BLP 1203

Sidney Bechet - Giant Of Jazz Volume 1

Released - 1955

Recording and Session Information

WOR Studios, NYC, October 12, 1945
"Wild Bill" Davison, cornet; Sidney Bechet, soprano sax, clarinet; Art Hodes, piano; George "Pops" Foster, bass; Fred Moore, drums, vocals.

BN262-1 Save It Pretty Mama
BN263-1 Way Down Yonder In New Orleans
BN264-1 Memphis Blues
BN265-0 Shine
BN266-1 St. James Infirmary
BN267-0 Darktown Strutters' Ball

WOR Studios, NYC, January 21, 1949
"Wild Bill" Davison, cornet; Sidney Bechet, soprano sax; Art Hodes, piano; Walter Page, bass; Fred Moore, drums.

BN348-2 Sister Kate
BN352-1 Nobody Knows You...

WOR Studios, NYC, March 23, 1949
"Wild Bill" Davison, cornet; Ray Diehl, trombone; Sidney Bechet, soprano sax; Art Hodes, piano; Walter Page, bass; Wilmore "Slick" Jones, drums.

BN359-0 Fidgety Feet

WOR Studios, NYC, April 19, 1950
"Wild Bill" Davison, cornet; Jimmy Archey, trombone; Sidney Bechet, soprano sax; Joe Sullivan, piano; George "Pops" Foster, bass; Wilmore "Slick" Jones, drums.

BN376-4 Copenhagen
BN377-1 China Boy
BN381-2 Shim-Me-Sha-Wabble

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Darktown Strutter's Ball	Brooks	October 12 1945
Save It Pretty Mama	Redman	October 12 1945
Shine	Mack-Dabney-Brown	October 12 1945
St. James Infirmary	Primrose	October 12 1945
Way Down Yonder In New Orleans	Layton	October 12 1945
Memphis Blues	W. C. Handy	October 12 1945
Side Two
Fidgety Feet	Shields-La Rocca	March 23 1949
Sister Kate	A.J. Piron	January 21 1948
Copenhagen	Davis-Melrose	April 19 1950
Nobody Knows You...	J. Cox	January 21 1949
China Boy	Winfree-Boutelie	April 19 1950
Shim-Me-Sha Wabble	S. Williams	April 19 1950

Liner Notes

IT IS A RARE THING indeed when a musician steps beyond the normal boundaries of the jazzman to enter that charmed circle in which he becomes an "institution".

Such a man is Sidney Bechet.

Sidney is an idol of jazz fans in the U.S. as well as in France, where he has lived for the past years. When he plays at the famous Olympia Theatre in Paris, the reception accorded him is comparable with that enjoyed by Maurice Chevalier or some other top-ranking music hall star. When he appeared recently at the performance of a ballet he had written, the crowd raised such a mob scene that the ensuing riot was reported by the wire services to newspapers on this side of the Atlantic.

What are the qualities that have earned Sidney Bechet this fabulous degree of attention?

The answer must incorporate several elements. On Bechet's musicianship there is almost unanimous agreement: his colorful, fluent improvisations, his heavy vibrato and forceful melodic lines both on soprano saxophone and clarinet, have made him the idol of jazz fans for decades and have ultimately, as they did with Armstrong, edged their way into general public acceptance. Then, too, there is the legend. Bechet is a living part of the heritage given us by the early New Orleans jazz, a surviving symbol of a near-forgotten and newly-recalled era when he and Louis and Bunk and Freddie Keppard and the rest were all a part of the creative jazz scene in a city with which so many of the sentimental associations of jazz are linked. Beyond this there is the dominant character of the man himself, of the majestic physical personality behind the horn; and for more than a decade there has been the glamorous story of his comeback, after years of neglect and a period of musical disillusionment and retirement.

Add all these factors together, throw in a few dozen of the great musicians with whom Bechet surrounded himself on his many Blue Note recording sessions, and you may have a clearer picture, visual and aural, of the incomparable Bechet story.

On the sessions that make up Blue Note 1203 and 1204, Sidney was featured with a number of compatible musicians, most of them identified in one way or another with Dixieland jazz, as are many of the tunes that were selected.

BLP 1203

All six tunes on Side 1 are the products of an eminently successful session made under the direction of Art Hodes, with Bechet switching to clarinet on Save It Pretty Mama and Way Down Yonder. The very slow and funereal St. James Infirmary, with its semi-comedy vocal by Freddy Moore, was a Louis Armstrong record item in 1928. Memphis Blues, W. C. Handy's first song hit, goes back almost a half-century, having originated as an election song for Boss Crump. Aided by Art's sensitive piano and Pops Foster's powerful slap-style bass, Bechet and Davison were ostensibly so stimulated by each other on their first joint session that their soaring spirits are reflected in truly rousing performances. The even level of excellence of the six selections can be fully appreciated now that they can be heard uninterruptedly on one LP side.

Fidgety Feet, with its eloquent Bechet soprano chorus and Sister Kate, with Wild Bill growling and searing his way through the familiar 16-bars-plus-tag strain, are both tunes that go back to World War I days; the first a product of clarinetist Larry Shields and cornetist Nick la Rocca of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, the second a Louis Armstrong theme which, Satchmo often recalls, he sold out to Mr. Piron for a fiat $50.

Copenhagen, the one the Wolverines recorded in 1924, has some solo work by Wild Bill, Jimmy Archey and Joe Sullivan with a climactic soprano sax buildup. Nobody Knows You (When You're Down And Out) is a song collectors will remember from the Bessie Smith version in 1929; Wild Bill, Art and Sidney all have some warm emotional moments with its attractive chord changes.

China Boy, associated with Joe Sullivan ever since he recorded it with McKenzie and Condon's Chicagoans in 1927, swings through Joe's solo to a superbly built-up series of Bechet choruses. Shim-Me-Sha Wabble, a Spencer Williams original, probably antedates the better known Muskrat Ramble and has a chorus based on a similar harmonic sequence, plus a minor-key verse.

BLP 1204

Like BLP 1203, this starts off with a Shields-la Rocca tune of ODJB origin. Diehl's trombone chorus is especially smooth on this treatment of Jazz Band Ball. Tin Roof Blues, which the New Orleans Rhythm Kings assembled and recorded in 1923, is treated in the time-honored fashion, with the ensemble doubling up the tempo here and there in the closing chorus. Cake Walking Babies has an old ragtimey melody around which Sidney swings with relentless power. Basin Street milks the melody of the Spencer Williams standard, with some warm moments by Bechet and Wild Bill. Another of Spencer's tunes, I've Found A New Baby, which follows it, shows not only Sidney's fluent solo style but his most effective manner of stimulating the improvised ensembles. The side closes, as it opened, with a la Rocca memory; Tiger Rag in its day was perhaps the most popular jazz instrumental of its type, taken usually a little faster than Sidney plays it here.

Sidney's interpretation of The Saints opens with Art's piano mournfully recalling Nobody Knows The Trouble I've Seen, then jumps into tempo with Sidney's soprano establishing the melody. Though this has become the most overworked tune on the traditional jazz scene, in this version it fortunately goes on its own way, shunning the conventional vocal approach, with one passage in a minor key for variety.

I Ain't Gonna Give Nobody None Of My Jelly Roll, with Jimmy Archey pulling some tailgate trombone effects in the ensembles, is followed by Tailgate Ramble, created and recorded a few years ago by Johnny Mercer and Wingy Manone. Mandy and Runnin' Wild (the latter a Bechet tour de force that features his superlative improvisation throughout) are from the same session as Jelly Roll. Joshua, starting with Bechet accompanied by offbeat handclaps, soon moves into some plaintive ensembles as Will Bill and Diehl join him. This one has an exuberance that reflects the kicks the men were getting out of the date. It ends, as it began, with the soprano and the handclaps, plus a few suitably sad closing chords as the walls come tumbling down.

LEONARD FEATHER
(Author Of The Encyclopedia of Jazz)
Cover Design by JOHN HERMANSADER
Photo by FRANCIS WOLFF
Remastering by RUDY VAN GELDER

1998 CD Issue Liner Notes

The songs on this disc are almost all from the early amalgam of jazz and the popular song in the 1920s — one exception is 'When The saints Go Marching In, a hymn written in New Orleans in 1896, and another is "Joshua," a spiritual brought to national attention by a best-selling 1925 Paul Robeson record. The style of the performances, however, is the hard-driving swing associated with Greenwich Village saloons in the early forties, itself a refinement of the Chicago style that replaced the New Orleans two beat with four-four and featured successions of improvised solo choruses. Although in the critical sniping of the forties, "Nicksieland" - named for the Village club operated by Nick Rongetti — was disdained by the traditionalists as inauthentic and the modernists as old fashioned, it is pure, vibrant jazz: No longer in the mainstream, it is still a favorite at jazz parties and festivals.

Responsibility for Sidney Bechet, Wild Bill Davison and Art Hodes coming together for these sessions is shared among several people. In 1938, John Hammond presented Sidney Bechet, among others, at Carnegie Hall, where Alfred Lion heard him. Among the performers at the Hammond concert were Meade "Lux" Lewis and Albert Ammons, and a few days later, Lion recorded them. The results were good enough to sell, and the sides initiated the Blue Note label. Lion promptly recorded Sidney Bechet as well (Blue Note 6). Nick Rongetti liked post-Chicago jazz and featured it at Nick's to the exclusion of all other varieties of jazz. Bechet and Davison both played at Nick's and they may have played together there or at jam sessions organized by Nick's guitarist and talent scout, Eddie Condon, or by Milt Gabler (of Commodore Records). They first recorded together for Blue Note on an Art Hodes session in October 1945, when Davison was featured in quartet, then playing at the Village Vanguard.

New Orleans-born Sidney Bechet (1897-1959) (pronounced senior member of the group. Of French-African ancestry, his family had been middle-class tradesmen since colonial days. Although his parents expected him to learn a trade with his brothers, his dedication to the clarinet and later the soprano saxophone won out. He began professional work in his teens, including a regular association with King Oliver, and he dropped out of school.

In 1917, a touring band took him to Chicago, where he stayed until 1919 when he toured Europe with Will Marion Cook's orchestra. The reception for the band and soloist Bechet was sensational, and he stayed in England for a couple of years before moving to New York in 1922. Although New York remained his base until a permanent move to Paris in 1951, he continued to perform regularly in Europe. He was held in high regard by his peers, and he recorded often. For a few months in the Twenties, Bechet played with Duke Ellington, and was featured in the Noble Sissle band off and on from 1928 through 1938. In 1932, he formed a small band with trumpeter Tommy Ladnier, but the early thirties were not economically viable for jazz, and in 1933-34, he and Ladnier operated a tailor's shop. After his final engagement with Sissle, Bechet joined the lineup at Nick's. From then on, he was a star soloist, sometimes with ad hoc groups under his leadership. more often as guest leader of someone else's band.

Art Hodes (pronounced Ho-dees) was born in the Ukraine in 1904, but From the age of six months until his death in 1993, he was a Chicagoan except the years 1938-1950, when he lived in New York. In 1926, he joined the Wolverines, and for the rest of his life played in small bands — some under his leadership, made many records — often for Blue Note — edited and published the magazine Jazz Record, produced jazz on early television and taught. Throughout he was a superb blues pianist.

Wild Bill Davison (1905-1989) got his nickname from a poster at a Chicago club where he was playing, but it didn't stick until the 190s. The name fit the raw ebullience of his cornet playing and it also fit his personality — he was a crude womanizer and a kleptomaniac, and although he didn't show symptoms of alcoholism, he drank more than a fifth of whisky or gin every day. He was born in Defiance, Ohio and was raised by his grandparents in the basement of the Carnegie library where his grandfather was custodian. He took up the cornet as a child, and when he began getting paying work, was advised by a school counselor to drop out. His career was almost entirely one of drift. He played around Ohio until 1925, when the band he happened to be with landed a job in Chicago. Davison stayed there until a 1933 lob offer in Milwaukee, which became his base until 1941 when a fan who was also a wealthy widow offered to fund a move to New York. Within weeks of his arrival, he was invited to sit in at Nick's and Nick hired him on the spot. He became a Condon regular, performing and recording as sideman or nominal leader. When clubs were no longer a steady source of income, he played concerts and festivals around the world, doing so until his death.

The chemistry between Bechet and Davison on record, including especially these classic sides, is marvelous. Davison once told me that Bechet liked to play with him because he didn't get in Bechet's way. (Bill's exact words are less printable.) A better reason may be the compatibility of their styles. Bechet was one of the most powerful soloists in jazz, amplified by the metallic sound of the soprano sax, and he tended to overwhelm other players. Davison's rough tone and explosive improvisations fully matched Bechet's. Bill was self-taught and apparently had his distinctive sound from the beginning. Although he couldn't sight read music, he had an instinctive grasp of harmony, which contributed to his improvisations and allowed him to accompany the solos of others smoothly. For whatever reason, when Bechet and Davison recorded for Blue Note, the results were unquestionably Desert Island Discs.

—Art Hilgart
Contributor, The Journal of the International Association of Jazz Record Collectors