Bechet and His Long Song

Professor J.
Southern (Managing Editor-Publisher)
Sidney Bechet and His Long Song

Author(s): Lewis Porter and Michael Ullman
Source: The Black Perspective in Music, Vol. 16, No. 2 (Autumn, 1988), pp. 135-150
Published by: Professor J. Southern (Managing Editor-Publisher)
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1214805
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Sidney Bechet and His Long Song*
BY LEWIS PORTER AND MICHAEL ULLMAN
IN 1923, clarinetist and soprano-saxophonist Sidn

(1897-1959) was arguably the greatest soloist in jazz,
soon afterwards he was overtaken by his lifelong ri
Armstrong (1901-1971).1 In the early twenties Bechet p
a rhythmic drive and technical skill then unparallel
improvised more freely than most other jazz musicians
jazz players tended to think of the solo as a set piece, a
composition to be worked on and polished in private
played in roughly the same way at each performance. B
Armstrong, however, improvised their solos to the ful
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 contem-
poraries, 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 Be-
chet 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 rela
tively 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 material will appear in a forthcoming history of jazz by the

present authors, to be published by Prentice-Hall, Inc. Some of its materia
previously appeared in a liner essay written by Lewis Porter for the LP
reissue Smithsonian R026, Louis Armstrong and Sidney Bechet in New York.
I
136 THE BLACK PERSPECTIVE IN MUSIC
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SIDNEY BECHET 137
young Bechet was blowing softly into his instrumen

From that time on, however, he was rarely willing
background. In the New Orleans ensembles that n
and Armstrong, the cornetist was constrained to pa
melody and, often at the same time, selecting app
mental notes. The trombonist created a slower co
based on chord progressions, while the clarinetist, t
cerned with the written melody, played florid ob
scales and arpeggios. But Bechet was unwilling to ac
tional supportive role of the clarinet.
The New Orleans clarinetists tended to play with
rich, packed, woody sound, and Bechet would ret
throughout his lifetime. Sometimes the sound was a
sacrifice of some fluency, but the New Orleans clar
speed and grace. The most famous clarinet solo in th
the chorus on "High Society," actually is a picco
Robert Recker arrangement. It was first adapted fo
Alphonse Picou, and then memorized by generations
leans clarinetists. "High Society" was first record
1923 by the King Oliver band with Johnny Dodds o
thirty-two bar, A B A C form, it allows ample room
display his improvisational skills. The first half o
chorus is transcribed in Example 1.3
What one hears in Sidney Bechet's early work
extension of this New Orleans clarinet tradition. As
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."
Will Marion Cook was on tour in 1919 with his New York
Syncopated Orchestra, when he heard Bechet play during
orchestra's stop at Chicago in February and persuaded t
clarinetist to join the orchestra as a soloist. Cook had a vers
organization that used jazz as only one of its styles-he audition
Bechet by having him play a cadenza from the Poet and Pea
Overture. Cook would feature Bechet playing the blues in p
grams that included everything from spiritual arrangements, su
as "Joshua fit the battle of Jericho," to transcriptions of Brahm
Hungarian Dances.
Finally, in the spring of 1919, Bechet arrived in New Yo
where he joined Cook and soon after sailed to England with
orchestra. They arrived at London in June 1919, and immediat
began an engagement at the Royal Philharmonic Hall. Coo
group was warmly received by the critics and the public,
Bechet especially attracted wide attention. His performan
brought forth a prescient review from the Swiss conductor, Ern
Ansermet, who, after hearing Bechet play his featured "Cha
teristic Blues," wrote:
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've heard two of them which he had elabo-
rated 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
pitiless ending like that of Bach's second Brandenburg Concerto. I wish to
set down the name of this artist of 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

fast numbers of hanging a few daringly lazy notes ta
the rhythm. Just when he seemed ready to stumble,
himself up with several rapidly executed staccato fi
turned him squarely to the beat.
Bechet liked to talk about music as if it had a will o
job of a musician was to find out where the music wa
in his own playing he typically seemed to drive the
him, especially in his last choruses. His performanc
velous "Maple Leaf Rag" of 1932 ends with sever
roof-raising fervor that seemed to surprise all the
Bechet himself. He knew how to build a performanc
chorus, so that he always made a splash at the e
melodies, including some that seem corny today; by
Vie en Rose," "Dear Old Southland," "Song of Son
"Swanee River" were a regular part of his repertoire
Bechet returned to New York from Europe late in
July 1923, he went into the studios to make his ear
recordings.6 (An earlier session with Bessie Smith h
The sessions were led by Clarence Williams (c1893-19
and songwriter, who was more important in the mu
music publisher and record producer. Bechet domina
Cat Blues" and "Kansas City Man Blues," overshadow
reticent cornetist, Thomas Morris. "Wild Cat Blues"
neither in form nor mood. Following in the multi-th
tradition, it has four themes, each sixteen bars long
in the following order: (four-bar intro) A B A C
based on D). Bechet's handling of the breaks in th
sections is particularly revealing. For the most pa
arpeggiates chords, albeit with great precision. B
break in the second D section is more rhythmically cr
long, initial high note and syncopated accent on the f
anticipates Armstrong's confident breaks of a few y
Example 2. Bechet's break from "Wild Cat Blues."
/=intense vibrato
Bechet states the theme of the "Kansas City Man Blu

genuine, twelve-bar blues, in vibrant long tones and sharp yip
plays his soprano saxophone with such vigor that it is clear fro
beginning he will not be bound by the restraints of the
accompanying role of the clarinetist. Morris is overwhelm
Bechet's wonderfully vocalistic approach to blues-vocalistic
cially in its rhythmic freedom. In measure 4 of the first and
140
THE BLACK PERSPECTIVE IN MUSIC
choruses, Bechet plays a characteristic descending fo

will reappear in later solos.
Example 3. Bechet's formula from "Kansas City Man Blues."
= 88 Growl
/!*i ' 2r V / +? jj
Bechet's blues solos are full of heavy blues inflecti
often ends a chorus, as he does on "New Orleans H
(recorded in October 1923), with a major third, w
resolve the tension created by the preceding "blue
strategy is used also on later records; it appears twice
during the first chorus of his "Blue Horizon" record
Example 4. Bechet's blues formula.
The "New Orleans Hop Scop Blues" is another ge

from the third chorus on it has a strong boogie-woo
an example of long-range planning that was rare in
develops in the final chorus a distinctive idea he has
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.
In Octo
ing ses
Moaner
three l
Charles
ensemb
is notab
freedom
not tec
space w
to sopr
growls,
Bechet
1924, b
SIDNEY BECHET 141
most glorious three minutes in all of jazz, was m

1925. The unlikely vehicle was the Clarence Willi
Walkin' Babies from Home." It was sung on this dat
wife, Eva Taylor. While her sprightly voice lights u
song, the joy of the performance comes with its las
choruses, during which the intensely competiv
Armstrong push and prod each other in a kind o
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 sud-
denly 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's music;
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 infec-
tious Carribean dance rhythms.9 Bechet must have enjoyed this
enterprise, because he totally subsumes himself to the music, play-
ing 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
Victor.) Played by Bechet on the soprano, "Sum

with a sweetly restrained statement of the melody
vibrato in check until the second chorus, then
menacingly and opens up, rising in pitch, volume,
until he reaches the striking break with which the
as potent is the celebrated blues, "Blue Horizon"
Bechet plays-one is tempted to say sings-with s
nity, bending notes in and out of pitch, moving pe
the chalumeau register of the clarinet, and buildin
notes of hair-raising intensity.
There were other magnificent recordings in the
the Victor recordings of the period are several piec
including "The Mooche" in a version that Elling
said to admire, and "Mood Indigo." There is litt
eastern tone about the "Egyptian Fantasy" of 1941
the loosely swinging second theme is introduced,
distinctive for its calm atmosphere and Bechet's c
Other recordings for Victor, made in 1940 and
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 Be-
chet 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 re-
cordings 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 tradi-
tions, so he decided to provide his own accompaniment, playing as
many as six instruments himself through an early use of overdub-
bing. 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 accom-
panists 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
by a 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 photograp

of the Institute of Jazz Studies, Rutgers University.
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SIDNEY BECHET 145
Louis Armstrong into the world of music, claim

Armstrong, and was hailed at one time by ove
talists as the only authentic kind of jazzman. Jo
sound best when the trumpeter is allowed to pla
lead on the bouncy "Lord, let me in the lifeboat
"Days beyond recall."
Clearly Bechet preferred Johnson's modest ap
the melody to Armstrong's exercise of power an
was unhappy about a reunion record date wit
Decca in 1940, of which he wrote "it seemed like
make it a kind of thing where we were supposed
other, competing instead of working together fo
that would let the music come new and stro
When Bechet returned to New Orleans on 17
the first time since 1919-he joined Armstro
concert in the Municipal Auditorium. The se
Armstrong and Bechet virtually broke down,
complaining that Bechet was playing lead.
Later that year, Bechet tried to form a band w
what would be his last attempt to form a New O
with his peers. The attempt floundered when Jo
prefer drinking to playing, at least to playing w
Bechet. Perhaps it was doomed from the begin
place, the band could not find bookings in New
to leave town. During March and April, in 1945,
in Boston's Savoy Cafe.
Before Johnson left, the band made regular r
including a few interviews.11 The issued per
Johnson sounding erratic, ill-at-ease, or simply o
easily outplayed by the younger and more virtu
does little to accommodate the trumpeter's ge
weeks of bickering over Bechet's overbearing sop
which oldtimer Johnson disdained, the two jazzm
pany, and teenager Johnny Windhurst replace
Significantly, some of the best music of this peri
10 April 1945, with Bechet playing long solos wit
of a trumpeter.
During the war, Bechet played in New Yor
Jimmy Ryan's and Nick's, and he continued
through the postwar years as well, despite the c
jazz. (Bebop had arrived in New York in 1944.)
written in his definitive biography of Bechet
week went by when Bechet did not play a concer
began teaching: one of his students was sopran
Wilber. But he never became a star in the United States as did
Louis Armstrong; stardom came only after he had made his per-
manent home in France, where, after successful tours in 1949 and
1950, he settled in 1951.

Bechet enjoyed the adulation he received the
example, a street named after Bechet. His wed
covered by the media as if he were royalty. He rec
in the fifties, mostly for the Vogue label (which k
print), usually with the young band of Frenchma
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 stan-
dards in France.
Bechet was also interested in another kind of composition. For
story line by Andre Coffrant, he wrote the ballet, "La Nuit est u
sorciere," which he performed in 1953. Actually, it was a collabor
tion: Bechet produced the themes, and James Toliver orchestrat
them. The results were mixed, with amateurish string-writing g
ing way to appealing themes that stand out embarrassedly, a
surprised to be found in such high-toned company. The prod
tion of this ballet in 1955 was a failure. A second "rapsodie-balle
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 thes
larger works, Bechet seems not to have let himself become discou
aged. He spent much of the fifties recording regularly and p
forming almost constantly. The results were mixed; th
saxophonist would sometimes devote whole evenings to popu
songs, dixieland chestnuts, and his solos were often set pieces. A
other times, he played with the spontaneity and intensity of hi
earlier years.
In 1956 Bechet discovered he was ill with lung cancer. H
continued nontheless to perform, his appearances including t
energetic set with Buck Clayton at the Brussels World Fair in 1
(recorded for Columbia Records), where he played "Indiana" a
"St. Louis Blues" with the relentless vigor that Ernest Anserm
had heard in Bechet forty years earlier. His last performance ca
on 20 December 1958, where, at the Salle Wagram, he ended a se
with "Maryland, My Maryland," and then defiantly went out
spend the rest of the night in cabarets. He died on 14 May 1959
on his sixty-second birthday-in Paris.
Bechet was enigmatic; a proud, and by most accounts, som
SIDNEY BECHET 147
Bechet's French Period, 1950s.
what fierce man, habitually courtly but occasionally

was involved in a shooting incident in 1929, and
deported from France. The usually generous bassi
called Bechet "the most selfish, hard to get along w
worked with."13 But Bob Wilber remembers Bechet th
his patient, though demanding music lessons, and is
Bechet for recording with his band of teenagers
autobiography, Bechet admitted:
Oh, I can be mean-I know that. But not to the music. T
you gotta trust. You gotta mean it, and you gotta treat it gen
One of the great tensions of his life was betwe

competitiveness and his lifelong desire to assembl
swinging, New Orleans band. He never quite succeed
commanding style as well as his personality mad
impossible. But he never gave up! And his autogiogr
why. Jazz, or ragtime as he persisted in calling it, had
its own way, which was intimately related to the hist
of black people. Playing it demanded the upmost sen
feelings and needs of the otherjazz people, and to the
When you're really playing ragtime, you're feeling it out,
the other parts, you're waiting to understand what the ot
and then you're going with his feeling, adding what you
feeling. You're not trying to steal anything and you're not
anything (Bechet, 141).
Bechet disliked big-band music, which forced men

rather than improvise. His reasons were logical:
All that closeness of speaking to another instrument, to an
gone. All that waiting to get in for your own chance, free
that holding back, not rushing the next man, not buckin
back for the right time to come out, all that pride and s
(Bechet, 211).
Egotist that he was in some ways, Bechet saw in j

connecting with other men and with the tradit
music-making. Jazz, he wrote, started with the eman
slaves, and to play it well one has to come in contact
music that has come before:
A musicianer could be playing it in London or Tunis, in Paris, in Germany.

But no matter where it's played, you gotta hear it starting way behind you.
There's the drum beating from Congo Square and there's the song starting
in a field just over the trees. The good musicianer, he's playing with it, and
he's playing after it. He's finishing something. No matter what 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

"You just can't keep the music unless you move with
the interest of moving with the music, Bechet r
with the French modernist, pianist Martial Solal
sophisticated show-tunes, which Solal must have se
same bursting-at-the-seams exuberance with
menaced Armstrong in the twenties.14 Before h
Bechet wrote that the goal of his music was to reach
life." He might have written his own epitaph when
Ellington, "He's a man with a life in him .... he
music, and the music belongs to him (Bechet, 14
Lewis Porter, Rutgers University

Michael Ullman, Tufts University
NOTES
1. Gary Giddins has recently discovered that Armstrong was

gust 1901, and not in 1900 as formerly believed. See the Villag
August 1988, 101.
2. The basic Bechet biographies, in addition to his Treat It
Autobiography (London: Cassell, 1960; reprint, New York: Da C
with new preface by Rudi Blesh), are John Chilton's definitive w
Bechet: The Wizard of Jazz (New York: Oxford University Press
Jean-Roland Hippenmeyer's Sidney Bechet, ou l'extraordinaire o
musicien dejazz (Geneva, Switzerland: Tribune Editions, 1980). A
of note is a book of fifteen Bechet compositions, Mon ami Sid
Publication Alain Pierson, 1982; distributed exclusively by Imp
sion Music, Paris). Each book includes a selection of photograp
3. All music examples are in concert key and were transcribed
Porter. This recording is available on Smithsonian R001, a coll
King Oliver recordings, with scholarly notes by Lawrence Gus
pointed out the original Recker publication. Dodds strays from
lished version-he changes the fifth note and some of the rhy
4. Ansermet's review, originally published in Revue romande,
tober 1919, has been reprinted in Walter Schaap's English tran
many places, among them, Ralph de Toledano, ed., Frontiers Of
York: Frederick Ungar, 1947; second edition, 1962).
5. Information about Bechet's recorded legacy may be found i
index of the massive Walter Bruyninckx discography Sixty Ye
corded Jazz (published by the author in Belgium, with irregul
1978-present). In addition, Bechet's autobiography has a list of
at the back; there is a much more complete discogr

Mauerer (Copenhagen: Karl Emil Knudsen, 1969); a
helpful annotated listing at the back of Chilton's book. A
with discographies, none can be truly complete, bec
continues to come to light every year and to be issued
6. All the recordings discussed here that date from 1923
found on the Smithsonian R026 release cited above. The rare Bechet
records of the years 1923-1925, which are not discussed here, are col
lected on Sidney Bechet and the Blues Singers, volumes I, II, and III, Fat Cat'
Jazz 013, 014 and 015.
7. This title is included in the Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz 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 Autobiography Of 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 Soprano Meets a Piano,
Inner City 7008.

Bechet and His Long Song

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Bechet and His Long Song

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Professor J.

Southern (Managing Editor-Publisher)

Sidney Bechet and His Long Song

Professor J. Southern (Managing Editor-Publisher) is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize,

IN 1923, clarinetist and soprano-saxophonist Sidn

* Much of this material will appear in a forthcoming history of jazz by the

young Bechet was blowing softly into his instrumen

There is in the Southern Syncopated Orchestra an extraordinary clarinet

grace note an octave below. As early as 1923, he had

Bechet states the theme of the "Kansas City Man Blu

choruses, Bechet plays a characteristic descending fo

The "New Orleans Hop Scop Blues" is another ge

most glorious three minutes in all of jazz, was m

The period of Bechet's greatest fame in the United States came

Victor.) Played by Bechet on the soprano, "Sum

Recording Session of the One-Man Band, 1941. All photograp

i:iL-;;:ditiS; ..0 0 0:;:;: .

0~~~~~~~~~~a~ fEr _ E '

- ii: - i:- ::i:i i: : .: :: - . i: - H

Louis Armstrong into the world of music, claim

1950, he settled in 1951.

Bechet's French Period, 1950s.

what fierce man, habitually courtly but occasionally

One of the great tensions of his life was betwe

Bechet disliked big-band music, which forced men

Egotist that he was in some ways, Bechet saw in j

A musicianer could be playing it in London or Tunis, in Paris, in Germany.

Dixielanders who wanted to fix the music's style

Lewis Porter, Rutgers University

1. Gary Giddins has recently discovered that Armstrong was

at the back; there is a much more complete discogr

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