Word: bechet
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Died. Sidney Bechet, 62, Negro Dixieland jazz artist famed for the honeyed wail of his soprano saxophone; of cancer; in Garches, a Paris suburb. At ten Bechet was tooting his clarinet in the dives of Storyville, New Orleans' oldtime red-light district, over the years spread the lusty music of Dixieland up and down the land, across the Atlantic. An eclectic musician who knew Bach, could read music only sketchily, but wrote a ballet, Composer-Performer Bechet wove grand opera into Dixieland, combined some Verdi with Gershwin whenever he played Summertime. In and out of favor...
...Last, Clicks. When Edward Ellington was born in Washington, D.C. in 1899, the capital was jigging to the insolent rhythms of ragtime pianists. Farther west Buddy Bolden's fabulous cornet was shaking New Orleans' levees, and such young idolaters as Joe ("King") Oliver and Sidney Bechet were soon to hammer out the rudiments of instrumental jazz. Washington jazz tended to strings-pianos, banjos, violins-but it had the same ancestry: the sophisticated rhythms of African drums, which later took on a more succinct and sensuous character as they drifted through the Caribbean islands, gradually infiltrated...
...Bechet: La Nuit Est Une Sorciere (Ballet...
Jazzman Sidney Bechet soloes in his own Ballet, which has been a success in France. The story concerns a somnambulist who kills his family while he is asleep, only to be led to his own death by a slave. The music at first alternates between late romantic and jazz styles, then combines the two. The jazz is excellent, while the classical sections are rather dramatic. When combined, Bechet has an interesting musical admixture that fits the weird story...
...jazz have become American folklore. The critics like to call it "music of protest": it started with slave chants, work songs, blues, gaudy Negro funeral parades in New Orleans−those noisy expressions of bravado in the face of death by such greats-to-be as King Oliver, Sidney Bechet and Louis Armstrong who blatted their way from the cemetery playing High Society or Didn't He Ramble. New Orleans jazz moved to Chicago, where a crowd of delighted white musicians pounced on it, adding a few refinements and "protested" mostly against...