was not trying to rival Bessie Smith.
He was adventurous in other ways. In 1939, for example, he
recorded, with "Willie the Lion" Smith and "Zutty" Singleton, a
group of rhumbas and Haitian meringues, emphasizing their infectious Carribean dance rhythms.9 Bechet must have enjoyed this
enterprise, because he totally subsumes himself to the music, playing the melodies and harmony parts simply, without elaborate
improvisation. Perhaps he remembered hearing such material in
New Orleans during his youth.
More important was his recording in 1939 of the celebrated
"Summertime" for Blue Note. (He would switch between Victor
and Blue Note until 1943, the year he did his last session for
142
THE BLACK PERSPECTIVE IN MUSIC
Victor.) Played by Bechet on the soprano, "Summertime" begins
with a sweetly restrained statement of the melody. Bechet holds his
vibrato in check until the second chorus, then suddenly growls
menacingly and opens up, rising in pitch, volume, and intensity
until he reaches the striking break with which the piece ends. Just
as potent is the celebrated blues, "Blue Horizon" of 1944, which
Bechet plays-one is tempted to say sings-with slow-motion dignity, bending notes in and out of pitch, moving pensively through
the chalumeau register of the clarinet, and building up to long high
notes of hair-raising intensity.
There were other magnificent recordings in the forties. Among
the Victor recordings of the period are several pieces by Ellington,
including "The Mooche" in a version that Ellington himself was
said to admire, and "Mood Indigo." There is little of a middleeastern tone about the "Egyptian Fantasy" of 1941, especially after
the loosely swinging second theme is introduced, but the piece is
distinctive for its calm atmosphere and Bechet's clarinet breaks.
Other recordings for Victor, made in 1940 and 1941, show that
Bechet did not feel wedded to New Orleans ensemble traditions.
In 1940 Bechet recorded Earl Hines's "Blues in Thirds," an
unorthodox blues waltz, with Hines and Baby Dodds, and in 1941
he made the haunting instrumental version of "Strange Fruit" with
Willie the Lion Smith. For Blue Note, Bechet made in 1946 the
magnificent two-clarinet version of "Weary Way Blues," which Bechet shares with Albert Nicholas. The performances-there
are
two takes-begin with the clarinets playing the minimal theme in
tight harmony; then almost miraculously, they peel off from one
another, and spend the rest of the time weaving in and out of each
other's lines with insinuating grace.
In 1941 Bechet created two curiosities for Victor with his recordings of "Sheik of Araby" and "Blues of Bechet" as a one-man
band. Perhaps, as Mezz Mezzrow believed, Bechet despaired of
finding the ideal accompaniment according to New Orleans traditions, so he decided to provide his own accompaniment, playing as
many as six instruments himself through an early use of overdubbing. Later, he complained that the sides would have been better if
he had been able to rehearse more with the recording engineer.
Mezzrow, a clarinetist himself, blamed the lack of good accompanists on a world insensitive to artistry. He said that these records
were among "the greatest New Orleans jazz performances ever
recorded, with a perfect blend and balance between all six pieces,
and it had to be done by Bechet single-handed."10
Some of the Blue Note sessions in the later forties were marred
a
by trite Dixieland background-Bechet employed several awful
drummers. But the date in 1945 with New Orleans oldtimer Bunk
Johnson (1879-1949) was memorable. Johnson, who preceded
SIDNEY
BECHET
143
Recording Session of the One-Man Band, 1941. All photographs of Bechet courtesy
of the Institute of Jazz Studies, Rutgers University.
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Louis Armstrong into the world of music, claimed to have taught
Armstrong, and was hailed at one time by over-eager sentimentalists as the only authentic kind of jazzman. Johnson and Bechet
sound best when the trumpeter is allowed to play an unassuming
lead on the bouncy "Lord, let me in the lifeboat" and on the blues
"Days beyond recall."
Clearly Bechet preferred Johnson's modest approach in playing
the melody to Armstrong's exercise of power and agile control. He
was unhappy about a reunion record date with Armstrong for
Decca in 1940, of which he wrote "it seemed like he was wanting to
make it a kind of thing where we were supposed to be bucking each
other, competing instead of working together for that real feeling
that would let the music come new and strong" (Bechet, 176).
When Bechet returned to New Orleans on 17 January 1945-for
the first time since 1919-he joined Armstrong for an all-star
concert in the Municipal Auditorium. The segment featuring
Armstrong and Bechet virtually broke down, with Armstrong
complaining that Bechet was playing lead.
Later that year, Bechet tried to form a band with Johnson in
what would be his last attempt to form a New Orleans-style band
with his peers. The attempt floundered when Johnson seemed to
prefer drinking to playing, at least to playing with the difficult
Bechet. Perhaps it was doomed from the beginning. In the first
place, the band could not find bookings in New York City and had
to leave town. During March and April, in 1945, the group played
in Boston's Savoy Cafe.
Before Johnson left, the band made regular radio broadcasts,
including a few interviews.11 The issued performances find
Johnson sounding erratic, ill-at-ease, or simply overwhelmed; he is
easily outplayed by the younger and more virtuosic Bechet, who
does little to accommodate the trumpeter's gentler style. After
weeks of bickering over Bechet's overbearing soprano saxophone,
which oldtimer Johnson disdained, the two jazzmen parted company, and teenager Johnny Windhurst replaced the trumpeter.
Significantly, some of the best music of this period was broadcast on
10 April 1945, with Bechet playing long solos without the assistance
of a trumpeter.
During the war, Bechet played in New York clubs, such as
Jimmy Ryan's and Nick's, and he continued to work steadily
through the postwar years as well, despite the changing styles of
jazz. (Bebop had arrived in New York in 1944.) John Chilton has
written in his definitive biography of Bechet that in 1946 not a
week went by when Bechet did not play a concert. In 1947 Bechet
began teaching: one of his students was soprano saxophonist Bob
Wilber. But he never became a star in the United States as did
Louis Armstrong; stardom came only after he had made his permanent home in France, where, after successful tours in 1949 and
146
THE
BLACK
PERSPECTIVE
IN MUSIC
1950, he settled in 1951.
Bechet enjoyed the adulation he received there; there is, for
example, a street named after Bechet. His wedding in 1951 was
covered by the media as if he were royalty. He recorded prolifically
in the fifties, mostly for the Vogue label (which keeps his records in
print), usually with the young band of Frenchman Claude Luter,
also a clarinetist. Luter turned over the musical direction of the
band to Bechet, treating him as a kind of capricious god, according
to Bob Wilber.12
Although Bechet had not been much of a composer in his
earlier career, in France he made a hit with his throbbing ballad
"Petite Fleur," which he recorded in 1951. The tune's sentimental
performance appealed to the French. No wonder! With his intense
vibrato and broadly emotional approach to melody, Bechet in this
mood was the Edith Piaf of the soprano saxophone. "Petite fleur"
and another Bechet tune, "Les oignons," became pop-jazz standards in France.
Bechet was also interested in another kind of composition. For a
story line by Andre Coffrant, he wrote the ballet, "La Nuit est une
sorciere," which he performed in 1953. Actually, it was a collaboration: Bechet produced the themes, and James Toliver orchestrated
them. The results were mixed, with amateurish string-writing giving way to appealing themes that stand out embarrassedly, as if
surprised to be found in such high-toned company. The production of this ballet in 1955 was a failure. A second "rapsodie-ballet,"
this one entitled "La Colline du delta," fared no better; it was not
recorded until 1964, five years after Bechet's death.
While disappointed by the public and critical reception of these
larger works, Bechet seems not to have let himself become discouraged. He spent much of the fifties recording regularly and performing almost constantly. The results were mixed; the
saxophonist would sometimes devote whole evenings to popular
songs, dixieland chestnuts, and his solos were often set pieces. At
other times, he played with the spontaneity and intensity of his
earlier years.
In 1956 Bechet discovered he was ill with lung cancer. He
continued nontheless to perform, his appearances including the
energetic set with Buck Clayton at the Brussels World Fair in 1958
(recorded for Columbia Records), where he played "Indiana" and
"St. Louis Blues" with the relentless vigor that Ernest Ansermet
had heard in Bechet forty years earlier. His last performance came
on 20 December 1958, where, at the Salle Wagram, he ended a set
with "Maryland, My Maryland," and then defiantly went out to
spend the rest of the night in cabarets. He died on 14 May 1959on his sixty-second birthday-in Paris.
Bechet was enigmatic; a proud, and by most accounts, some-
SIDNEY
BECHET
Bechet's French Period, 1950s.
147
148
THE BLACK PERSPECTIVE IN MUSIC
what fierce man, habitually courtly but occasionally dangerous. He
was involved in a shooting incident in 1929, and subsequently
deported from France. The usually generous bassist Pops Foster
called Bechet "the most selfish, hard to get along with guy I ever
worked with."13But Bob Wilber remembers Bechet the teacher and
his patient, though demanding music lessons, and is still grateful to
Bechet for recording with his band of teenagers in 1947. In his
autobiography, Bechet admitted:
Oh, I can be mean-I know that. But not to the music. That's a thing
you gotta trust. You gotta mean it, and you gotta treat it gentle (Bechet, 5).
One of the great tensions of his life was between his natural
competitiveness and his lifelong desire to assemble a collectively
swinging, New Orleans band. He never quite succeeded; indeed his
commanding style as well as his personality made such success
impossible. But he never gave up! And his autogiography tells us
why. Jazz, or ragtime as he persisted in calling it, had its own needs,
its own way, which was intimately related to the history and future
of black people. Playing it demanded the upmost sensitivity to the
feelings and needs of the otherjazz people, and to the music itself:
When you're really playingragtime,you're feeling it out, you're playing to
the other parts, you're waiting to understandwhat the other man'sdoing,
and then you're going with his feeling, adding what you have of your
feeling. You're not trying to steal anything and you're not trying to fight
anything (Bechet, 141).
Bechet disliked big-band music, which forced men to read parts
rather than improvise. His reasons were logical:
All that closeness of speaking to another instrument,to another man-it's
gone. All that waiting to get in for your own chance, freeing yourself, all
that holding back, not rushing the next man, not bucking him, holding
back for the right time to come out, all that pride and spirit-it's gone
(Bechet, 211).
Egotist that he was in some ways, Bechet saw in jazz a way of
connecting with other men and with the traditions of black
music-making. Jazz, he wrote, started with the emancipation of the
slaves, and to play it well one has to come in contact with all the
music that has come before:
A musicianercould be playingit in London or Tunis, in Paris,in Germany.
But no matter where it's played, you gotta hear it startingway behind you.
There's the drum beatingfrom Congo Squareand there'sthe song starting
in a fieldjust over the trees. The good musicianer,he's playingwithit, and
he's playingafterit. He's finishingsomething. No matterwhat he's playing,
it's the long song that started back there in the South (Bechet, 202).
But for all his seeming conservatism, Bechet insisted that the
music must incorporate change and development. He scorned the
SIDNEY BECHET
149
Dixielanders who wanted to fix the music's style and repertoire.
"You just can't keep the music unless you move with it." Perhaps in
the interest of moving with the music, Bechet recorded in 1957
with the French modernist, pianist Martial Solal. He played the
sophisticated show-tunes, which Solal must have selected, with the
same bursting-at-the-seams exuberance with which he had
menaced Armstrong in the twenties.14 Before he died in 1959,
Bechet wrote that the goal of his music was to reach "straight out to
life." He might have written his own epitaph when he said of Duke
Ellington, "He's a man with a life in him .... he belongs to the
music, and the music belongs to him (Bechet, 143)."
Lewis Porter, Rutgers University
Michael Ullman, Tufts University
NOTES
1. Gary Giddins has recently discovered that Armstrong was born 4 August 1901, and not in 1900 as formerly believed. See the VillageVoice,23
August 1988, 101.
2. The basic Bechet biographies, in addition to his TreatIt Gentle:An
(London: Cassell, 1960; reprint, New York: Da Capo, 1978,
Autobiography
with new preface by Rudi Blesh), areJohn Chilton'sdefinitivework,Sidney
Bechet:TheWizardofJazz (New York: Oxford UniversityPress, 1987) and
Jean-Roland Hippenmeyer's SidneyBechet,ou l'extraordinaire
odysseed'un
musiciendejazz(Geneva,Switzerland:Tribune Editions, 1980). Also worthy
of note is a book of fifteen Bechet compositions,Mon ami Sidney(Paris:
PublicationAlain Pierson, 1982; distributedexclusively by Import Diffusion Music, Paris). Each book includes a selection of photographs.
3. All music examples are in concert key and were transcribedby Lewis
Porter. This recording is availableon Smithsonian R001, a collection of
King Oliver recordings, with scholarly notes by Lawrence Gushee, who
pointed out the original Recker publication.Dodds strays from the published version-he changes the fifth note and some of the rhythms.
4. Ansermet's review, originally published in Revue romande,on 19 October 1919, has been reprinted in Walter Schaap'sEnglish translationin
many places, among them, Ralph de Toledano, ed., FrontiersOfJazz (New
York: Frederick Ungar, 1947; second edition, 1962).
5. Information about Bechet's recorded legacy may be found in the artist
index of the massive Walter Bruyninckx discography SixtyYearsOf RecordedJazz (published by the author in Belgium, with irregular updates,
1978-present).In addition, Bechet'sautobiographyhas a list of recordings
150
THE BLACK PERSPECTIVE IN MUSIC
at the back; there is a much more complete discography by Hans J.
Mauerer (Copenhagen: Karl Emil Knudsen, 1969); and there is also a
helpful annotated listing at the back of Chilton's book. As is always the case
with discographies, none can be truly complete, because new material
continues to come to light every year and to be issued on LPs.
6. All the recordings discussed here that date from 1923 and 1924 may be
found on the Smithsonian R026 release cited above. The rare Bechet
records of the years 1923-1925, which are not discussed here, are collected on SidneyBechetand theBlues Singers, volumes I, II, and III, Fat Cat's
Jazz 013, 014 and 015.
7. This title is included in the SmithsonianCollectionof ClassicJazz and as
well in the set of Bechet's complete Blue Note recordings released by
Mosaic Records, a mail-order enterprise in Stamford, Connecticut.
8. Bechet's Victor recordings from 1932 through 1943, including all those
mentioned in this article, are collected on three French double albums,
RCA PM 42409, 43262, and 45728.
9. These Caribbean pieces were recently issued, complete for the first
time, on Sidney Bechet: Tropical Mood, Swingtime 1014 (Copenhagen).
10. Mess Messrow and Bernard Wolfe, Really the Blues (1946. New York:
Anchor Books, 1972), 279-80.
11. All of the broadcasts and interviews are collected on a remarkable
series of recordings, Sidney Bechet:Jazz Nocturne, Fat Cat's Jazz 001-012.
12. Bob Wilder, "Notes on the Music," Booklet for Giants of Jazz: Sidney
Bechet, Time-Life Records STLJ 5009.
13. Pops Foster:The AutobiographyOf A New OrleansJazzman.As told to Tom
Stoddard (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971), 169.
14. A recent release of his work with Solal is When a SopranoMeetsa Piano,
Inner City 7008.