Sidney Bechet

And capping off that string of gems, the great Joni Summers.

Right now we're going to hear a September string of gems, in particular, kick-started with an ever-classic recording from the great Sidney Bechet.

What a unique and timeless sound he possessed.

His signature soprano just takes you to a different time and place.

And then to cap it all off, we're going to hear from Bobby Darin and his recording of Try to Remember off his absolutely classic 1966 album In a Broadway Bag.

It would end up being one of the last jazz big band albums of his career, and it's a real gem.

Sidney Bechet, Johnny Coles, Bobby Darin, right here on this tis autumn episode of I'm Old Fashioned on jazz.fm. 91.

Thank you.

We started out with Crazy Rhythm and Squeeze Me, two tunes that were done on September 22nd of 1954 in Paris for the Vogue label.

This was Jonah Jones with the Sidney Bechet band, Jonah Jones on trumpet, the great New Orleans soprano saxophonist Sidney Bechet, Andre Persiani on piano, Benoit Corzine on bass, and Marcel Blanche on drums.

And apparently, This followed a concert in Paris that Bichet had to cancel out on because of ill health and Jonah Jones subbed for him, and people were surprised that he knew how to play earlier styles of jazz.

So the logical thing was to combine him with Bichet on a recording date, and here we are.

Thank you.

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So that was Jonah Jones with the Sidney Bechet band of that period.

It was a pickup band.

Completely different.

You can see one that will be very contemporary work, inspired by a Bechet drama, Au Le Bourgeois.

And the other one will be the work I felt in love when I was a teenager studying at a conservatory that will be Toccata.

So you can see that completely same composer, two works, completely different writing style and 50 years between one work and the other one.

A lot of early music, a lot of Wayne Shorter, a lot of John Coltrane, a lot of Billie Holiday.

Eventually, a lot of Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechet, uh, Charlie Mingus.

Uh, it was just, I was just listening to all, all of these things.

So would you say, because I know your love for Wayne Shorter, but would you say that Coltrane has chased you, or you have cha- ha- chased him, or neither?

think...

If you ask people, you know, what are your favourite memories of music or why does this bit of music stick with you? As far as AI goes down the line, I don't imagine you're going to find someone who's not even been born yet going, oh, my first love of music was when I typed into a generator, please make me some background jazz that sounds a little bit like Sidney Bechet and it come out with this thing.

I was like, oh, it's never... ever going to be that.

I think in the final episode, Charlotte Ritchie, we should have probably mentioned that.

We'll hear him doing clarinet and soprano all through this program.

Obviously very influenced by Sidney Bechet.

Then we went on to Southern Beauty's Rag, that kind of, not a terribly well-known Joplin piece, but very well played in this case by, let me make sure I got this, Ezequiel Paella on piano, and that was done in 1999.

Then those two tunes that were recorded in 1991 for Red Ondel from the album, I'm not sure which album it was, but it came from, as I said, 1991.

So now we're going to go to the next set, and we're going to hear two more tunes from that 1991 date.

We're going to hear a soprano sax feature for Carrizo on Summertime.

taken as the Sidney Bechet version did, along with some good cornet by Dickie Conce and piano by Manuel Fraga, and nice stately tempo all the way through.

Then another jazz tune, More Ragtime, by J. L. O. Morton, called the Froggy More Rag, after that, features all members of the band.

My name is Steve Bowie.

The subject of this podcast episode is the great Sidney Bechet, a New Orleans-born soprano saxophonist and clarinetist.

He was born on May 14, 1897, and became one of the great soloists of the early years of jazz.

He played with Duke Ellington for a short period in the mid-1920s, and even though it was a short time, it was very memorable to Ellington.

Thank you.

Thank you. . . .

The Sheikah Bearby was a song that Sidney Bechet liked to play, and he had a set solo that he liked to play on it.

He taught it to Johnny Hodges, and we're going to hear both of them play this solo.