Sidney Bechet

Did You Know?

• In 1919, Swiss classical conductor Ernest Ansermet wrote a tribute to Bechet, one of the earliest articles about a jazz musician by a classical music expert, linking Bechet's music with that of Bach.
• On April 18, 1941, Bechet recorded 'The Sheik of Araby' playing six different instruments: clarinet, soprano saxophone, tenor saxophone, piano, bass, and drums, as an early experiment in overdubbing.
• Bechet never learned how to read music in his lifetime of being a musician.
• Some existentialists in France took to calling him 'le dieu' ('the god').

Biography

Sidney Bechet came into the world in New Orleans in 1897, born into a middle-class Creole of color household. His father, Omar, worked as a shoemaker and also played the flute, while all four of Bechet’s brothers were musicians. One older brother, Leonard Victor Bechet, made his living as a full-time dentist but also played trombone part-time and led a band. Bechet taught himself most of the instruments lying around the house, starting with the cornet, before settling on the clarinet as his main focus—an instrument he stuck with almost entirely until 1919.

When he was just six years old, he made his debut at a family birthday party, playing with his brother’s band and earning applause. As a young man, he studied under several notable New Orleans players, including Joseph “King” Oliver, Bunk Johnson, Freddie Keppard, Lorenzo Tio, “Big Eye” Louis Nelson Delisle, and George Baquet. He performed with various New Orleans groups, using the improvisational tricks of the day—things like obbligatos built on scales and arpeggios, and twisting the melody.

Working alongside Louis Armstrong, Bechet helped create the loose, fluid “swinging” rhythm that separated jazz from ragtime. He had a strong desire to make his sound stand out, and trumpeters often found it tough to play with him because of it. He marched in parades with Freddie Keppard’s brass band, the Olympia Orchestra, and John Robichaux’s dance orchestra. Between 1911 and 1912, he played with Bunk Johnson in the Eagle Band, and from 1913 to 1914 with King Oliver in the Olympia Band. From 1914 to 1917, he toured widely, traveling as far north as Chicago and frequently sharing the stage with Freddie Keppard.

Personal life

Sidney Bechet was a Catholic. His abrasive personality was often likened to Coleman Hawkins's; both men were deeply convinced of their own significance in jazz as the genre's popularity waned, and they showed little tolerance for younger, less seasoned musicians. In 1938, Bechet briefly left music to run a tailor shop in New York. He married three times: Norma Hale (1918–1929), Marie-Louise Crawford (1934–1942), and Elizabeth Ziegler (1951 until his death).