Hörproben kann man hier einige finden:
http://www.redhotjazz.com/bechet.html
Und hier eine wunderbare Passage vom Ende der Autobiographie, Treat It Gentle, die auch im Mosaic-Booklet abgedruckt ist:
I can remember when I was young. I didn’t have toys like others. I never had a toy to play with. I wouldn’t have known what to do with a toy if you gave me one. I started once to write a song for a boy like that. The song, it was called Sans Amis. He had nothing to play with and no one to play with. But he had a song. He kept making that song over and over out of himself, changing it around, making it fit. That boy, he had this song about being lonely, and as soon as he had the song, he wasn’t lonely any more. He was lucky. He was real well off; he had this thing he could trust, and so he could trust himself.
~ Sidney Bechet: Treat It Gentle, London 1960 (Reprinted New York 1978)
Und dann noch Art Hodes über Bechet (ebenfalls aus dem Mosaic-Booklet):
Sidney enriched everyone he touched; he was that kind of player. There was the State College date we did in Pennsylvania. It was my date. I’dd booked it; but with Sidney on it, it became Bechet’s date. he worked that hard to make it good. Anything that came to mind that needed doing he’d step in and do. You see…
We’d driven some 8 hours (starting like 5 a.m., immediately after finishing up on a gig) and we arrived in not the greatest of shape. In fact, a couple of my guys were feeling no pain (if you know what I mean). Sidney got them both to take a cold bath, plus some aspirins; then walked them for blocks, just to get ‚em straight. Then he played the gig; and knocked everybody out.
Did I ever tell you how we’d met? We were both on staff for Blue Note records. One time the date was named after Bechet; another it was Art Hodes‘ Hot Five. But no matter; Sidney worked those dates as if they were all his dates. Yeh; now I recall our meeting. It hadn’t come about on a good note. He was supposed to play a session for me and for some reason never showed. But he did make it the following week. When the union advised me not to pay him, and to bring charges against him, I decided that wasn’t for me. So we became friends.
Bechet didn’t stand for no nonsense. For some reason he took a dislike to a certain drummer’s playing. He only discussed it once with me. I couldn’t bring myself to let this cat go. Well, the next date Bechet got, he used Wettling on drums and James P. Johnson on piano. Couldn’t blame him for that; that was in good taste. Two very fine players. But dig this. Bechet, of course, was colored. But Wettling was white. With Sidney color didn’t count. If you couldn’t please him musically, forget it.
The ’40s (when I ran into Bechet) weren’t the best of times materially; financially. Sidney tried various businesses to make things go, but never successfully, or for long. And he liked to sail; take to the water. For a bit I heard he dug photography. Finally, he left the U.S. scene and landed in France. I’d heard he married some wealthy woman (titled). They must have loved him over there. When he passed on they renamed a street after Sidney Bechet.
~ Art Hodes, zuerst erschienen in dessen Zeitschrift „The Jazz Record“ in den 40ern, dann in der Auswahl aus Hodes‘ Artikeln „Selections from the Gutter“, in den 70ern erneut abgedruckt.
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"Don't play what the public want. You play what you want and let the public pick up on what you doin' -- even if it take them fifteen, twenty years." (Thelonious Monk) | Meine Sendungen auf Radio StoneFM: gypsy goes jazz, #158 – Piano Jazz 2024 - 19.12.2024 – 20:00 | Slow Drive to South Africa, #8: tba | No Problem Saloon, #30: tba