Sidney Bechet – 'Mosaic Select 22'

 

Sidney Bechet (May 14, 1897 – May 14, 1959) was a pioneering American jazz saxophonist, clarinetist, and composer who was one of the first important soloists in jazz history.  Born into a middle-class Creole family in New Orleans, he was largely self-taught and played in top local bands by his teenage years.


Sidney became a master of the soprano saxophone, an instrument he famously adopted while touring Europe in 1919.  He was the first to give the soprano saxophone a prominent place in jazz, using its piercing sound to play lead lines usually reserved for trumpets.

His first sessions in 1923 predated those of Louis Armstrong, making him a primary architect of the jazz-swing solo style.  Sidney was renowned for his distinctive, wide, and operatic vibrato, which gave his playing a powerful and impassioned tone.  Sidney spent much of his later life in France, where he was revered as a cultural icon and known to Jazz fas as "le dieu" (the god).

In 1928 outside a Montmartre nightclub in Paris, Sidney was involved in a gun duel with fellow musician Gilbert "Little Mike" McKendrick, when he claimed Sidney played a wrong note.  Sidney challenged Little Mike" to a duel, declaring, "Sidney Bechet never plays the wrong chord!".  During the duel, a stray bullet from Sidney's gun hit a woman in the street, injuring her, though not fatally.  He was arrested, spent 11 months in jail, and was subsequently deported back to the United States in 1929.  The event highlighted Bechet's legendary temper, uncompromising musicality, and the volatility that defined his life and art.  

In 1947, he returned to France permanently, and died of lung cancer in Paris on his 62nd birthday in 1959.  He is buried in Garches, a suburb of Paris.

Sidney Bechet influenced generations of jazz musicians, including John Coltrane, who recorded the tribute "Blues to Bechet" on his 'Coltrane Plays the Blues' album from 1962.

This three-CD Mosaic Select set showcases a collection of sessions from the 1920s, ’30s, and ’40s, spanning various Columbia Records subsidiaries like Columbia, OKeh, Variety, and Vocalion.  While some tracks hold significant historical importance, others are more obscure and marginal.  Despite this, Sidney shines throughout, effortlessly transitioning from the deepest blues to the most trivial novelty numbers.  His boundless energy, fertile imagination, and genuine warmth as a musician are evident in every track, from his inaugural recording session in 1923 (which serves as the opening track of Select) to a quartet performance from 1947, shortly before he permanently relocated to France.

I first heard Sidney, as a little girl, when my father played his 78 of "Petite Fleur", a record he played often.

For the freeload, what music did your parents play, and did you like it?