Musicianer's musicianer

I just finished "Treat It Gentle," the autobiography of New Orleans jazz great Sidney Bechet (that's ba as in bath and shay as in sashay), which I spied cruising a local bookstore last year.

The book from Da Capo Press is a nifty look at the roots and initial growth of jazz from a guy who was there pretty much at the beginning and who was probably second only to Louis Armstrong in his worldwide stature among early jazz musicians, or "musicianers" as Bechet refers to them. It reads easily, kind of folksy for the most part like Mark Harris' baseball novels the Henry Wiggen's books ("The Southpaw," "Bang the Drum Slowly," et al), which are old favorites of mine. In contrast, the section on his grandfather, a musician and slave named Omar, is mythological in nature and like a short work of classical literature on its own.

Bechet also is notable for cutting a niche in jazz for the soprano sax, which Coltrane and others made so much memorable use of later. He played clarinet as well.

For an excellent Sidney Bechet CD compilation, try "Sidney Bechet: Centenary Celebration 1997," from Louisiana Red Hot Records. The cuts Bechet recorded from 1924-43 are heavy on the New Orleans sound with a heaping helping of the blues and lots of wonderful improvised flourishes. If you think of Sidney as a sax-playing Satchmo, you're not far wrong.