Sidney Joseph Bechet (May 14, 1897 – May 14, 1959) was an American jazz saxophonist, clarinetist, and composer. He was one of the first important soloists in jazz, first recording in July 1923, a few months after trumpeter Louis Armstrong's recording debut with King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band. His erratic temper hampered his music career, and not until the late 1940s did he earn wide acclaim. Bechet spent much of his later life in France.
Bechet was born in New Orleans in 1897 to a middle-class Creole of color family. Bechet's father Omar was both a shoemaker and a flute player, and all four of his brothers were musicians as well.
His older brother, Leonard Victor Bechet, was a full-time dentist and a part-time trombonist and bandleader. Bechet learned and mastered several musical instruments that were kept around the house (he began on the cornet), mostly by teaching himself; he decided to specialize in the clarinet (which he played almost exclusively until about 1919).
At the age of six, he started performing with his brother's band at a family birthday party, debuting his talents to acclaim. Later in his youth, Bechet studied with Joseph "King" Oliver, Bunk Johnson, Freddie Keppard, Lorenzo Tio, "Big Eye" Louis Nelson Delisle, and George Baquet.
Bechet played in many New Orleans ensembles using the improvisational techniques of the time (obbligatos with scales and arpeggios and varying the melody).
While working with Louis Armstrong, Bechet was one of the first musicians to develop the loose, fluid "swinging" rhythmic style that set jazz apart from ragtime. Bechet liked to have his sound dominate in a performance, and trumpeters reportedly found it difficult to play alongside him.
He performed in parades with Freddie Keppard's brass band, the Olympia Orchestra, and in John Robichaux's dance orchestra. From 1911 to 1912, he performed with Bunk Johnson in the Eagle Band of New Orleans and in 1913–14 with King Oliver in the Olympia Band. From 1914 to 1917, he was touring and traveling, going as far north as Chicago and frequently performing with Freddie Keppard.
In the spring of 1919, he traveled to New York City and joined Will Marion Cook's Syncopated Orchestra. Soon after, the orchestra traveled to Europe, where they performed at the Royal Philharmonic Hall in London. The group was warmly received, and Bechet was especially popular.
While in London, he discovered the straight soprano saxophone and developed a style unlike his clarinet tone. Bechet was the first influential soprano saxophonist, leading to its rising popularity as a jazz instrument.
His saxophone sound could be described as emotional, reckless, and all-encompassing. He often used a broad vibrato, similar to some New Orleans clarinetists at the time. In 1919, a Swiss classical music conductor, Ernest Ansermet, wrote a tribute to Bechet. It was one of the earliest (if not the first) articles about a jazz musician written by an expert in the field of classical music, linking Bechet's music with that of Bach.
Bechet's first recordings, "Wild Cat Blues" and "Kansas City Man Blues", were made on July 30, 1923, with pianist Clarence Williams's "Blue Five"; the former is in a ragtime style with four 16-bar themes, and the latter is a 12-bar blues. Louis Armstrong joined the Blue Five the following year, including "Texas Moaner Blues". Armstrong and Bechet recorded together again in January 1925, on "Cake Walkin' Babies from Home", released under the Red Onion Jazz Babies billing. In 1924, Bechet worked with Duke Ellington for three months and made a significant impact on Ellington's early jazz style.
Duke Ellington called him "the epitome of jazz". However, he never learned how to read music in his lifetime of being a musician.
On September 15, 1925, Bechet and other members of the Revue Nègre, including Josephine Baker, sailed to Europe, arriving at Cherbourg, France, on September 22. The revue opened at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris on October 2. The show was an example of negrophilia in France at the time. He toured Europe with multiple bands, reaching as far as Russia in mid-1926. In 1928, he led his small band at Chez Bricktop (run by the popular Ada "Bricktop" Smith) in Montmartre, Paris.
In France, Bechet found that he was appreciated by a wider audience and had more general freedom than he did in the United States.
In 1928, Bechet was imprisoned in Paris for eleven months. In his autobiography, he wrote that he accidentally shot a woman when he was trying to shoot a musician who had insulted him. He had challenged the man to duel and said, "Sidney Bechet never plays the wrong chord." After his release, he was deported to the United States. He joined with Lorenzo Tio and also came to know trumpeter Roy Eldridge.
In 1932, Bechet returned to New York City to lead a band with Tommy Ladnier. The band, comprising six members, performed at the Savoy Ballroom. He played in Noble Sissle's orchestra, which toured in Germany and Russia.
In 1938, "Hold Tight, Hold Tight (Want Some Seafood Mama)", commonly known as "Hold Tight", was composed by Bechet's guitarist Leonard Ware and two session singers with claimed contributions from Bechet himself. The song became known for its suggestive lyrics and then for a series of lawsuits over songwriter royalties.
In 1939, Bechet and the pianist Willie "The Lion" Smith led a group that recorded several early versions of what was later 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 show The Chamber Music Society of Lower Basin Street, playing two of his showpieces ("Shake It and Break It" and "St. Louis Blues") with Henry Levine's Dixieland band. Levine invited Bechet into the RCA Victor recording studio (on 24th Street in New York City), where Bechet lent his soprano sax to Levine's traditional arrangement of "Muskrat Ramble". On April 18, 1941, as an early experiment in overdubbing at Victor, Bechet recorded a version of the pop song "The Sheik of Araby", playing six different instruments: clarinet, soprano saxophone, tenor saxophone, piano, bass, and drums. A hitherto unissued master of this recording was included in the 1965 LP Bechet of New Orleans, issued by RCA Victor as LPV-510. In the liner notes, George Hoeffer quoted Bechet: