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Sidney Bechet

Author: Lelia Loban ★2017
Date: 2007-05-02 13:33

While eating our Chicken Melamine for dinner last night, my husband and I watched a 1997 documentary, "Sidney Bechet: Treat It Gentle," on the Ovation cable channel. Since Ovation re-runs things over and over, there's a good chance of a re-airing soon, and the program is well worth watching. Bechet, a clarinet and soprano sax jazz man from New Orleans, is less well known to audiences in his native country than many of his contemporaries, because he spent most of his career in France. In the first half of the 20th century, an African American musician got more respect and a better income over there than over here.

The documentary includes many clips of Bechet playing. His shrill tone competes well with the brasses (including Louis Armstrong's trumpet--those two had mixed feelings about each other...). Bechet influenced other clarinet players in jazz to emphasize projection and move away from the mellower, Big Band sound. From looking at him strain, I get the impression he must have played on brutally hard reed. Sometimes there's too much banshee squeal or too much billy-goat vibrato in Bechet's sound for my personal taste, but it's an exciting sound in its rightful context, and the man could play.

One clip in particular shows him holding a note so long he'd almost have to be circular breathing--except he looks as if he's playing that whole stretched-out, loud, high-pitched wail on one breath. The clips that startle me the most, in the context of Bechet's tremendous breath control, show him smoking cigarettes!

Lelia
http://www.scoreexchange.com/profiles/Lelia_Loban
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