S02E03 – Sidney Bechet, New Orleans, 1897

Era come se quel ragazzo fosse diventato uomo tutto in una notte diventando un grande appassionato di vita notturna e di tutto ciò che ne consegue.

New Orleans, 1897

Well, back then it was tough. Mulatto was a very vague concept; it depended on who was looking at you. Then there was this fixation on ancestors. Where did your grandparents come from? Louisiana? Okay. And your great-great-grandfather? Louisiana. Maybe you were sixth or infinite generation Louisianan but still you had to dig and dig to find the phallus. And then, digging and digging we were all the same, all migrants, all humans.

Okay, it was a big mess.

But being born into a Creole family certainly had its pros. Or at least for Sidney. Yes, because everyone in the family played. The father, who was a shoemaker, played the flute and the older brother, who was a dentist, spent all his time between pulling teeth playing the trombone for the customers of the barbershop whose mouths he occasionally massacred. Yes, because dentistry was not yet a science and the dentist was not a doctor and when you had a toothache you went to the barbershop where someone in cold blood would pull out your painful tooth. It was with the money earned in that salon that Leonard gave his little brother Sidney a clarinet.

In the family everyone played, it was practically a family band. Omar, the father, was a band leader of a band of his peers and all three of his older children played an instrument. Sidney was still too young, but he was a real pain in the ass. He would go around the house imitating with his hands and mouth the sound of his brothers’ instruments.

It was the end of Sidney’s school career. He was completely lost in that clarinet; he wanted to become good enough to be part of the family’s musical activities. The game and friends were replaced by the clarinet. In the morning, he would leave for school but two streets before his destination he would turn into the park and sit on the bench furthest from the street with the clarinet. He was basically skipping school to play. He was progressing very quickly at an astonishing pace. His brothers as well as all the musicians who frequented that house were always happy to give him some advice, to teach him some themes of some of the pieces that were played around in the seediest clubs of New Orleans or under the entrance porches of the one-story houses in the French Quarter.

Catching all that music and making it his own was easy for Sidney, a little ten-year-old sponge who absorbed every note he could hear. But you know, creativity also requires awareness and a little organization.

No, no, no, what is that? Don’t bark like a dog and you don’t even have to meow like a damn cat. Boy, if you come here to steal my time you must learn discipline!

Sidney’s fiery determination defied authority and discouraged his parents who wanted him to learn discipline and music theory if he didn’t want to learn a respectable trade for a Creole, like bricklaying or carpentry. They sent him to the best, the best.

Among the numerous legendary names associated with the early development of jazz, one of the most prominent is “TIO”. Three members of this creol of color family played and taught the clarinet in New Orleans during the formative decades of the style. Lorenzo Tio jr, his father Lorenzo sr, and his uncle Louis Papa Tio. Each was considered a masterful performer and teacher by peers and successors and together they left a remarkable students who subsequently achieved success as jazz musician. As a pedagogue the Tio’s taught a number of significant clarinet stylists including Sidney Bechet, Jimmie Noone and Barney Bigard.

The Tio’s approach to teaching involved emphasis on ear training, intonation, music-reading skills through solfege sightsinging, and development of a fluid digital technique and a robust tone quality through exercises in published method books.

All this stuff deeply bored Sidney, who preferred chatting and playing with Lorenzo Jr., who was his age and who immediately became his great friend, to Louis and Lorenzo’s lessons. His career took off when one evening he replaced Lorenzo Jr. in Bunk Johnson’s Eagle’s Jazz Band in a club in Storyville. He was just 13 years old. His mother exploded. It was not decorous for a hard-working family of the proud Creole society to play at just thirteen years old in Storyville, among sinners and sinners. But when she realized it, it was too late. Sidney was completely absorbed in that world. He played well beyond his age and by now his peers were no longer thirteen-year-olds like him, but grown men, excellent musicians who recognized his enormous talent.

At the time, they said that Johnny Doods ran off the stage every time he saw Bechet enter the club, afraid, they say, of being humiliated in one of those competitions between instrumentalists. It was as if that boy had become a man all in one night, becoming a great soloist and a great fan of nightlife and all that comes with it.

Bechet lived in New Orleans in its golden age, a moment when all the essential ingredients came together to create what they later called jazz. He was there, he was the right age, and he contributed to that story. He did it until New Orleans was too small, until the day he realized that there would be other places and other stories to write, other musicians to meet. And he too got on those boats that at the end of the 1910s took hundreds of musicians and workers north along the Mississippi route. Chicago, where he joined Will Marion Cook’s band and then Europe where he arrived with the Southern Syncopeted Orchestra, the first black and Creole band that played in England at the court of King Charles V.

It was in London that he saw the first soprano sax of his life, there in a shop window. He immediately fell in love with it. He bought it, took it in his hands and it became his favorite instrument. Sidney Bechet, known to be the first soprano saxophonist in the history of jazz. Long, without curves, it looked like a clarinet but not made of wood, of brass. The soprano, an instrument difficult to tame, especially in the highest register. Bechet up there had difficulty tuning it and compensated for the defects with an operatic vibrato that became so characteristic as to make him unique. A mix of blues accompanied all this. His technical ability allowed him to fire rapid successions of notes like from a gun, up and down the entire register. The soprano saxophone, once simply a novelty instrument, now served as an extension of Bechet’s personality.

The boy did shoot notes like bullets from a gun, but his temperament was not exactly that of an English lord. One evening he argued with two women in a hotel room. When the meter opened the door the three were giving each other a good beating while destroying the room. And nothing, they arrested him and quickly sent him back to the United States. It was 1922, I think.

He fired notes like bullets, but we can’t say he fired bullets like notes. It was 1927, Sidney had moved to France some time ago. He spoke French very well, and he loved France. In Paris he was practically a hero, most people were fascinated by his New Orleans Creole accent and his passionate and sentimental way of playing. He enjoyed that glory, aware of the racial comfort that black Americans enjoyed in those parts, comfort that he could only dream of in his homeland. One evening an argument broke out during a sort of Jam Session at Bricktop’s (Ada Smith’s Cafe), some said it was because of bad chords, others because of a woman. Who knows. A pistol duel ensued with an audience. The two met in a public street, other musicians and ordinary customers crowded on either side of the duelists. Sidney fired and hit three people. None of them were the intended target.

He shot Banjoist Mike McKendricks in the leg, who didn’t take it well. Little Mike, who was released from the hospital, ran to Bechet, threatening to sue him. And what did he do? He got very angry and threatened to disappear, otherwise he would shoot him in the other leg too. That’s when the gendarmes caught him and sent him back to the United States.

Sidney Bechet’s genius has manifested itself in extraordinary ways: from the French’s fervent love of his sentimentality and musical virtuosity, to his crucial role in the development of jazz between 1920 and 1959. Considered one of the four most influential pioneers of jazz (along with Buddy Bolden, Louis Armstrong and Jelly Roll Morton), Bechet was often compared to Armstrong, both as an equal and as a rival.

His music could evoke the ancestral dances of Congo Square in New Orleans or captivate opera lovers with technique and depth. Whether it was a slow blues soaked in emotion or a lively rhythm capable of making anyone dance, his fiery temperament always emerged through the sound of his instrument, as if his soul spoke directly from the bell of his sax.

Bechet reminds us that despite the apparent safety, life can always bring unexpected surprises. Perhaps, then, the best response is to enjoy music while you can. Just like he did. 

Jazz for Sidney Bechet was a way to connect the desire for liberation and self-expression of African Americans to music. When asked about the origins of jazz he replied: “music began with emancipation”. In fact, music was not just notes on paper for Bechet, music was a spirit, inspired by his ancestors, treated with the utmost respect, dignity and passion.

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Il podcast è scritto da Guido Maria Bianchini e Marta Leoni.
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Traduzioni di Silvia Civa.
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