Sidney Bechet

Sidney Joseph Bechet, born in New Orleans on May 14, 1897, and died on May 14, 1959, was an American jazz saxophonist, clarinetist, and composer who also appeared on Broadway. He came from a middle-class Creole of color family; his father Omar worked as both a shoemaker and a flute player, and all four of his brothers were musicians. His older brother Leonard Victor Bechet was a dentist by profession and a part-time trombonist and bandleader. Bechet taught himself multiple instruments, beginning on the cornet before settling on the clarinet, which he played almost exclusively until around 1919. At six years old he performed with his brother's band at a family birthday party. As a young musician he studied under Joseph "King" Oliver, Bunk Johnson, Freddie Keppard, Lorenzo Tio, "Big Eye" Louis Nelson Delisle, and George Baquet.

Bechet performed in New Orleans ensembles employing the improvisational techniques of the era, including obbligatos with scales and arpeggios and melodic variation. He marched in parades with Freddie Keppard's brass band and the Olympia Orchestra, and performed in John Robichaux's dance orchestra. Between 1911 and 1912 he played with Bunk Johnson in the Eagle Band of New Orleans, and from 1913 to 1914 he worked with King Oliver in the Olympia Band. From 1914 to 1917 he toured as far north as Chicago, frequently alongside Keppard. Working with Louis Armstrong, Bechet was among the first musicians to develop the swing style of jazz, and he helped widen the distinction between jazz and ragtime. Trumpeters reportedly found it difficult to share the stage with him because of his insistence on a dominant sound.

In the spring of 1919 Bechet traveled to New York City and joined Will Marion Cook's Syncopated Orchestra, which subsequently toured Europe and performed at the Royal Philharmonic Hall in London. During that London stay he encountered the straight soprano saxophone and developed a playing style distinct from his clarinet approach. He became the first influential soprano saxophonist, contributing to the instrument's growing prominence in jazz. His saxophone sound was characterized by a broad vibrato similar to that of certain New Orleans clarinetists. In 1919, Swiss classical conductor Ernest Ansermet wrote a tribute to Bechet, one of the earliest articles about a jazz musician authored by a classical music expert, drawing a connection between Bechet's music and that of Bach.

Bechet's first recordings were made in 1923 and 1924 in sessions led by pianist and songwriter Clarence Williams, whose group the Blue Five also included Louis Armstrong. Those sessions produced "Wild Cat Blues," a ragtime-structured piece built on four sixteen-bar themes, and "Kansas City Man Blues," a twelve-bar blues. In 1924 he worked with Duke Ellington for three months and left a significant mark on Ellington's early jazz style; Ellington later called him "the epitome of jazz." Despite his extensive musical career, Bechet never learned to read music.

His Broadway career spanned from 1923 to 1946. He appeared in the musical How Come? and the play Hear That Trumpet. On September 15, 1925, Bechet sailed to Europe with other members of the Revue Nègre, including Josephine Baker, arriving at Cherbourg, France, on September 22. The revue opened at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris on October 2. He subsequently toured Europe with multiple bands, reaching Russia by mid-1926, and in 1928 led his small band at Chez Bricktop in Montmartre, Paris. During his time in France he was imprisoned in Paris for eleven months after an incident in which he accidentally shot a woman while attempting to shoot a musician who had insulted him. Following his release he was deported to New York, arriving shortly after the stock market crash of 1929.

Back in New York, Bechet reconnected with Lorenzo Tio and came to know trumpeter Roy Eldridge. In 1932 he returned to New York City to lead a six-piece band with Tommy Ladnier that performed at the Savoy Ballroom, and he also played in Noble Sissle's orchestra, which toured Germany and Russia. When work in music became scarce, Bechet and Ladnier opened a tailor shop where musicians gathered and played informally in the back. In 1938, "Hold Tight, Hold Tight (Want Some Seafood Mama)" was composed by his guitarist Leonard Ware and two session singers, with claimed contributions from Bechet, and the song became the subject of multiple lawsuits over songwriter royalties. In 1939, Bechet and pianist Willie "The Lion" Smith led a group that recorded early examples of what would later be called Latin jazz, adapting traditional méringue, rhumba, and Haitian songs to the jazz idiom.

On July 28, 1940, Bechet made a guest appearance on the NBC Radio program The Chamber Music Society of Lower Basin Street, performing "Shake It and Break It" and "St. Louis Blues" with Henry Levine's Dixieland band. Levine subsequently brought Bechet into the RCA Victor recording studio on 24th Street in New York City, where Bechet contributed soprano saxophone to Levine's arrangement of "Muskrat Ramble." On April 18, 1941, Bechet recorded "The Sheik of Araby" for Victor in an early overdubbing experiment, playing six instruments himself: clarinet, soprano saxophone, tenor saxophone, piano, bass, and drums. A previously unissued master of that recording appeared on the 1965 RCA Victor LP Bechet of New Orleans. In 1944, 1946, and 1953 he recorded and performed in concert with Chicago jazz pianist and vibraphonist Max Miller; those private recordings have never been released and are documented in John Chilton's biography Sidney Bechet: The Wizard of Jazz.

By the late 1940s Bechet's financial situation had not improved, and his contract with the Chicago-based label Jazz Limited restricted his performance opportunities, including preventing him from appearing at the 1948 Festival of Europe in Nice. In 1951 he moved permanently to France following a performance as a soloist at the Paris Jazz Fair. In 1958 he performed as a soloist and alongside musicians including Buck Clayton and Sarah Vaughan at the United States Pavilion at Expo 58, the World's Fair in Brussels, Belgium. Bechet died on May 14, 1959, his sixty-second birthday. He is recognized as one of the first important soloists in jazz history and recorded several months before Louis Armstrong made his own early recordings.