BLP 1207

The Fabulous Sidney Bechet

Released - 1958

Recording and Session Information

WOR Studios, NYC, November 5, 1951
Sidney DeParis, trumpet; Jimmy Archey, trombone; Sidney Bechet, soprano sax; Don Kirkpatrick, piano; George "Pops" Foster, bass; Manzie Johnson, drums.

BN416-3 tk.3 Original Dixieland One-Step
BN417-0 tk.4 Avalon
BN418-1 tk.6 That's A Plenty
BN419-0 tk.7 Blues My Naughty Sweetie Gave To Me
BN420-1 tk.16 Ballin' The Jack

Audio-Video Studios, NYC, August 25, 1953
Jonah Jones, trumpet; Jimmy Archey, trombone; Sidney Bechet, soprano sax; Buddy Weed, piano; Walter Page, bass; Johnny Blowers, drums.

BN518-3 tk.4 All Of Me
BN519-1 tk.6 I'm A Ding Dong Daddy (as Ding Dong Daddy)
BN520-1 tk.8 Black And Blue
BN522-2 tk.19 Rose Of The Rio Grande
BN523-0 tk.20 Sweet Georgia Brown

Session Photos

Photos: Francis Wolff

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Original Dixieland One-Step	La Rocca	November 5 1951
Blues My Naughty Sweetie Gives To Me	Swanstone-Morgan-McCarron	November 5 1951
That's A Plenty	Pollack	November 5 1951
Ballin' The Jack	Smith-Burris	November 5 1951
Avalon	DeSylva-Rose	November 5 1951
Side Two
Rose Of Rio Grande	Leslie-Warren-Gorman	August 25 1953
Black And Blue	Razaf-Brooks-Waller	August 25 1953
Sweet Georgia Brown	Pinkard	August 25 1953
All Of Me	Marks-Simons	August 25 1953
Ding Dong Daddy	Baxter	August 25 1953

Liner Notes

THERE ARE a very few jazz musicians who possess and can project so passionate a pulsating power that they can fuel any ensemble, no matter how sluggish, into burning at a higher temperature than its normal capacity. Louis Armstrong could do that, as can be heard especially in his recordings of the thirties when his big bands often sounded like Meyer Davis rejects until Louis' horn awakened the congregation. Charlie Parker was also able to change to some extent the context of his playing — even when squared strings were involved — just by the naked ferocity of his presence. And so powerful is Thelonious Monk's beat that he makes even an ersatz rhythm section swing — or collapse. There are no in-betweens with musical personalities as commanding as Louis, Bird, Monk or Sidney Bechet. You either go their way when you're playing with them, if you can, or you get off the train.

I remember one early Paris morning in 1950 when Bechet was playing in a left bank "cave" with a collection of amiable but stumbling French revivalists who had taken all they could off of various old recordings, all but the living experiences that had produced the records in the first place. For part of a set, Sidney was talking to friends, mostly growling about the rapaciousness of American bookers. The music meanwhile was becoming more and more lugubriously unswinging until in time it might have qualified for Schrafft's. Sidney finally became too exasperated to talk any more. "Excuse me," he grumbled, "I'm going to have to do something about this." He walked on the bandstand, picked up his soprano and somehow, before half a minute had passed, Sidney had blown his cardboard sidemen into a unit of flesh and some bones, had lifted this unit by his own power into the air, and by this push, had given them enough momentum so that they appeared to be swinging until the end of the tune. They must have felt, I imagine, as if they had suddenly become sucked up by a typhoon.

Growing up in Boston, I heard Sidney literally hundreds of times in all kinds of situations, many of them otherwise quite dreary. I never heard Sidney when he wasn't swinging, and swinging hard. (I'd like to hear Bechet with Blakey some time; I wonder who'd ride whom. My bet would be on Bechet.) I never heard him, even when he was bugged — about a women, bread, or Bunk Johnson — play dispiritedly. And I've never listened to him without being moved. At times, hearing him has been an exhilarating experience for me; and even when the performance hasn't been optimum, I've never heard him without being shaken at being put in contact with that much emotion coming out of just one horn.

Bechet's biography has been sketched on previous reissues. It should be added that Bechet's influence has gone beyond the New Orleans idiom. He helped Johnny Hodges's learn the soprano, and although Hodges's ultimate alto conception was quite removed from Sidney's approach to a horn, there remained traces of the Bechet voice. A number of jazzmen who evolved during the swing era may not have been much shaped by Bechet's style as such, but I recall several of them marveling at his drive and abandon; and I expect that the example of Bechet as a jazz musician who opened himself all the way when he played, had an effect on those younger jazzmen who heard him while looking for their own voices.

There's not much to be said about the tunes in the set. They're either venerable offertories from the New Orleans-Dixieland hymnal or standards that have intrigued jazz musicians, particularly of the generation or two represented here. Of the first sessions, it should be noted that this is one of the relatively few recorded appearances pianist Don Kirkpatrick made before his death in 1956. Kirkpatrick had played and arranged for Chick Webb, and had also worked with Elmer Snowden and Don Redman, among others. He had played for a time in the fifties with the perfectionist Wilbur de Paris who noted recently: "He was a very good pianist, out of the Waller-James P. Johnson school, and also a very skilled arranger." Jimmy Archey is the short, dignified King Oliver alumnus who has been freelancing in recent years, mostly with New Orleans-Dixieland combos, and has traveled successfully in Europe. Jimmy plays a punching, non-legato trombone with assertive conviction. Sidney de Paris, who has been in his brother's band for several years, is a considerably underrated trumpet player who in the right circumstances can be a very personal, functionally imaginative soloist. George "Pops" Foster, one of the last of the major New Orleans contributors to jazz, is also one of the most engaging raconteurs and gentle hedonists I've ever known in or out of jazz. Manzie Johnson worked with June Clark, Don Redman, Frankie Newton, Sidney Bechet and many others through the years, and many listeners particularly remember him for his work on the Ladnier-Mezzrow sides of the thirties.

In the second session, Mr. Archey remains and the trumpet is Jonah Jones, a swing era veteran (perhaps best known for his time with Cab Calloway) who made some European hegiras and who recently has found a steady, sizable income in playing muted jazz for such plush conversation rooms as The Embers in New York. The rhythm section on this second date is lighter and more flowing in the swing era sense than is usual on Bechet recordings. Buddy Weed has done many studio dates; Johnny Blowers has been with Eddie Condon, among others; and the late Walter Page, who died in 1957, was, of course, one of the first (if not the first) walking bassists and for many years was part of that Count Basie rhythm section which, as Whitney Balliett put it, "put wheels on the beat."

Bechet has been in France for a decade now, and is likely to live there for the rest of his life. He has been accepted as no other jazz musician ever has in France. His records sell startling amounts at times; he plays not only the jazz clubs and concerts, but the big variety theatres; and he has the time and support to write and perform in projects like his ballet/ La Nuit Est Une Sorciere and more recently, his operetta, New Orleans.

Even the usually embattled French jazz press is more or less united on lauding Bechet. The Grand Inquisitor, Hugues Panassié, writes of Bechet's ample, rich tone, tremendous drive and remarkable melodic sense. In the opposition press, Jazz-Hot, Frank Tenot wrote in 1952 that Bechet makes "his instrument sing with an astonishing lyric force. His hot and large sonority illuminates each of his phrases. However, the grandeur of his playing does not exclude simplicity, the quality of simplicity that the great masters of the first era of jazz possessed."

There have been times through the years when some critics have commented dourly on Bechet's vibrato, finding it too wide and overbearing. This reaction is palpably a matter of taste and temperament. I've never found his vibrato annoying, and find it, in fact, a quite natural vocalized part of his expressiveness. With all that heat coming through a technique and conception that, after all, began in an era when vibrato was the most natural concomitant of jazz imaginable, I'm only surprised that the vibrato — colleagues, sometimes doesn't erupt volcano-like and swallow us all record and listeners alike.

NAT HENTOFF

ADDENDUM

Tracks 1-6, the master takes of the 1951 session, were originally issued on The Fabulous Sidney Bechet And His Hot Six With Sidney De Paris (10" LP Blue Note BLP 7020). Tracks 10-15, the master takes of the 1953 session, were issued as Dixie By The Fabulous Sidney Bechet (10" LP Blue Note BLP 7026). Because of time restrictions, the 1958 12" LP reissue The Fabulous Sidney Becket left off "There'll Be Some Changes Made" (first session), which had been on a previously released Bechet 1211 LP, and "Shine" (second session).

In 1985, The Complete Blue Note Recordings Of Sidney Bechet (Mosaic MRS-110) included all 12 masters, adding five previously unissued alternate takes in process. The alternate take of "Black And Blue" is a very different arrangement the selected master with Bechet playing the melody and taking considerable liberties with it. The alternates of "There'll Be Some Changes Made" and u Rose Of The Rio Grande" rival the chosen masters and have since been anthologized elsewhere.

Both of these sessions, Bechet's last for the label, were recorded during visits from France, where he settled in early 1951. They are his only Blue Note sessions recorded on tape as opposed to disc, giving us a cleaner, clearer sound than his earlier work.

—MICHAEL CUSCUNA