Sidney Bechet
“Bechet — apart from the strength and inspiration of his family background in New Orleans — found most of his early creative inspiration from living…”
Sidney Bechet’s superb 1960 autobiography Treat it Gentle, recorded on tape by Joan Williams and Desmond Flower, gives a very personal insight into the life of a jazz musician of the first half of the 20th century.
Bechet was, without question, a clear true voice of 20th century jazz, and music as a whole, and like Picasso his contribution is vital in our understanding of the 20th century.
In other words Bechet’s sound on the clarinet and the soprano sax is always stripped down, yet hallmarked by his incredible vibrato, which leaves little or no trace of period, which means that, like Arthur Miller’s dialogue, Bechet’s sound is always modern (and I don’t mean in the ‘Modern Jazz’ sense, but in the sense of the wider modernist movement), always striving for something close to perfection.
Bechet — apart from the strength and inspiration of his family background in New Orleans — found most of his early creative inspiration from living and working in Europe soon after the First World War. This is how he describes the effect the early syncopated music had when he arrived in England as part of Will Marion Cook’s Southern Syncopated Orchestra 101 years ago:
