Sidney Bechet: life and musical legacy

Sidney Bechet truly led the life of a jazz musician. He was a supporter of Dixieland Jazz who played the clarinet and was the first person to play Jazz on a Soprano Saxophone. Domineering is a word frequently used to express his music. Various fights showed he had a short temper that reflects in his music. His solos were often soaring and passionate, endlessly inventive, direct rather than ornate. Throughout his life, he never had the discipline needed to play in a regular band; he always preferred to be a soloist and worked in many different bands.

Personal Life

Bechet was born on May 14, 1897 in New Orleans, Louisiana to a black Creole family. His father Omar was educated in a private school so he spoke and wrote both Creole Patois and English. His mother Josephine was black, but was referred to as a passeblanc. Bechet grew up in a middle-class family as the youngest of five boys. His father was a maker of fine shoes; Omar also played the flute as a hobby. In fact, music had a central role in the Bechet household, as Sidney's four brothers also played instruments.

His brother, Leonard, played the clarinet and trombone, and it was to the former instrument that eight-year-old Sidney was attracted. Leonard, whose major interest was the trombone, passed along his clarinet to his younger brother. At first, Sidney played in the family musicales - waltzes, quadrilles, and the polite music of the middle class.

By his early teens, he was playing in both children's bands and with older musicians. At the age of 14, much to his parents' chagrin, Bechet began to play music for a living getting home at dawn and talking about getting married as an adult musician would. At last, his parents stipulated that whoever booked the young Bechet had to provide a ride to and directly from the show. He began to travel around as a musician at the age of 16 and went on tour with Clarence Williams throughout the deep South. In 1917, the U.S. Navy closed the famous New Orleans brothel district called Storyville. This act by the government, along with the growing industrialization of big cities across the northern part of the United States and the poor pay down South, caused a dispersal of musicians from the New Orleans area. And Bechet was one of the wanderers.

As a boy, he would watch the street parades in which jazz bands played. Young Sidney was so fascinated by the music, that he often played hooky from school. And as he became more skillful on the clarinet, Sidney played in local jazz bands, such as the Young Olympians. His playing so impressed Bunk Johnson, the legendary cornet player, that Sidney was invited to join Johnson's band, the Eagle Band. Sidney gained a great deal of experience, playing in dance halls, and for picnics, and parties. In addition to his love of traveling, Bechet was also renowned for his love of the opposite sex, a fact that often got him into serious trouble. . Bechet also cemented his reputation as being somewhat hotheaded and difficult. In London, he had a conflict with a prostitute, which landed him in prison and eventually caused him to be expelled from the country on November 3, 1922.

Bechet met a young French girl named Elisabeth and wrote a letter to his brother Leonard informing him that he was going to be married. Unfortunately, before any marriage took place, Bechet had another run-in with the law. According to one account, Bechet was playing in a band with Mike McKendrick and the two started quarrelling about the way a song should be played. McKendrick pulled a gun and Bechet quickly left, but returned and waited for McKendrick outside of another bar. When the banjo player left the bar, Bechet ambushed him and began shooting while McKendrick returned fire. Three people were wounded and both men were sent to prison. Bechet spent 11 months in jail. He was supposed to go back to the United States immediately, but he was in the process of divorcing his first wife Norma and believed it would be awkward to return just then instead he decided to go to Berlin in 1926, but returned to the United States when he got an offer to play with Noble Sissle's band.

In 1933, he suddenly decided to give up music. He opened up a shop, in partnership with Tommy Ladnier for mending and ironing clothes, called the "Southern Tailor Shop." Bechet enjoyed a growing reputation towards the latter part of the thirties and a relatively tranquil personal life traveling with his new wife Marilouise.

In 1951 while touring Scandinavia, Belgium, and North Africa, he met a woman from his past in Algeria.

He somehow ran into his old fiancee Elisabeth and the two rekindled their romance that ended up with Bechet proposing marriage. On August 17, 1951, the couple was married at the Cannes Town Hall in a ceremony, which included doves, a parade, floats, jazz bands, and a twelve-foot model of a saxophone.

Bechet stayed home after the honeymoon for just a short time and then toured England and the United States. He was forced to return to France in December of 1951 because he had developed a stomach ulcer. He was scheduled to have surgery, but the rest improved his condition and the operation was delayed. He restarted recording and playing only a month later in 1952 and continued through 1954.

On April 3, 1954, Bechet got a telegram in Lucerne, Switzerland that he had fathered a son by his mistress Jacqueline Pekaldi back in Paris. Regardless of his health and his son Daniel, Bechet was back out on the road touring through 1955.

In 1959, Bechet's health took a turn for the worse and it was soon apparent that he would have to stop his traveling altogether. He became very sick with cancer and died on May 14, 1959. Bechet's highly colorful autobiography, Treat It Gentle, was published in 1960. In it, Sidney Bechet described his feelings for music: "That's one of the things that make it why a musicianer, if he's real serious about the music, has to have this place inside himself. You've got to say that to yourself...'I've got the music and I don't give a damn for the rest. Rich or poor, the music is there and that's what I'm for.'"

Life as a Musician

Repressive racial laws had begun to blur the traditional distinctions between New Orleans' black and Creole cultures. Musically, this resulted in the cross-fertilization of southern blues and the European-flavored Creole sound. This combination was evolved into jazz. Bechet claimed to have been taught by legendary New Orleans musicians George Baquet, Big Eye Louis Nelson, and Lorenzo Tio. Whoever his teachers were, Bechet took to the coronet and the clarinet.

1903 Without telling his family, he practiced secretly on his brother Leonard's clarinet. During a family party, he played along side Freddie Keppard. His playing was heard by George Baquet who was amazed by his promise and decided there and then to give him free lessons. In 1908 At the age of just 11, he was hired by Bunk Johnson's Eagle Band. By 1910, His mother gave him permission to play in the Storyville clubs. He started playing with King Oliver from1913. 1915 saw him making a tour of Texas in a band led by Clarence Williams. In 1917, he moved from clubs in Perdido Street in New Orleans to Chicago, first with King Oliver and then Freddie Keppard. Later he left Keppard to play in other bands. Bechet was 21 and playing in Chicago when Will Marion Cook, a well- known black composer and bandleader, discovered him and took him to New York. With the band of Will Marion Cook, he achieved great personal success in England, earning the admiration, among others, of Ernest Ansermet, a noted conductor from Switzerland, was in London to conduct the orchestra of the Ballet Russe. James Lincoln Collier reported in his book, The Making of Jazz: A Comprehensive History that after seeing Bechet, Ansermat said:

"there is in the Southern Syncopated Orchestra an extraordinary clarinet virtuoso who is, so it seems, the first of his race to have composed perfectly formed blues on the clarinet ... I wish to set down the name of this artist of genius, as for myself, I shall never forget it -- it is Sidney Bechet."

When the band broke up, he decided to stay in London with some other members of the band. Bechet stayed in Europe for two years and played in one of the splinter groups from Cook's orchestra led by Benny Payton. The band mainly played in London, Paris, and Brussels.

During this time, there was a significant development for Bechet as an individual performer and for jazz music in general. Bechet discovered the soprano saxophone. At that time, the saxophone was considered more of a novelty instrument and was not taken seriously by talented musicians. Despite this shortcoming, or perhaps because other people did not like to play it, he mastered the straight saxophone quickly and became the instrument's first great player. Though he did continue to play the clarinet, Bechet became famous more or less entirely as a saxophone player. He earned notoriety as both an excellent soloist and a pioneer on the saxophone. Also, while in London he brought a Soprano Saxophone, a more domineering instrument than the clarinet.

1921 He returned to the United States and got a job with the musical show "How Come?," in which the unknown Bessie Smith made her debut. In 1923, Bechet made his first recordings with the noted composer and arranger Clarence Williams. He appeared as part of the Clarence Williams Blue Five and overshadowed all the other members of the band, including a young Louis Armstrong. He was a sought-after session man and played with Bessie Smith (which led to a brief affair).

During 1924-25, he worked with Mamie Smith, James P. Johnson and Duke Ellington's Washingtonians. Bechet even joined Duke Ellington's band for a short time. Though his tenure with Ellington's group was restricted because of his inability to get along with the other musicians, Bechet had a great influence on the band. Bechet's lack of discipline and problems being on time got him into trouble with Ellington. One time he brought his German Shepard with him to a practice. Ellington was able to overlook much of Bechet's personal eccentricities because of his unmatched brilliance on the saxophone, but one time when he disappeared for three days and then told Ellington he was in a cab, his time as a member of Ellington's band was over. Bechet at this time in his life in the early twenties was considered the best horn player in jazz.

Soon after, he also found time to manage a nightclub in Harlem the "Club Basha," but got tired of that. He also made his debut in Paris in a band led by Claude Hopkins, taking part in a show featuring Josephine Baker. When the show finally ended, in Berlin, Bechet once more indulged his love of traveling by taking part in a tour with Benny Peyton. He ended up in Russia there in Moscow he met Tommy Ladnier, who was also on tour. After this, he toured all over Europe before finally going back to Harlem. . By September of 1925, Bechet joined Will Marion Cook's latest project, 'The Black Review'. Orchestra journeyed to Paris, but the company did not last and Bechet formed a splinter group spending two years touring Brussels, Russia, Greece, Turkey, Spain, Egypt, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Italy. In 1928 he returned to Paris and joined Noble Sissle's Orchestra as a soloist and also found time to write his first composition, "The Negro Rhapsody."

Between 1928 and 1931, Bechet continued to move back and forth between Europe and the United States. He went to Berlin and (in secret) to Paris with Noble Sissle's band, then to New York and then back to Berlin. He also made a brief appearance with Duke Ellington's orchestra.

Bechet played in Sissle's orchestra throughout the thirties, even going back to France for a short time. During the thirties Bechet performed and recorded with many noted jazz players including Louis Armstrong, Tommy Ladnier, and Eddie Condon. But the 1930s were not good times for small jazz bands because of the dominance of big bands and the changing musical tastes during the Depression, so Bechet temporarily retired. He rejoined Sissle in 1934, traveled, and recorded with his band until 1938. He left Sissle's band without a new gig, but quickly moved back to New York to play regularly at Nick's Tavern until May of 1940.

Bechet wanted to record George Gershwin's "Summertime," but had little success with the major labels. Finally, a small jazz label called Blue Note agreed to record Bechet's version of the classic song. The record became a jazz hit and helped propel Bechet back into the limelight. 1940 was an extremely important year. He recorded four masterpieces with Louis Armstrong, including "Perdido Street Blues." He also made some excellent recordings with a group known as the "Bechet-Spanier Big Four." He also recorded again with the "New Orleans Feetwarmers," reformed as a studio band. One result was the magnificent "Blues In Thirds" with Bechet on Clarinet and Earl Hines on Piano.

During 1944-48 Bechet used many jazz soloists in his recording sessions: Sidney De Paris, Vic Dickson, Art Hodes, Pops Foster, Max Kaminsky, Albert Nicholas and others. He recorded a series of numbers with Mezz Mezzrow.

In 1946, he had an idea of setting up a music school in Brooklyn; In 1947, he was a guest on several editions of Rudy Blesh's radio show "This Is Jazz." In 1948, he played at the Jazz LTD in Chicago.

He took part in the Paris Jazz Festival in 1949, organized by Charles Delauney, with triumphant success. The French finally forgot about the sad episode of 1929. also recorded with Jelly Roll Morton.